Contemporary Western calligraphy is an artistic trace-making practice concerned with the manual inscription of graphic signs and shapes taken (or derived) from the Latin alphabet: letters or fragments of it, numbers and punctuation marks, not necessarily combined into words or sentences.1 These signs (i.e. the elements of a linguistic system) and their shapes (namely all their different visible configurations) engender visual compositions that reaffirm the belonging of the written mark to the realm of the visible. In these artworks, it’s often the graphic power of the alphabetic sign that first strikes the viewer before the shapes are eventually recognised as letters or read.
As a consequence, the objects created by this practice assume a mixed quality for two reasons. First of all, calligraphic text-art uses signs of writing with iconic considerations. Second of all, every writing system is hybrid in itself since it is the encounter of two heterogeneous medias: verbal communication and visual communication (Christin, 2001, 11). Writing’s heterogeneity comes from the fact it involves two different physical fields (one oral and the other visual), and involves different intersubjective communication contexts (at least two partners are needed for a verbal exchange to take place, while visual communication demands only one viewer). Therefore, we must acknowledge—in the terms of Yves Jeanneret reformulating Christin—that writing is more than the mere transcription of speech into a visible form, or the simple communication of a discourse. But simultaneously, writing is not just an image among others. It is a communication system defined by its particular way of involving interpretative operations from the viewer-reader (Jeanneret, 2011, 79–80).
As far as contemporary Western calligraphy is concerned, one can notice a separation between the work of the artists (the ’practice’) and the commentaries offered by publications on the subject (the speculative ‘definitions’ of calligraphy). An important part of the discourses indeed seems to define this practice according to two main aspects. First of all, the identification of the graphic shapes: Are they legible, decipherable? Or are they rather ‘abstract’ traces retaining the dynamics of a written mark, ‘asemic’ shapes?2 Second of all, the questions of the technique: Are all the elements handmade? Or did they require the intervention of a mechanical process or of digital technology?
Most definitions of contemporary Western calligraphy seem to stem from two opposing hypotheses. The first one assumes that the contemporary practice marks a break with previous forms of calligraphy. Undeniably, if we understand ‘calligraphy’ as the skill of the scribe or the art of beautiful writing, many contemporary compositions will hardly fit into the category. Legible works are therefore opposed to illegible ones; formal texts (using historical shapes such as Cancellaresca, Gothic scripts, Copperplate, etc.) are opposed to ‘modern’ graphic shapes that do not fit into the historical classifications; traditional writing supports (paper, parchment, stone …) are opposed to non-traditional ones (canvas, sculptures, glass, video, etc.).3 The second approach to a definition of contemporary Western calligraphy, on the contrary, stems from a will of continuity between the history of Latin script and the current practice. In that case, present-day calligraphers are often defined as modern scribes or artists preserving the art of beautiful writing; recent creations (explorations of letterforms, new handwritten alphabets) are seen in continuity with the medieval scribe’s work.4
As a consequence, these artworks are either presented as creations by contemporary visual artists or as manuscripts executed by skilled penmen preserving an ancient craft but rarely as pertaining to both conditions. In other words, these discourses tend to define contemporary Western calligraphy either by its technique—tending to rely on the idea that “calligraphy” is supposed to be produced by a hand and a tool (and preferably one that has existed for centuries: a quill rather than a stylus)—or by the criteria of legibility, in other words the degree to which the letters or words can be identified. In these definitions the visual presence of the graphic composition appears as secondary, while it seems to be essential for calligraphers themselves.5
Numerous calligraphy handbooks exemplify this separation, for instance.6 They usually begin with chapters on the historic handwriting styles, well separated and chronologically classified, after which they present diverse examples of calligraphy works from the last decades. Classification criteria suddenly change, and the link between the two parts is rarely explained, or not very convincingly so. It is on this link—implying both affinities and disparities—that I would like to focus. In order to understand this relationship, it seems that we must not start by inferring what contemporary Western calligraphy is (or is not) based on formal similarities or differences between recent artworks and historical writing shapes. What I would like to suggest here is a way to examine the artistic practice of handmade graphic traces without restoring these oppositions (the ‘all manual’ vs the ‘new technologies’; the degree of readability vs the degree of ‘freedom’ from the structure of the alphabet, etc.). One way to do so is by going back to the material aspects of the inscription. All calligraphic artworks—from the most ‘formal’ to the most ‘abstract’ ” ones, from average-sized works on paper to enlarged screen projections—indeed share one fundamental aspect: a material interrelation that involves a manual movement, an implement and a support (whether this support is concrete or impalpable, as we will see with the ‘lightgraff’ case). This material association generates the graphic shape.
