Virtuosity was the NY Times Word of the Day recently.
It’s always fun searching abstract words in Google Photos. You’ll often come up with some surprising results. This image came up in my Google Photos.
When you first see the image, you think: whoa. What in the world is going on here? Detailed instructions. Numbers everywhere. A web of lines crossing a keyboard like some kind of maniac blueprint. To execute these in the proper order looks like it would require tremendous skill. Almost like playing a complicated piano piece. Like virtuosity.
But when you look closer and begin decoding it. In reality, it’s just typing 28-character message (33 with spaces). We easily type 28 characters on a keyboard. Nothing virtuosic about that.
- Number 1: M
- Number 2: A
- Number 3: Y…
MAY YOU…
LEARN…
You start guessing. It becomes a little like Wheel of Fortune.
MAY YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW TO…
Oh! Today!
MAY YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW TODAY
There’s a fun element of play in that slow reveal. The pleasure isn’t just the message. It’s the uncovering. Each letter is a marker of sequence. You could almost ask, “When did you guess the phrase?” At the 14-letter mark? Earlier?
Right now, the letters unfold in order. It’s more procession than puzzle. If I wanted to make it more suspenseful, I could scramble the sequence. Instead of 1, 2, 3, 4… it could go 7, 2, 15, 21, 13… revealing letters in scattered positions like a true game board.
That would make it more like a decoder puzzle.
Which is funny, considering I’ve been working at Tribune Content Agency for 26+ years — a place that syndicates crossword puzzles and word games. This feels like a distant cousin. Not as challenging as a crossword. Much more direct. Just follow the trail. Let the message slowly surface.
And honestly, there’s something nice about a puzzle that doesn’t make you think too hard.
The way this is made is also of note. This isn’t a photograph of a keyboard. It’s a keyboard scanned directly on a scanner. There’s something tangible about that. The keyboard touching the surface of a scanner. It’s like doing a pencil rubbing. You are in direct contact with the surface.
Which is interesting, because a keyboard is already something we are constantly in contact with. Our fingers live on it. Our words pass through it. But here the keyboard itself is pressed flat, touching the scanner. Only a thin plane of glass separates you from it in this digital replication.
If this were a photo, it would be a bit more detached. More like an object in space. The scanner makes it feel archival. Fossilized. Pressed into the page.
I made this back on April 4, 2018. Yeah, that was a while ago. Remember, I came across this in my photo archives. The original purpose of this image was to mail the print to a friend.
Could I have typed the message in a text? Sure. Could I have emailed him a photo of this print? Sure. But instead, I snail-mailed him the actual print.
With a keyboard, we type out messages. With this print, instead of typing, I wrote on the sheet of paper with a pen. Instead of writing letters, I wrote instructions. The keyboard speaks, but only after you follow the path.
I remember wanting to send Marco a keyboard. Not just a message typed from a keyboard — but a keyboard with a message on it. As if to say: here is this keyboard. It is saying something to you.
In fact, the day before I made this puzzle, I literally wrote the letter right on top of the image. Here’s what I sent to my cousin.
We take for granted all the messages that pass through a keyboard. In thise case wrote the message on a keyboard. ON the keyboard. Get it?
Eight years prior to this keyboard exercise, I started printing friends’ Facebook posts, hand writing a comment on the printout, and snail-mailing it to them.
Admittedly, putting someting into the mail takes a bit of effort, so this year, I’ve picked up the handwriting tradition again, but without the snail mail part. Now I scan in my letter and post it online as a response.
Back to the keyboard message. Here’s the image again.
These numbers are almost like a dance. Or a treasure hunt. The treasure is reached once you go through all the steps, and you have the final message. The treasure is both the adventure, and the final result.
This reminds me of doing mazes. You meander around a maze, trying to find the ending. The joy is found in the meandering. I’ve always said that a good maze will bring you to the very edges. As in, a good maze doesn’t just give you a direct route to the end. A good maze will bring you over the entire canvas. A good maze will bring your trail to the borders of the maze canvas. A good maze will take you places you never imagined going.
Going from key to key on this keyboard feels like that. You span the whole surface. You cross diagonally. You double back. You wander.
Eventually, you reach the end.
But the joy is in the meandering.
Virtuosity… remember that definition?
great technical skill, fluency or style
The virtuosity here isn’t technical brilliance. It’s more that the recipient took the time to decode the message. Also, the virtuosity might be the decision to turn something ordinary — typing a sentence — into a trail. Into geometry. Into a small adventure mailed in an envelope.
Possible messages to encode next
- Take the long trail
- Meander
- Every now and then dance
- You have virtuosity
- You found the treasure
- The treasure is yours
- The geometry of joy
I like that last one, “The geometry of joy.” That takes into account the shapes and lines on the printout. The chaos of the lines looks almost like something in nature. Like a garden. Here’s some garden-related messages that could be used:
- Flowers grow out of dark moments
- The forest was once just a seed
- To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow
- Dirt is good for the soul
Maybe something dance related
- At the still point, there the dance is.
I heard about the news that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra hired a 30-year-old Finnish wunderkind as their new conductor. I have orchestras on my mind. The keyboard looks a bit like an orchesta pit.
So maybe a message to encode on the keyboard could be music-related:
- I know this music from memory, not from the music.
- The orchestra plays
Imagine taking the time to decode this puzzle, and the resulting message is THE ORCHESTRA PLAYS. If you decoded the message one note at a time, it’s like YOU are the orchestra. You are playing the music. And that’s sort of grand, isn’t it? Or perhaps virtuosic.
Love this entire observation, Matt! How fun to go analog with communications by way of writing out responses. You have unique handwriting that would make a great font using a simple tool like Calligraphr: https://www.calligraphr.com/en/
Because of my ADD brain, I do believe I learn something new each day. I tend to go on deep dives of certain items, particularly when they are visually appealing. The key for me is retaining the information I glean. Unfortunately, the depths of my memory—both short-term and long-term—is disappointingly vague.
Thank you, Melissa! I should try calligraphr. Maybe it might be easier to make a font with handwriting than other applications. Five years ago, I made a font before with Scrabble tiles. Here’s a post about scanning in the tiles. I never made a post about the final font. Yeesh. Add that to the blog post ideas list.
Heh, I know what you mean about retaining what you learn. My brain will find something shiny and new, and then forget all about it a couple weeks later. That’s why I like blogging, it gets me to write down these things I discover, and then they are captured. I also always saving articles and webpages, so when I want to share something, I can find where I read the article or webpage. (Which also reminds me, I need write about how I do this. I use the free version of Evernote to save the webpages, and then I convert them to markdown, so I have my own local copy in an easy-to-read format that is not proprietary)