Bob Neill is Alive and Well: A Brief History of Typewriter Art Following the sad death of Bob Cobbing I am in a position to report happier news. But as this is my first post to this group, I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Andrew Belsey and I have been a concrete poet since the 1960s, when I was introduced to the subject at Warwick University by Michael Gibbs and Paul Merchant. They edited the first number of KONTEXTS at the University, and Michael continued as editor for some years. At some point he moved to Amsterdam, where he continues to be active in the art world. A few years later I became acquainted with Alan Riddell, and contributed to his typewriter art exhibitions in Edinburgh (1973) and London (1974), and to the resultant book, TYPEWRITER ART (1975). Unfortunately Alan Riddell died in May 1977, when he was only 50, and the British concrete poetry and typewriter art movements suffered a blow from which they never really recovered. Had Alan lived, I am sure he would have continued to be the centre of activity, inspiration and encouragement for those working in the whole field of concrete poetry. By this time his own typewriter art, which has been exhibited (at the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, in 1978) but as far as I know never published, was reaching sublime heights, even transcending the fine examples that appeared in his earlier book ECLIPSE (1972). Over the decades I have continued as an (amateur) concrete poet and typewriter artist, while making full use of changes in technology to produce ASCII art and computer verbal/visual graphics of all sorts. (Most of this lies dormant on hard disks or in files, as it is difficult to find outlets these days.) But I was always something of a historian and archivist. In this role I was able to assist Joan Stark with her HISTORY OF ASCII ART website, and Brenda Danet with her book CYBERPL@Y, which includes a chapter on ASCII art and its precursors. One thing that I mentioned to Joan Stark was that the British Library Catalogue listed the following: BOB NEILL'S BOOK OF TYPEWRITER ART BOB NEILL'S SECOND BOOK OF TYPEWRITER ART But I could not find any copies of these books, nor discover any information about the author or publisher. Goudhurst, after all, is not known as a centre of avant-garde publishing: it is a small market town in rural Kent. A version of one of Bob's pictures, a Persian cat, was posted on the Web by a Dutch source, but it gave no further clues. However, after several years of drawing blanks, earlier in 2002 I managed to trace Bob Neill, who it turns out is alive and well and even thinking of bringing out a THIRD book of typewriter art. Bob readily agreed to a visit, so I was able to talk to him about his life and work, examine his two books and take a photograph of him in his study holding the books. (Unfortunately from my point of view, Bob has just one copy of each book, so he was unable to let me have copies. The books sold well and there must be quite a few in circulation but they rarely come on to the second-hand market. Luckily, though, since visiting Bob I have managed to obtain a copy of the SECOND book.) I also learnt from Bob that he had been working almost completely independently, and was unaware of Alan Riddell's TYPEWRITER ART or of other traditions in typewriter art, with one small exception: he had seen an article, without any illustrations, in the STAR newspaper about a Spanish typewriter artist. Though his work has similarities to some of the contributions to TYPEWRITER ART (especially the portraits by Will Hollis and Dennis W.A. Collins), Bob's books are unique because they contain not only the typewriter pictures but also the "program" for producing them . that is, the exact sequence of keys to be pressed for each line of the picture, including overtyping. (The result looks something like a knitting pattern!) Thus anyone with one of Bob's books and an old-fashioned (non-proportionally spaced) typewriter can produce replicas of Bob's pictures. Many of his readers did do their own pictures following Bob's programs, and he has also inspired some professional artists, such as Helen Jones and Kirsty Lyall, who had a collaborative exhibition, WITH THANKS TO BOB NEILL, in Nottingham in December 2000. The subjects of Bob's pictures are portraits of people and animals. Examples of people in the SECOND book include contemporary personalities like Sandi Toksvig, Selina Scott, Benny from CROSSROADS, Miss Elly and J.R. from DALLAS, Barry Manilow and Adam Ant. (The likenesses are excellent.) His technique uses the strict grid format of the typewriter. He uses overtyping, sometimes up to three timeson one row, to produce character units varying in intensity from very dark to white (space bar). Bob's pictures are thus like half-tone photographs, only with much larger "dots." Sometimes, in addition to the black characters, he uses a two-colour ribbon to produce a red background. Given the nature of his technique, it is not surprising that Bob was aware of the possibility of computerising the procedure. The last section of the SECOND book contains a program for