Since the obsession with the Orient began, western civilization has created many misconceptions about the culture it has worked so hard to imitate. Edward Said describes the Orient as “an integral part of European material civilization and culture” (2), as it not only expresses but also represents a cultural and ideological mode of discourse. Said’s description helps better convey the desire for European society to immerse itself in what it perceives the Orient to be, primarily as it appears in art and other more eclectic images, but nothing deeper. Despite their desire to bring the Orient into their homes, western society had developed a false ideology of Orientalism, feeling that it was “essentially an idea or a creation with no corresponding reality” (5). This western ignorance of the Orient can be attributed to a superiority complex that the west felt it held over eastern cultures.

Whether many members of the western world were aware of it or not, the overall purpose of this superiority complex was for western culture to maintain dominance over the orient. In order continue this domination, the west feigned ignorance to the deeper essence of eastern customs and culture and instead focused on the shallower more esthetically pleasing aspects of the culture to imitate. This idea is further extrapolated as Said suggests, “Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a veridic discourse about the Orient (which is what, in its academic or scholarly form, it claims to be)” (6). Western civilization found itself more powerful by meticulously picking and choosing what parts of the Orient made its way into fashionable European society. This theme continued as the western focus shifted through different areas of the orient; earlier imitations reflected Egyptian and Persian styles, which gave way to a more Indian focused period. Most recently, the Orient has come to refer to the Asian Orient including areas such as China, Japan, North and South Korea, etc. Given that this is western civilization’s most current obsession with “Oriental culture” I find that the image below shows how little we have budged from our original misguided notions of the Orient.

Geisha Bride with Remington Typewriter (The Antiley Chop Typewriter Blog)

The photo is titled, “Geisha Bride with Remington Typewriter”. By introducing the official label of the Geisha in the title, the artist evokes certain implications about the figure we then see. The first immediate and obvious difference that is apparent is the fact that Geishas are women of Japanese culture whose dedication to the art of performance is their being. The “Geisha” depicted in the photo, however, is very clearly Caucasian with little to no identifying Geisha markings. The cultural difference is most apparent in her unruly blonde hair. The Geisha customs expresses the pains taken to perfect and maintain the Geisha’s hair with intricate styles often professionally done. The woman in the photo appears to have purposely teased her hair into chaos, the exact opposite goal of a Geisha’s design. It is also important to note the dress being worn by the “Geisha” in the photo. As she is labeled the “Geisha Bride”, it is apparent that the photographer decided to westernize the Geisha by placing her in a traditional European-American wedding dress. In respect to the orient, there are a many concerns with this choice. Although Geishas could marry, they had to retire from their profession first, as active Geishas are expected to be single women for the sakes of the clients. Additionally, a Geisha would traditionally wear the kimono with an obi sash as their uniform. Although white may mean purity, oftentimes in oriental culture, white is the color that represents the act of mourning.

If aware of the lack in cultural respect often found in western depiction of the orient, the photographer could be mocking the idea of western ignorance, or perhaps is representing a marriage of oriental customs to the western culture. The bride is wearing traditional geisha makeup as her face is coated white with only parts of the lips painted. Her deliberate eye makeup also gives the appearance of a mask as is the Geisha custom. Despite this one key identifying mark of Geisha custom, as the viewer moves away from her face, the rest of her body moves further and further away from oriental tradition, as is seen with her hair and dress. She is positioned behind the Remington, with her arms around the typewriter, as if she is marrying the machine. The Remington is another symbol of western power – another deliberate choice over a Chinese or Japanese typewriter, as may have been more suitable for the Japanese culture.

By placing an American typewriter versus one of an oriental style, the photographer shows the western dominance over this cultural symbol of oriental society, so much so that she is westernized herself. There is also no ring on the bride’s finger. Also she is looking up with her eyes wide open, as if someone was going to take the typewriter away from her. It is also important to note that if there was a Japanese or even Chinese typewriter  (a much more complicated machine that takes much more time to master than the American style) in this image, the typewriter would be massive and probably have to take up most of the image, compared to the American Remington that the photographer has chosen. Since the woman getting married in this image looks to be more “Americanized” by the photographer (as shown with her hair, eyes, and dress) rather than a true Japanese Geisha, perhaps it does make more sense for the photographer to use the standard American Remington typewriter as well. As the western world has shown for many decades of oriental interest, it appears to care little for the underlying facts and details surrounding the culture and more focused on the surface image that the Geisha and Remington evoke as one object. We may either praise the photographer for recognizing the clash of the two cultures, or as critics we may continue to see an ignorant portrayal of a culture the west has spent over a hundred years dominating as though the Orient were a toy.

Works Cited

The Antikey Chop Typewriter Blog.” The Antikey Chop Typewriter Blog. Tumblr, 12 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2012.  http://theantikeychop.tumblr.com/post/33569344656/geisha-bride-with-remington-typewriter-the.

