[michaelg7x]

I love the idea of letters being hand-written. In fact, having just done the requisite minimum amount of writing with my fountain pens to keep them working[1], I wondered about building an app which can record you via the camera hand-writing a message, remove your hand and perhaps the pen from the video, speed-up and create a time-lapse video which can be sent to someone. Add a background from wherever you're holidaying (our desks for now, haha) and it's a modern-day postcard. I don't have the specific skills to build it but would love to show the time-investment in the process when sending someone a message. I'm sure that time-lapse video apps already exist, just not with the ability to auto-remove objects within the video.

[1] The two Lamy Safaris I have dry out if left pointing upwards after a couple of days. They're ridiculously wet and concentrated if left nib-down. Somewhat hit and miss if they're left level. The Waterman and Pelikan are both unaffected by their direction of repose. The cheap and now very old Parker doesn't seem to suffer either.

[qubex]

To be honest, I can see where your idea of the app is coming from... but what’s the point? Wouldn’t it be just yet another piece of self-aggrandising performance art in this already totally narcissistic age?

One writes to leave one’s mark. One writes well because one recognises the importance of presenting one’s thoughts in an aesthetically pleasing manner — a manner that in a certain sense ‘costs’ the writer a great deal because it implies maintaining discipline and order. One sends letters because one wishes to make an effort to avoid the transient and facile nature of modern electronic communication — and because in a certain sense one wishes one’s communication to be ‘timeless’ and transcendent. How does filming oneself writing and sending it actually fit into this?