I examine three artworks, concentrating my analysis on the variations between these three material parameters (tool, movement and support) in order to understand the degrees of difference as well as the degrees of affinity between contemporary calligraphic text-art and the history of Latin script as an act of inscription. Ultimately, this will also give us clues to comprehend how Western calligraphy, as a contemporary text-art practice, takes part in renewing the visible manifestations of the alphabet sign.
The construction of a written sign is a material relationship between a particular movement of the hand and the contact of an implement with a support. But it is also linked to the writing system in which it takes place (alphabetic or ideogrammatic, for instance). Palaeographic studies inform us on this relationship and therefore, on our understanding and practical experience of the handwritten form as users of the Latin alphabet.
Since the mid-20th century, an area of palaeographic studies concentrates on the actual conditions in which the stroke is made: the position of both the tool and the writer, the angle at which the mark is traced, the order and direction of the successive strokes (the “ductus”; Marichal, 2005, 650–1). This way of considering the graphic written mark renewed the whole history of writing knowledge. By showing that letters are composed of a series of strokes successively and variously combined (Gilissen, 1982, 308; Smith, 2007: 5–6), palaeography also reminds us that the concept of the letter as a basic unit belongs to language, where the letter is a grapheme in the reading process, but not to writing. As far as the graphic process of writing is concerned, we could rather say that the basic unit is the stroke.
More precisely, the palaeographic study that will help us here regards the slow transition from the interrupted construction to the cursive. Here is how it could be summarised:
From the first to the ninth century, continuity solutions existed within the letter. For instance descending strokes could be fading into ascending strokes inside the same letter. But these solutions were not yet applied to what palaeographers call “external ligatures”, which are combinations between the end of a letter and the beginning of the next (De Robertis, 2007, 34). Once these external connexions appear, they consist at first in the same repetitive descending movement, from the end-stroke, at the top or in the middle of the letter, to the next one, starting at the bottom. Palaeographers call this type of connexion “ligatures from head to foot” (Martin, 1995, 67).) Not only did this solution become so systematic that it eventually modified the shape of some letters without other justification but the allowing of this repetitive descending movement, but by tying the beginning and ending of letters together, it ended up disconnecting them in their middle. Indeed, as palaeographers show with multiple examples, letters were still traced in two or more strokes and separated in their middle, even though the end-stroke was tied to the beginning-stroke. Therefore, at first, the combination between the different strokes is not extended to the whole word and we cannot yet talk about “ligatures”. The generalization of continuity solutions did not appear until the late thirteenth century. The main condition for the invention of ligatures that will lead to cursive script is the generalization of an ascending movement, permitting the advent of the looping stroke. Palaeographers consider this to be the first real alternative model since the first century. What can be retained from this very brief summary is that contrary to what we could easily be tempted to believe, what prevailed in the development of cursive script is neither efficiency (writing speed or economy of movement) nor a pursuit of variety. These changes were rather lead by mental configurations, in other words a conceptual apprehension of writing (De Robertis, 2007). For instance, according to palaeographers, technical conditions have been much less of a hindrance to the development of cursive writing than we can think or than we are often told. Many documents establish the use of ascending strokes long before the apparition of cursive writing, but it took centuries before it developed into the looping stroke required for cursive writing.7
The Western calligraphic practice implies learning to master historic styles of the Latin alphabet. “Mastering” here must be understood as implying the hand and the eye together. By studying and copying the shapes, the calligrapher comes to understand the visual relationships defining a writing style: not only technical parameters like the handling of the implement but also graphic parameters including letter proportions, white space and ligatures.
