DNA #1: The New Alphabet
Operating in the space between a regulatory cosmos and the chaos of life, spoken language and its written notation unfold in different directions. Proceeding from the digital as a seemingly universal notational substrate, the first volume of Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet) series tracks the interplay between these two tendencies by looking at a series of examples: the relationship between binary code and Leibniz’s philosophy of Monadology, the technological and cosmological aspects of non Western writing systems, which are antithetical to a monolithic understanding of language, and the power of the Alphabet Song to teach children the alphabet, its ordering principle cloaked in poetic form. The texts are accompanied by images created by artist Wolfgang Tillmans.
