This Traversal of MacPaint took place on Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at the University of Victoria during the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The Traversal was performed by Sarah Simpkin, Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of Ottawa. The Traversal documentation includes one video of the performance. The performance was carried out on a Macintosh SE (circa 1987) running System 6.0.7 and a copy of MacPaint 1.5 provided by the University of Victoria Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Commons. The technical setup was provided by Nicholas Schiller and Vanessa Rhodes.

Simpkin begins by introducing herself and the time and place. She then proceeds to insert a blue floppy diskette containing MacPaint into the computer’s disk drive. The disk drive’s sound is audible as the disk is initialized. Simpkin clicks on the Paint folder followed by MacPaint to open the software. Simpkin uses the Apple menu to open the About MacPaint dialog box featuring a self-portrait of the software’s author, Bill Atkinson. Simpkin proceeds to draw a self-portrait using the tool palette on the left side of the screen, including the paintbrush, pencil, and freehand shape tools. A smaller palette of line weights is visible below the tool palette. Simpkin discovers that these have no effect on the line weight of the pencil tool, which remains 1px wide at all times. A palette of 38 black and white patterns is visible on the bottom on the screen. Simpkin uses the Undo function on two occasions. Once the drawing is complete, she signs her name in 10 point Chicago font and saves the document as “Sarah Portrait”. Simpkin then quits the program and ejects the diskette.