The first case I examine is generally described as ‘calligraphic dripping’ (see Figure 7.1). Using acrylic lacquer as a medium and a brush or a thin stick as a tool, the calligrapher lets the paint flow on top of a given surface (paper, canvas or a plastic sheet in this case). The relatively even flow of paint is given shape both by moving the whole forearm at a significant speed and by impulses of the wrist, essential to the line tension, that is to the calligraphic qualities. The plastic properties of this medium allow it to drip and yet resist the gravitational force, sustaining deformation without rupturing. The significant element for our present trace-making investigation involves the relation between the tool and the support. Here the tool is completely detached from the surface and therefore its own qualities as a tracing device are rendered inconsequential. It can be a brush, a stick or any other instrument, as long as it can be handheld and allow the paint to pour. As a result, the graphic shape does not appear because the tool enters in contact with the surface and liberates the medium (as it goes with quills, metallic nibs, brushes and so forth). Instead, the flow of paint takes shape because at some point of its course, it is blocked by the support.
Even though calligraphic drippings can use similar ligature constructions as the ones found in the history of writing (looping strokes and tracing back on one stroke in order to change direction), the material approach of the alphabetical continuity is completely different. With calligraphic dripping, we discover a line that could be said to be ‘cursive in itself’. The artists’ work then consists in modelling it, with the help of gestures and tools that are not “calligraphic” by essence (like the wood stick) or not used in a “traditional” calligraphic way (like the brush dipped in paint and lifted away from the support). Yet this combination produces ‘calligraphy’. Therefore, we could suggest that the main parameter to define contemporary calligraphy is not the tool, the medium or the kind of support but the way the graphic shape is produced: through a direct distribution of linear contrasts. Direct distribution of linear contrasts (sometimes called ‘organic contrast’) means that a stroke is created in a single pass of the tool. This “traced mode” is usually opposed to a “sketched mode”, where letter contours are drawn (and inner spaces eventually filled; Bracquemond et Dusong, 2010; Noordzij, 2005; Noordzij, 1982).8 Since the dripped stroke produces a direct distribution of linear contrast, it can be defined as belonging to the ‘traced mode’; the difference is that it does so without any contact between the tool and the support. In other words, with calligraphic drippings, the shape is not the result of traditional handwriting’s material interaction (or ‘friction’) anymore.9 Together, friction and traced mode are the conditions for the materialisation of the stroke, if we consider the stroke being “the track of a tool” (Noordzij, 2005, 9). Therefore, by replacing the inscription by another mode of production that depends on the force of gravity and the encounter with a horizontal plane, calligraphic text-art offers new possible graphic rhythms for the handmade mark.
Consequently, contrary to the historic writing styles of the Latin alphabet that he learned to master and where the “line” had to be composed, the calligrapher here works with a continuous line. Instead of giving birth to a graphic form either by connecting fragments of strokes or by tracing a continuous line through permanent contact between an implement and a support, calligraphic dripping involves modulating a continuous line without ever connecting the tool and the surface. By doing so, the calligraphic gesture frees itself from one of the main conditions of Western writing.10 As Dutch typographer and type designer Gerrit Noordzij explains in an interview,
[a]ny writing of any civilization begins with the stroke, and the stroke is made with the tool, and if you have a stiff tool, then the shape of the tool dominates the character of your writing, and with a soft tool the impulse of your hand dominates the writing. So you get two branches: the Eastern branch is the Chinese hand-civilization; and on the other branch is Semitic writing, with its derivations from the West and the East—the Indian—with the tool dominating.
(Kinross, 2001)
Thus, in the case of calligraphic dripping, we can say the impulse of the hand gives its character to the graphic mark, and yet the calligrapher did not resort to the contact of a ‘soft tool’ on the surface. It is a sort of intermediate traced mode where the plastic qualities of the medium are used as a flow, and the skills of the calligraphic hand are used to give rhythm to this flow. This can be linked to the definition of rhythm as a both spatial and temporal phenomenon: a spatial shape transformed both by and through time (Sauvanet, 2011), always oscillating between a “form” (the possibility of taking shape) and a “flux”.11 Therefore, the act of giving rhythm to a flux is very different from the operation of composing a rhythm by connecting graphic fragments.
The second case I am going to examine is based on a technique generally called ‘lightpainting’ or ‘lightdrawing’. It rests on the process of long exposure photography (where the shutter stays open for several seconds or minutes) and has been used almost since the invention of photography by scientists in studies of motion,12 and by multiple artists during the course of the 20th century.13 Complete darkness or very low luminosity is required, as well as light-emitting objects to play the role of tracing tools. Non-luminous elements appearing in the final image (bodies, objects, any scenery component) are usually the result of the long exposure time, although in certain cases the photograph can deliberately use a flash unit in order to reveal specific elements of the composition. It is the case in the photograph showed in Figure 7.2: the break-dancer is captured in the middle of his movement with the help of a flashing light.
