Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I guess from that statement, we could say that art, in itself, is pretty much subjective. You could throw water bombs filled with paint on an empty canvas, and call the end product art. You could work with charcoal and do portraits, and you’ll still end up with art.

You could also take an old typewriter, replace the ink pads with colored paint pads, cover the letter keys over with labels drawn with corresponding colored markers, and come up with a typing art machine. And this is exactly what Washington-based artist Tyree Callahan did. Not only does it produce paintings, but the typewriter itself could be seen as a work of art itself.

Callahan calls his modded 1937 Underwood Standard typewriter the “Chromatic Typewriter.” He has submitted it to the 2012 West Prize competition, where top prize goes to the piece of artwork with the most votes.

[via Dark Silence in Suburbia via Colossal]