workshop
Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Kiel 2007
The workshop »I type my voice« took place as a part of the symposium »Lesen und Sehen – ein Dialog der Schrift« (Reading and Seeing – a script dialogue) at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel.
The theme is the relationship between language and the body.
Our starting off point was the voice and handwriting of each participant. The workshop began with each participant writing their name on a piece of paper. The signatures were scanned into a computer, and one curved and one straight line was isolated in each signature. These lines were used by the students to create a modular font. This was an exercise in font design which brought swift and satisfying results, and showed the students how a typeface can be assembled.
In the second phase of the workshop a phonetic alphabet was recorded by computer and then used to form the written sentence. The process was similar: the natural, body-specific, and unmistakable sounds and shapes were »separated« from the body by being recorded, fragmented, and digitalised. These linguistic fragments were then reassembled, creating a new font and language which is both »of the body« and distanced from the body.