Typestract: The Most Liberating Form of Pre-digital Art
When it comes to pre-digital art, typestract has given artists a newfound sense of liberation and a mixed-media experience that is reminiscent of the current wonders brought forth by the digital age, where communication and interfacing with technologies seemingly automate the process of art-making.
Unlike other art forms, I believe the loud, abrasive, repetitious clicking of the typewriter is part of the process that gives typestract such a unique beauty; the unspoken dialogue between the artist and the work itself is priceless and, in a sense, ensures that the piece of art will be unlike anything else, a one of one if you will.
I first began typestract in the early months of 2021 during a long, isolated winter in the city of Chicago. My roommate purchased a typewriter in the fall to help him focus on a script that he was writing and to isolate any unwanted distractions. One day, while he was out of town, I decided to pick up the metal antiquity and give typewriting a shot.
I soon grew fascinated by the harmonic symphony of the clicking keys and the typebars relentlessly smacking the sheet of paper. Right before my eyes, thoughts formed into letters, and letters soon formed into sentences — I was hooked. At first, I began by formulating short compositions, poems, and internal dialogues with myself that I felt the need to write out.
Inspired by the digital distortion and abstract typography one can program in digital software like Adobe Photoshop, I knew that my knowledge of interface was slowly seeping its way into, and making itself apparent on the sheet of paper in front of me. Before I knew it, vast abstract figures of skylines and short poems were sharing real-estate on what would eventually become — to this day — my most esteemed work of art, a piece titled Iamhuman, no. 1.
Like many art forms, typestract is peculiar and extremely unique; it can be used to express many ideas at once, or it could be used to simply magnify the aspects of one thing in particular, like the uniqueness of a shading ratio or the composition of a particular landscape. Iconoclasts such as the great Henri Chopin, a French avant-garde artist, used typestract to display profound symbolism in his work. Focusing on the unusual relationship between balance and chaos, Chopin’s work can be defined as a harmonious disaster, with compelling abstract qualities that give the viewer an interpretation of unique disharmony in the sense that his distortion and repetition of words grows into a symbol for something far greater than his dactylopèmes.
When it comes to pre-digital art, typestract has given artists a newfound sense of liberation and a mixed-media experience that is reminiscent of the current wonders brought forth by the wonders of the digital age, where communication and interfacing with technologies seemingly automate the process of art-making.
In a way, one can even argue that typestract is one of the most primitive versions of ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange — which encodes characters into visual and electronic communication. In short, everything that is represented on a screen, digitally, is part of a unique exchange of characters and pixels, using such to display visual information. At the most basic level, emoticons such as smiley faces, :-), are the most basic interpretation of ASCII art, but on a more sophisticated level and with the proper combination of characters, ASCII art can depict almost anything from realistic portraits of celebrities to classical paintings.
One of my favorite designers, Dirk Krecker, incorporates this philosophy into his artwork and places a particular emphasis on the equilibrium between machine learning and autonomy in the digital age. While so many people rely on computer interfaces to get things done, Kreker imagines a reality in which the harmony between the two — people and computer interfaces — can create powerful, meaningful depictions of the world around us. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Kreker is inspired by urban landscaping, and the familiarity of our automated quality of life, which can be represented in his typestract and by using the typewriter as a symbol of modernity.
Although the practice of typestract may have been invented over 100 years ago, designers and artists alike continue to dabble with and try their hand at one of the most primitive, yet groundbreaking forms of pre-digital art. With the modern context of the human-computer interface, will we begin to see a revival in the use of nostalgic pre-digital antiquities like the typewriter?