Graffiti and street artists borrowed this technique, and then calligraphers. In recent examples of ‘light calligraphy’ or “lightgraff’,14 as calligraphers call it, we notice another shift in the relationship between support, implement and movement. Once again the contact between the tool and the surface is broken, but this time in a different manner than in the previous dripping case.
Lightgraff implies ‘tracing’ on no tangible support but rather gesturing in the air, on a virtual plane that can be more or less parallel to the camera lens (the less parallel it is, the more the calligrapher needs to take into account the perspective distortion). This has three main consequences. First of all, the artist must learn to compose and connect the strokes without seeing them as he only sees the flashing movements of the lamps. Not able to see the result in real time, the calligrapher develops the capacity to compose his graphic image with the only help of visual points of reference in the scenery and the succession of postures, in other words a sort of corporeal memory. Rehearsing the movements like a choreography hence becomes part of the whole creative calligraphic process. Second, the frame of the photographic image becomes the composition plane, meaning not only the physical space all around the calligrapher but also the optical depth of field (the area of the photograph that is in focus). Third, a transfer happens from the tracing ‘surface’ to the surface of display—the photographic image that finally reveals the design. This transfer is made possible by the camera’s ‘optical eye’. The photographic process, or, more precisely, its capacity to record traces of movements and contract them on a single image, transforms calligraphic gestures into visible marks. Therefore, every visible element present in the final image exists according to one single principle: the quantity of light it emits, whether by reflection like the scenery or by emission like the lamps. Every part of the photographic composition, including the body of the calligrapher, thus becomes a degree of movement and a degree of luminosity. In other words, they are recorded as intensities. If the calligrapher does not appear on the final image, it is because he or she moves quickly. In calligraphic drippings, plasticity was the material quality modelling the graphic line. In the case of lightgraff, luminosity and speed are shaping the trace: they not only give it its texture and brightness (the faster the arm, the less opaque the trace) but also reveal the calligraphic gesture, as some qualities of the movement (pace, directions, pauses) are particularly noticeable.
As a consequence, with the photographic image (namely the intervention of the recording process), light calligraphy creates a particular sense of space and time. While space appears to distort itself, different layers of time seem to interlace. Indeed, due to physical laws of perception, the whiter source of light will always appear ‘in front’ of the others, emerging on the foreground, no matter the order in which the strokes have been made. Two types of depth coexist. One tri-dimensional, answering the laws of physical space, the other belonging only to the perceptual space offered by the photographic image and answering to visual laws (chromatic, graphic, optical). Because the usual friction and tool–surface contact are replaced by the capture of various intensities, the graphic mark acquires rhythms that are not equal or limited to the sequence of strokes that produced it.
And yet, one fundamental parameter of Western handwriting is preserved. The construction is still composed by successive fragments of strokes, or ‘interrupted’ as palaeographers call it: the turning on and off of the lamps replaces the recurring contact of the implement on a surface.
So where does the difference lie? The lightgraff image could be qualified as a ‘text mode’ included in an ‘image mode’. Text mode and image mode are two different ways of handling and processing the visible alphabetic information. In text mode, the elements (letters, for instance) are composed as a “chain of characters” (Jeanneret, 2012, 397). In other words, every single element is separated from the next, with the possibility of modifying one character at a time. It is comparable to linguistic articulation. Typing a text in a word processor is an example of text mode. Image mode, on the other hand, gives a ‘spatial configuration’ of writing (ibid.). Alphabetic characters are treated as images: they are no longer letters as such but global images of letters, paragraphs or complete pages. A scanned text in bitmap is an image mode, so is a page in ‘portable document format’ (PDF). Running a software ‘optical character recognition’ (OCR) equals transforming a text previously in image mode into a text mode.15
Therefore, the photographic process here acts as an image mode in which the handmade mark, a text mode, is incorporated. The sequential construction of the calligraphic composition is embodied in a spatial and temporal continuum. As a result, the fundamentally successive and modular alphabet shape experiments a visual regime: a regime of heterogeneity and simultaneity.