Said, Edward. “Introduction.” Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. 1-28

— Emilie Arsenault

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Paul Smith Typewriter Art Video

Paul Smith (September 21, 1921 – June 25, 2007) was a typewriter artist from the age of fifteen on. Smith was diagnosed with severe spastic cerebral palsy as a young child. He was unable to attend school as a result of this disability. It took Smith close to 16 years to learn to talk and 32 years to walk; however, slowly and methodically, Smith learned to master the typewriter. Around the age of eleven, Smith created his first image on a typewriter retrieved from a neighbor’s trash. He was unable to press two keys at the same time; because he had to use his left hand to steady his right one, and therefore always kept the locked shift key down to produce his art. His works were created solely with the following characters: !@#$%^&*()_. Smith’s pieces mostly depict people, animals, Church figures, trains, landmarks or photos from his fans. To manipulate the desired shading, he would press his thumb directly on the ribbon. One picture, being worked on for two to three hours each day, could take anywhere from two weeks to months for Smith to finish. (All biographical information on Smith was taken from this much longer youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHyQhf9qAY)

Smith’s Typewritten Copy of the Mona Lisa

What Smith did by “typing” art was reproduce/recreate (or translate/copy) an image using the typewriter. The pieces Smith created already existed either in prior art forms or true-life images, before he began typing. Smith saw in his mind (or based on the actual image he was copying) exactly where each symbol needed to be placed before he typed each symbol. Henry James describes his dictation process as being “effectively and unceasingly pulled out of me in speech” (Bosanquet 7). To him everything flowed as it should, not even the pause of a comma could slow his process. In fact, the commas dictated in James work, are just as much a part of the piece as any other symbol introduced to the thought process while typing. Commas, and the methodical process of spelling out each word didn’t halt James as he dictated to Theodora Bosanquet (7). Just because punctuation forced him to take a breath, the thought itself didn’t cause the piece to slow down, it was simply a part of the whole. Similarly, in the video above, Smith appears very deliberate in his movements. He knew exactly what he was trying to accomplish with each keystroke. Smith’s flow of thoughts was continuous in the same way that James’ dictation was. Each symbol, whether punctuation or letter, was individually placed (or dictated) onto the page to form the greater picture.

Nichol’s Snore Comix Number Two

Nichol’s Snore Comix Number Two: Hand drawn and typewritten

In a combination of rigid type structure and Smith’s manipulation of symbols, bpNichol incorporated typewriter art into his creations. Unlike the structure of James’s uniformly typed page or Smith’s recreation of existing photos or paintings, bpNichol’s images were not imitations or recreations. The artwork that Nichol produced disrupted the idea of the writing process that Vilem Flusser discusses in The Gesture of Writing. Not only is the experience of creating (the engagement with the typewriter and hand-drawing) the image different, so is the reader’s (or perceiver’s) connection with the image. By methodically placing letters at a set distance apart (grid-like qualities of the typewritten text) the perceiver “can create meaning semantically and visually, horizontally and vertically” (http://bpnichol.ca/about).

Both Smith and Nichol’s images show the importance of the deliberate placement of words/characters on the page. The Spatialisme and poetic constellation are used not only physically but also metaphorically in both these works. As McCaffery and bpNichol mention in Rational Geomancy “the page becomes an active space, a meaningful element in the compositional process and the size and shape of it becomes significant variables” (65). Not only is the space that the artist uses important, but also the characters/word choices create the final image that the viewer perceives and interprets. Each individual letter typed onto the page creates a lasting imprint upon the larger picture, which is produced in the layers of additional symbol choices. The individual icons found on a page are symbols within a photograph within a page, making it a multidimensional presentation. These layers add to the overall teachings of the so-called “machine” which is created in the artwork.

In the beginning of Rational Geomancy “Part Two: Narrative” Nikolai Foregger’s quote states, “Don’t look around yourself for inspiration. We have only one teacher: THE MACHINE” (59). According to bpNichol, the creation, itself, is “the machine” to those perceiving it. Based on this notion, the piece becomes the active teacher once viewed by the perceiver. All three artists (James, Smith, and Nichols) have created their own versions of this machine, and each one educates using different methods of perception. Smith’s images are easy to perceive because what you see is a copy of something already familiar. When looking at the recreation of Smith’s Mona Lisa, the experience of the image lies in the mere fact that it is a copy of the original. Smith’s transcription of the image shows the perceiver what they expect to see. For example, the narrator of the Smith video above states, “a good copy? No an excellent copy” Either way, it is recognizably a replica. Therefore, a preconceived notion of interpretation already exists for the piece of art the perceiver knows as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The mechanism of the piece is derived from earlier perceptions of the original.

