Spellbound (Book)
Rethinking the Alphabet
Asserting that written language is on the verge of its greatest change since the advent of the printing press, visual artist Craig McDaniel and art historian Jean Robertson bring us Spellbound – a collection of heavily illustrated essays that interrogate assumptions about language and typography. Rethinking the alphabet, they argue, means rethinking human communication. Looking beyond traditional typography, the authors conceive of new languages in which encoded pictorial images offer an unparalleled fusion of art and language. In a world of constant technological innovation offered by e-books, tablets, cell phones and the Internet, McDaniel and Robertson demonstrate provocatively what it would mean to move beyond the alphabet we know to a wholly new system of written communication.
Edition
Asserting that written language is on the verge of its greatest change since the advent of the printing press, visual artist Craig McDaniel and art historian Jean Robertson bring us Spellbound – a collection of heavily illustrated essays that interrogate assumptions about language and typography. Rethinking the alphabet, they argue, means rethinking human communication. Looking beyond traditional typography, the authors conceive of new languages in which encoded pictorial images offer an unparalleled fusion of art and language. In a world of constant technological innovation offered by e-books, tablets, cell phones and the Internet, McDaniel and Robertson demonstrate provocatively what it would mean to move beyond the alphabet we know to a wholly new system of written communication.
Craig McDaniel is a painter, author, and associate dean and professor of fine arts at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art and Design. He is one of the authors of Spellbound.
Jean Robertson is the Chancellor’s Professor of Art History at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art and Design. She is one of the authors of Spellbound.
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Listening to the Alphabet: Sounds
Looking at the Alphabet: Shapes
Rethinking the Alphabet: Pictures
Rethinking the Alphabet: Colors
The Visuality of Text: Degrees of Spatiality and Translucency
Thinking in Scripts: The Look of Arabic by Erica Machulak
The Curious Case of Translation
Love Letters by Slavs and Tatars by Gabriel Ritter
Text and Image in Visual Art
Rethinking Visual Language in the Digital Future by Aaron Ganci
Visual Culture and Visual Power
Conclusion