In calligraphic drippings, a particular relationship to time and space was already noticeable: in order to create a shape, the calligraphic gesture needed to modulate the trickle of paint both in amplitude and duration, inflecting different degrees of speed and expansion to it. In light calligraphy, the act of tracing was not synchronised anymore with the manifestation of the trace and the series of gestures executed by the artist was becoming a sort of choreography. With the help of a third example, we see how the separation of the two planes of tracing and display turns the calligrapher into a live performer.
The third and last case I consider is a live performance created by British film director and visual artist Peter Greenaway, Writing on Water (see Figure 7.3). Commissioned by Lloyds of London to celebrate the bicentenary of Admiral Nelson’s death, it has been presented three times from 2005 to 2008.16 American composer David Lang wrote the music,17 and Peter Greenaway wrote a libretto combining excerpts from three literary, theatrical and poetic texts on the subject of water: Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Melville’s Moby Dick and Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. On stage, Greenaway faces a large touchscreen that allows him to mix moving images (pre-recorded shots organised into “batches” in the software program but for which the final montage is decided on the spot).
Even though his practice did not prepare him to this, the real-time dimension and experimental aspect of this work compel the calligrapher to develop new skills: also present on stage, text-artist Brody Neuenschwander becomes a live performer. Reacting to the music and to the projected images, he chooses words or sentences and inscribes them in various styles and compositions. Of course, the calligrapher and the VJ, just like for any kind of improvisation, prepared the performance beforehand. They worked on the theme of water, saw the recorded visual material, thought about how to give shape to these ideas. For instance, Neuenschwander has a little notebook opened on a corner of his lighting table-turned-rostrum camera, containing sketches, words from the libretto and notes. This is part of the performing and improvising dimensions. The calligrapher reacts to unpredictable events (the encounter of music and images); he has but seconds to decide what to trace and how to shape and compose the forms; what he does is immediately shown on screen, irreversible.18
Neuenschwander works with a particular recording apparatus: a sort of table box with a glass top. A camera is placed inside this light table, in order to record the calligraphy in real time. The writing surface is also specific. It is a very long roll of ‘paper’ fixed on one side of the desk so that after completing each composition the calligrapher just needs to pull another length of paper to start with a new sheet. More precisely, it is a very particular polyester-based material that does not crinkle when used with a liquid medium like ink or near hot lighting sources. More important, it is translucent enough for the marks to appear on the other side but opaque enough so that the camera won’t register the calligrapher’s hand.19 Ultimately, the moving calligraphy is blended with the image: the rearward filmed marks are digitally reversed and composited in real-time. The white tracing surface is ‘cut out’; only the written trace remains.
With the help of this innovative apparatus, the graphic trace is placed at the centre of the performance: the hand of the artist disappears from the image, leaving room for the expressiveness of the line in motion. But simultaneously, the calligrapher’s capacity to create ever-renewed expressive graphic shapes is intensified by its onstage presence. In other words, in this case the disappearance of the tracing hand does not undermine the importance of the handwritten form. I would go as far as to say that on the contrary, it reinforces it.
First, because this display not only shows the real-time evolution of the trace (which already renders the handmade aspect particularly apparent), but it also expands its dimension by projecting it on screen. The real-time digital manipulation causes the form to be stretched or to revolve depending on which screen it appears on. This plays with the plasticity of the alphabetical form, as well as it challenges the limits of readability. But more precisely, the calligraphy is projected on three screens of various shapes and format so that every composition is duplicated in three different versions of itself. This differential repetition creates echoes between all the different images of text.
Second, because this performance avoids an analogical (or deductible) relationship between the act of tracing and the resulting trace. In other words, the visible shapes on screen are not a representation of the calligrapher’s work but rather a presentation of scriptural variations. These visible texts don’t seem to designate a precise individual hand. For instance, during the performance, they don’t appear like they belong to the characters of Melville, Coleridge or Shakespeare or to the authors themselves. The importance of these visual words in motion lies somewhere else.
Lastly, because visual and scriptural rhythms are blended in real time. As they share their iconic qualities with the watery imagery they meet on screen, calligraphic compositions become ‘scripto-visual’ compositions that offer rhythmical modulations to the eye. The digital apparatus, by allowing the real-time presentation of images and calligraphy, allows them to share the same live character as the music. As a consequence, the three dimensions involved—sound, text and image—are offered to the audience as a possibility for open audio-visual associations. The handmade character of the trace is therefore employed as a possibility for a graphic development in space and time.
