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With Covid-19 ravaging populations and the World trying to come to terms with lockdown reality, it seems an appropriate moment to reactivate this Platform-7 project from 2013 exploring the trauma that follows on from a sudden shocking change in circumstance.
 Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ... with the idea of using the typewriter to type out a poem by Nancy Esposito live from across the Atlantic... |  Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ..The challenge for me with the event was technical, and not small... |  Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ..The typewriter had never been shown in public before and required a lot of work to get it up to scratch... |
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 Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ..I spent much time in a small underground windowless workshop, often alone and in the early hours,... |  Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ..fiddling with the mechanism and the electronics in a Silent Cacophony all of my own.... |  Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ...The night before the event I had to recode the software to transfer Nancy's typing from Boston, with my deliberate but perhaps slightly unwise decision to neither allow Nancy a cursor nor the ability to correct herself with a backspace... |
 Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ...after all, you don't get when you're typing on a typewriter - almost ruining the day ... |  Transatlantic TypewriterPaper feed Liam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ...We never met; we didn’t hear one another’s voice via Skype. The day before the event we sent endless e-mails to one another. Liam had written a program that would allow me to type my poem into my computer and have it appear on a screen in the slow motion of a re-imagined 1930s German typewriter plunking out the letters. The problem: I couldn’t open my Dropbox; I couldn’t access the program... |  Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ...For a half-hour I looked at the simple instructions on the screen. I moved the arrow around with my mouse. I couldn’t get a cursor on the page. He and I exchanged about fifteen e-mails until I mentioned the word, cursor. Now I’m not a total stone when it comes to computers, but I wanted, I expected that cursor mark. The breakthrough: there wouldn’t be a cursor... |
 Transatlantic TypewriterLiam Donovan (Technology) in London & Nancy Esposito (Poet) in Boston ..But it was all well worth it, and a great feeling to be part of such a powerful and widespread event... |
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Images & Copyright: Fae Harmer @PhotograFae
11th November 2013
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