The teaching method of Smith’s machine is different than that of Nichol’s whose art is primarily left to the viewer’s raw interpretation due to its originality. Nichol’s creations allow the art come alive in the mind of the viewer, more so than Smith’s, in the sense that the viewer may not understand what the image is trying to depict, but as a result there is more room left for interpretation. Unlike Smith’s recognizable forms, which may evoke recycled perceptions, Nichol’s “machine” creates an element of curiosity and excitement. Provoking deeper and more intricate perceptions of the piece. Due to his uniqueness, Nichol’s was, arguably, completely in control of the writing (or drawing) process; however, as a result, could never expect to regulate the viewer’s ultimate perception.

It appears to be that the individual keystrokes, which create the image as a whole, determine the depth and weight of each perception. Smith’s success came in his mastery of his physical disability and the control he has been able to show in his artwork. If this is the goal of his machine’s lesson, then he succeeded; each stroke meticulously copies the images he is recreating, thus mastering the perception of that piece and his own body. Nichol, on the other hand, succeeds in his abstractness. Unlike Smith whose method of recreation allows him to control the perception of the viewer, Nichol’s original pieces show his individual choices and symbol placement but doesn’t allow him to direct the viewers perception. Given these differences, can we argue that a few keystrokes into type art we may be able to tell which elements of the piece the artist will be able to control best? Does this depend on the ease of interpretation and perception?

Works Cited:

“About Bp: A Short Biography & Select Bibliography.” An Online Archive for BpNichol. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2012. http://bpnichol.ca/about.

Bosanquet, Theodora. Henry James at Work. London: Printed and Pub. by L. and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth, 1924.

Flusser, Vilem. “The Gesture of Writing.” Manuscript. Flusser Studies 08 (May 2009). Flusserstudies.net. http://www.flusserstudies.net/pag/08/the-gesture-of-writing.pdf. Accessed 16 October 2012.

“REPORT 2: NARRATIVE” Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book-Machine: The Collected Research Reports of the Toronto Research Group, 1973-82. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1992. Electronic Resource– CLUES. http://0-site.ebrary.com.mercury.concordia.ca/lib/concordia/docDetail.action?docID=10220447

NorthwestCamera. “Typewriter Artist.” YouTube. YouTube, 09 Aug. 2007. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJv7wkqQRww.

Typewriter Artist.” YouTube. YouTube, 24 Aug. 2008. Web. 20 Oct. 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHyQhf9qAY.

— Emilie Arsenault

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From: “How to Type – By the Touch System”, published by the Toronto Printing Plant of Underwood Elliott Fisher

Demonstrating Gender

Navigating gender/gendered discourse in the context of typewriter history is problematised by the extreme degree of uncertainty and ambiguity which prevents any neat demarcation of the subject. We might hurtle down several (roughly) parallel paths, considering a history of gendered writing (Kittler 186), of gender-coding machines (Keep 405), of the variance between popular representation and lived experience (Keep 410), or of shifts in the labourer’s access to the processes of production (Gitelman 206). Moreover, as emphasised repeatedly (Gitelman 208; Keep 405; Kittler 183), a slippage occurs from the very onset of any investigation into “typewriters”: do we mean the machine or the operator? The two cannot exist in isolation – the machine cannot operate itself, and being a typist is predicated on working “with” a typing-machine (c.f. Heidegger, in Kittler, 198). Thus, unpacking how gender operates with and around typewriting must necessarily begin with an admission that the familiar male/female binary is already mechanically complicated.

Identifying the typist as a “new species”, with a sort of “natural destiny” (Kipling, in Keep 401), complicates reading the typewriter as an emergent feminist by joining the bodily (female) and the machine (typewriter); efforts to categorise, understand, and demark the limits of the typewriter all point towards the typewriter’s role as transformative (Gitelman 185), transgressive, and nebulous. The role of the gaze (in relation, variously, to the machine, workers/work-space, and mass media), is paramount: “the fear and fascination” (Keep 401) about identifying the female as feminine, rather than unsexed (402), or mechanical (Gitelman 203, 208), was assuaged, in large part, through visual confirmation/creation of the type-writer girl as profoundly (if not pornographically) corporeal, human.

Despite the gaze and attempted control of hegemonic patriarchy, the typewriter was yet able to “[resist…] subjection” (Keep 418) and literally work “from within the structure of exploitation” (420) – particularly in remaining “in constant flux” (419), being both visible and viewing, mechanical and sensuous, and resisting an easily identifiable (and thereby controllable) subjectivity. The most dangerous position for the typewriter is one of repose – “becoming” (ibid.) “with” the machine, and casting off the antiquated conception of the female as having “limited physical resources” (402) allows for a freer subjectivity. One mode of achieving this floating subjectivity is in maintaining the initial, fundamental ambiguity in “typewriter” – we mean to stray into the realm of the post-human, to sustain a (pre-electric) cyborg-process, to be the machine and the operator!