In Writing on Water, two distinctive movements are shown simultaneously yet separately: the act of tracing and the resulting trace in motion. This has consequences in terms of graphic rhythms: it means the expressiveness of the moving line does not necessarily equals the expressiveness of the motion of inscription. Contemporary calligraphic works show the viewer the coexistence of different rhythmic qualities. This possibility comes from separating the space of inscription from the space of apparition. In other words, it is given by the encounter of the manual inscription with the computerised apparatus. Indeed, it is the very condition of computerised systems to separate the production of the written shape from its apparition (Jeanneret, 2012, 397).
During the 1970s and the 1980s, following the development of computerised medias, the dream of a new plasticity for the written form emerged. At the time, both artists and academics saw the electronic environment as a way to renew our reading and viewing experience of the letter (with poetry in motion, interactive literature, animated signs, etc.).20 The electronic signal, allowing for images (whether iconic or scriptural signs) and sounds to be apprehended and carried by a single medium, induced a conception of text-image compositions as a fusion. Yet, at the same time, a divergent opinion on the relation between writing and computerised media emerged. According to these beliefs, the written mark suffers a dematerialisation because of the separation of the act of inscription from its visible manifestation.21 Facing a certain fantasy of handwriting as an immediate process going from the brain to the page through the hand, digital technologies are seen as opposing a sort of mediation to the handwriting process (Noland, 2006).
Nevertheless, it seems that by encountering digital medias, calligraphic text-art emancipates itself from some of the most common misinterpretations regarding the act of inscription. Firstly, the idea that any inscription is linked to a desire or a need of conservation. Such interpretations restrict the word’s iconic presence and expressive potential to a secondary, even superfluous trait. To the contrary, in recent calligraphy performances, text-images only exist during the short time of the event. In Writing on Water, it can even be said that the calligraphy created by Neuenschwander is never shown as such, since every image captured by the camera is immediately altered. Second, the idea that handwritten practices such as calligraphy are not much more than a counter-proposition to a ‘dehumanisation’ caused by digital media. But it must not be forgotten that the written form is in itself a production of visible matter. Every time it occurs it redefines the visual space in which it appears, renews the act of seeing for the viewer, and constantly challenges us to develop modes of association (Christin, 2000, 462). It is precisely this potential of re-creating the graphic mark anew that contemporary calligraphic text-art develops, by exploring the material conditions of the handwritten inscription.
1The idiom “Western calligraphy” or “Latin calligraphy” has proved to be problematic (mainly because of the different meanings and expectations attached to the word calligraphy in the Western situation). However, we do not examine this terminology matter here. We do use the terms contemporary calligraphy or calligraphic text-art to name this practice of the handmade trace and its visible presence. (We deliberately use the word handmade rather than handwritten—as a shift from the one to the other precisely seems to appear in recent works.)
2To give but one example, while considering calligraphy pieces for a contest, the judge’s comment, “It’s certainly calligraphic, but is it calligraphy? […]. I don’t know that I’d call it calligraphy, because the letters have no literary meaning. This work has crossed over the line into painting. This is more of an idea of writing, rather that writing itself” (in Folsom 2002, 22).
3Sometimes, these works are also understood as belonging to the same territory as the modern art of painter-writers (such as Michaux, Alechinsky, Dotremont or others). However, the two situations are very different. Western calligraphers study the historic and traditional shapes of the Latin alphabet and use these signs as a graphic material for visual compositions (compositions to be seen, eventually read or even heard in the case of video and cinema). On the other hand, mixed forms of writing-painting in second half of the 20th century can be seen as an “importation” of the writing sign into the painting practice. What fascinated these artists is the possibility of the ideogram to reunite, in its very composition, painting and writing.
4See, for instance, Viola n.d.; Prandi 2011.
5See among others Burgert 2002; Neuenschwander 2000; Neuenschwander 1991; Käch 1956; Lach 2014.
6See, among others : Godfrey-Nicholls 2013; Quantum Publishing 2006; Callery et Grebenstein 2012; Sabard et Geneslay 1998.