one his pictures, written in BASIC for the Commodore PET by Nick Higham. Interestingly, while the typewriter "programs" remain as valid as ever, this section on computerisation is outmoded. (Is there anyone out there still using a Commodore PET?) Now there are plenty of programs available for drawing ASCII art, today's equivalent of typewriter art. But the best ASCII artists, like Joan Stark, will have nothing to do withsuch programs and do it all by hand and eye, and are thus still following the example set by Bob Neill and all the other typewriter artists. This has not really been a history of typewriter art, not even a brief one. It is more like a personal recollection of some typewriter art episodes and events, together with some general thoughts on this strange but fascinating art form. But I hope it will also bring deserved though belated recognition to Bob Neill. And perhaps it will also stimulate some more old-time practitioners of typewriter art (I mean from the 1960s and 1970s) to see if there is anything worth recording in their own memories. APPENDIX The Constant Rediscovery of the Typewriter as an Artistic Medium In the history of science there is the well-known phenomenon of "simultaneous discovery," when two or more scientists working independently and without knowledge of each other come up with the same idea or discovery at roughly the same time. It seems that something similar operates in the history of typewriter art, only without such simultaneity. Or to put it another way, typewriter art has been (re)discovered several times. For example, I doubt whether many of the contemporary contributors to Alan Riddell's TYPEWRITER ART in 1975 were aware of experiments in the 1920s by Bauhaus students or the Dutch typographer H.N. Werkman, with which the book opens. Nor had they come across the work of Guillermo Mendana Olivera round about 1960, now available through Joan Stark's HISTORY OF ASCII ART website. So the fact that Bob Neill was, with the minor exception mentioned above, unaware of other typewriter artists is not surprising. And he has not been the only major typewriter artist outside any group or tradition. A few years ago the work done by Winifred Caldwell in America in the 1940s and 1950s appeared on the Internet (now, unfortunately, it has disappeared). Caldwell's technique was quite different from that of Bob Neill and the main tradition of typewriter art, for she manipulated the paper in the platen and used lines, brackets, dots and a few other characters to draw more "naturalistic" pictures of houses, landscapes and flowers (named "TypEtchings" onthe website). But her results are highly skilled and as appealing as anything in typewriter art. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brenda Danet, Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online (Berg, 2001) Michael Gibbs and Paul Merchant (eds), Kontexts [1], 1969 Alex Hamilton, "Key Industry," The Guardian, 12 December 1975 (article about Riddell's Typewriter Art book) Neil Hanson, "Alan Riddell," The Guardian, 27 April 1978 (review of the Hull exhibition) Bob Neill's Book of Typewriter Art (Goudhurst: Weavers Press, 1982) Bob Neill's Second Book of Typewriter Art (Goudhurst: Weavers Press, 1984) Alan Riddell, Compositions: A Retrospective Exhibition of Work by Alan Riddell (1927-1977), Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, 8-30 April 1978, foreword by June Road (unillustrated exhibition catalogue) Alan Riddell, Eclipse (Calder and Boyars, 1972) Alan Riddell, Typewriter Art: Half a Century of Experiment, New 57 Gallery, 105 Rose Street Edinburgh, 17 November-6 December 1973 (illustrated exhibition catalogue) Alan Riddell, Typewriter Art: Half a Century of Experiment, Concourse Gallery, Polytechnic of Central London, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1, 25 February-13 March 1974 (illustrated exhibition catalogue, with some additions since the Edinburgh exhibition) Alan Riddell, "Typewriter Art," London Magazine 13(4), October-November 1973, pp. 63-67 (illustrated article about the Edinburgh exhibition) Alan Riddell (ed), Typewriter Art (London Magazine Editions, 1975) (major source of typewriter art from 1898 to 1974; 118 images by 65 artists from 18 countries) WEBSITES Winifred Caldwell, TypEtchings (no longer accessible: produces "a connection failure has occurred" alert. But at the last minute I discover that some TypEtchings are now displayed at ) Mobile Cube, Typewriter Art (contains examples from Riddell's Typewriter Art book) Brenda Danet, Cyberpl@y (information about and extracts from her book) Michael Gibbs, Nondescript Productions (includes information on Kontexts Publications, 1968-1983) Helen Jones Kirsty Lyall Bob Neill, Persian Cat (no longer accessible: produces "not found" response) Joan Stark, Gallery of Original ASCII Art (superb work by the undisputed Queen of ASCII ART. Joan Stark's website is difficult to access: normally produces "temporarily unavailable" response) Joan Stark, History of ASCII Art (highly informative survey from hieroglyphs to ASCII art, via typewriters and radio teleprinters) Andrew Belsey 12 November 2002