Liminality, Touch-Typing, and Positioning the Typewriter

In considering the visual dynamics of typewriting, two distinct economies of gaze are readily identifiable: that of the body of text produced (by means of a visible or invisible inscription process), and the scopophilia in watching the typist. Relevant to both of these foci is the positioning of the typist’s body proper, with attendant implications of desire, both for economic efficiency (in the case of concrete typed copy) and, more humanly physical, the employer’s desire of the typist herself. In both cases, the typewriter hovers between granting clear images, providing visual confirmation of (re)productivity, and maintaining non-visual/non-physical (mechanical) process. Here, Lisa Gitelman’s formulation of the upstrike typewriter as a “black box” (Gitelman 204) is useful, taking the device as “not a public or a human matter, only a secretarial and technological one” (ibid.); the typewriter is at once private, mysterious, and profoundly industrial – in its adjectival signification “secretary” is rendered mechanical. As with Twain’s typesetter who “composed as he composed” (ibid.), the typewriter typewrites… And yet, the black box is not without a certain appeal, its own “seductive enigma” (Keep 401), maintain by obscuring processes (the real) enough to be suggestive, tantalising.

The sensuality of the typewriter is so pronounced, so inextricable from the any mention of the technology, that the machine itself becomes invested with a “new”, potentially unsettling, cyborg-allure. Typewriters(’)/bodies were never free from scrutiny and control – when not observed they self regulated, with body, body type, and fashion dictating their successful entry into and negotiation of the workplace (see Keep, throughout, but especially 404-405, 410; Gitelman 207, 211-212). This is, in fact, in keeping with the assertion that “media is message” – rather than obsess over what is arguably peripheral (the operator’s sartorial deportment), aesthetics takes a turn towards the (non-human) technologic.

This move towards the beauty of the machine is manifest in cover image of the above Underwood pamphlet: being the cover to a brief practical manual on touch-typing, the only suggestion of anything organic, much less human, in the image is the decorative (and, it should be noted, useless) ribbon in the cover’s lower right quadrant. Juxtaposed with the “objective” photographic reproduction of the Underwood typewriter, the hand-drawn ribbon, coupled with the skewed angle of the “card” which it superimposes, softens the manual’s presentation, suggesting that the “black box” which looms in the background can be rendered a touch less daunting. However, this does not connote any precedence being granted to the human operator; indeed, the pamphlet devotes its first sections to a schematic of the device, subsequent to which, the human-typewriter may be addressed. When the human does enter into the manual, it is in a shape subservient to the machine (see Figure 1, above), placed to promote efficient production, and accuracy when working the keys. That which is stereotypically identified as sensuous (the typist) is here transformed into the profoundly sensible, placing the limbs not to stimulate human response, but to kinetically translate energy into the smooth functioning of machined parts. Similarly, there exists an unresolved binary complication on the cover of the Royal Typewriter Company’s user’s manual for the “Gray Magic” typewriter:

Cover to the user’s manual for the Gray Magic (Quiet De Luxe) Portable Typewriter, Royal Typewriter Company. Circa 1949.

Notwithstanding the attempt at visual subterfuge in the richly coloured background of the pamphlet’s cover, and the effort made to add a sense of chromic brilliance to the words “Gray Magic”, the machine itself remains mercilessly matte gray. How then, would this machine’s practical metal casing interact with its operator’s potential desire to appear distinguished, stylish? Would investment in a (not-too-intrusive) desk bibelot or nattily put together suit provide the balm for the bland aesthetics of the machine proper, or were the two more mutually reinforcing, with the machine throwing the typewriter’s own attractiveness into sharper relief (inviting the male gaze only to reject it in favour to ministering to the machine)? What, moreover, of the purported impulse to “wear “rational” dress” (Keep 407)?

With this last query, we return to the Underwood touch-typing manual, more specifically, the brief notations made on the booklet’s back:

With hand-written inscription of measurements.

Inscribed, rather ironically, in pencil, are a series of measurements (bust, waist, hips, and lengths) for a set of woman’s clothing. While it is impossible to directly relate this “markup” (see Andrew Stauffer’s work with nineteenth century marginalia) with typewriting, that a typewriting manual be at hand, and deemed an acceptable surface upon which couture might be inscribed reinforces a reading of the typewriter as always-already in flux, perforating and changing female subjectivity at all levels…

Works Cited

Gitelman, Lisa. “Automatic Writing.” Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Keep, Christopher. “The Cultural Work of the Type-Writer Girl.” Victorian Studies 40.3 (Spring 1997): 401-427.

Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. [1986] Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Writing Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

— Christopher Chaban

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