Alien Glyphs
2018
Medium
Custom software
What happens if the deliberate act of writing is reduced to subconscious scribbling, in other words, to merely making marks? In this project, I took a radical approach to this question by coding a program to produce paragraphs of text out of alien glyphs without any semantic meaning. Such an algorithmic approach provides full control over the abstract form of my work while relinquishing control over content with a randomized glyph alphabet. In this way, a paradoxical state was reached where I couldn’t read my pieces of writing created through the program, and I was forced to observe and contemplate the process of writing as a neutral spectator. It appears that the very act of making marks (and pausing at irregular intervals) is sufficient to evoke a sense of communication and information exchange and makes the writing process human.