7Numerous steps in the history of handwriting seem to corroborate what Christine Métayer describes as a “normalisation of the tracing of letters” (2001, 893): the movements, postures and gestures are limited by the models and the aim to reach a graphical uniformity. It was already the case in Rome in early centuries AD, as Laura Kendrick reminds us (1999, 38). The understanding of writing, at the time, was driven by an ethic according to which the most fundamental point was the efficient identification of the letter, leading to a rapid comprehension of the meaning. Consequently, as few variations as possible between the same letters were advised. For instance, the shape of alphabetical signs was taught by following groves of letters incised in wax-covered tablets with a stylus. In other words, we could say that the expressive potential of the gesture of inscription or of the letter itself are not characteristic of historical Latin alphabet handwriting.
8See also Alessio 2013; Gray 1970.
9The movement of an implement on a surface produces a friction, which, in turn, allows a given material (ink, graphite, etc.) to adhere to this same surface.
10Another illustration of how calligraphy develops new inscription modes within the conditions of traditional Western writing is given by German calligrapher and typographer Gottfried Pott. When asked about the reasons for a calligrapher to choose to customise a metallic nib (use it upside down, polish it to the right shape) rather than to settle on a pointed brush able to produce the tracing conditions he wished for (“the capacity to be used in all directions and to produce a fine alternating stroke”), he answered: “I did not […] want the flexibility of the brush but was looking for a way to coax a nearly unrestricted freedom of mobility out of an essentially rigid pen” (Pott 1999, n.p.).
11See also Sauvanet 1999; 1997.
12For instance, experiments by Etienne Jules Marey from 1882, like his series of “luminous spot moving in the dark” (Point lumineux en déplacement dans l’obscurité) which probably record the movement of insects (Chik 2011, 87 and ssq.), or motion studies of the walk by Marey’s collaborators Edouard Quénu and Georges Demenÿ, showing the bright trajectory of lamps attached to the joints of a body walking in front of the camera. The motion studies by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth in the 1910’s are another example.
13Man Ray and Gjon Mili, for instance, took photographs with this technique of “movement transcription” (Lista 1987, 61). The most famous series by Gjon Mili is probably the Picasso portraits printed in a 1948 issue of Life, where Picasso draws in the air holding a tiny lamp. Man Ray’s photographs Space Writing and Man with a Moving Light (1937) describe in their very title this process of recording the motion of a luminous element in a dark environment.
14The image described here is created with a digital camera, but in the specific case of this study, concentrating on the recording of the graphic trace and not on the photographic support, the difference between digital and argentic photography is not significant.
15The image mode renders the whole layout of a page, as with facsimile, but does not allow access to the discrete elements composing the layout, like letters or other visual components. The text mode, on the contrary, gives access to the components, in whole or in part (for instance, it is possible to copy a word or a sentence from a whole page of text), but is very limited when it comes to rendering the layout (the spatial disposition of elements). ‘Text encoding initiative’ (TEI), for instance, is one of the solutions to spatially arrange text mode components. Researches on the implications of these two modes and solutions for mixed image-text modes are particularly active in the field of digital edition studies. See for instance the work of Jacques André on the transcription of Renaissance documents: André 2003; André et Jimenes 2014.
16Excluding the very first and private presentation in Lloyd’s building in September 2005, Writing on Water has been performed three times. The first time on 29 October 2005 at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, in Amsterdam in 2006 and in Bruges (Belgium) on 16 May 2008. From one performance to the other, Peter Greenaway sometimes used different visual material for his VJ-ing. The performance I am referring to here is the 2008 one, the only one I have seen live. Curation: Artwise (UK). Projection: BeamSystems (NL).
17Lasting 32 minutes, the musical piece is composed for three voices (two baritones, one bass, performed by the Synergy Vocals ensemble) and a large ensemble (trumpet, trombone, piano, percussions, electric guitar, electric bass guitar, alto and cello), performed by London Sinfonietta (Lang 2013).
18I borrow this definition of improvisation to Dallaire, 2014, p. 129.
19The hand can appear as barely perceptible shadows on the original shots, but in this case, the blending with the image makes it disappear completely.
20See, for instance, Laufer 1986; Laufer 1987; Blanchard 1976.
21Similarly, from this point of view, digital writing tools are seen in opposition to handwriting tools. And yet, recent software developments, particularly in the field of type design, points towards integration rather than opposition. It is the case, for instance, of software programs able to take the pressure of the stylus on the tablet into account. Not only handwritten shapes are immediately rendered in a vectorial mode, but they can also handle calligraphic characteristics like pressure modulation.
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