Coming Saturday: Archy’s Typewriter in Boston

Shift Key on the Blunderwood PortableNote: Location update!

If you will be anywhere close to Boston this weekend, be sure to see the Blunderwood Portable typewriter in the Rose Kennedy Greenway. It’s a massive art installation on display Saturday and Sunday, part of Boston’s Figment Festival. Look for it where High Street intersects with the Greenway, northeast of South Station.

The Blunderwood, a 24:1 scale 1927 typewriter measuring 20 feet square and 8 feet tall, is an homage to Don Marquis’ Archy the cockroach.

Much like Archy, who dove head-first on the keys of Don’s typewriter to tell his stories, visitors to the Blunderwood will be able to walk on huge typewriter keys and see their own messages projected on an overhead screen made to look like an oversize sheet of typing paper. Several of Archy’s poems will also be projected.  Continue Reading →

A New Typewriter for Archy — 8 Feet Tall!

Progress on the Blunderwood typewriter

Progress update!

UPDATE: The Blunderwood folks have reached their Kickstarter goal of $5,000, but they now have a “stretch” goal of another $3,000 to add gold-leaf lettering to the typewriter and purchase a more powerful projector. The deadline is June 27. And make plans to see the Blunderwood in Boston, July 25-26!

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Archy and Mehitabel are the inspiration for a whimsical (and huge!) public art project coming this summer to a park in downtown Boston – and then to the Burning Man festival in Nevada.

A group of artists, welders and carpenters who call themselves the Cat and the Cockroach Collective are building a 24-to-1-scale model of a 1927 Underwood Standard portable typewriter, The reimagined Blunderwood Portable will be 20 feet square and 8 feet tall, with interactive keys able to spell out personal messages projected on an oversize sheet of paper when walked upon.  Continue Reading →