The New Alphabet

© HKW / Spector Books / Olaf Nicolai

Publication series Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet), Volume 1
Editor: Bernd Scherer
Publisher: Spector Books, Leipzig, 2021
80-100 pages, German and English edition
color illustrations, paperback with folded dust cover
ISBN DE: 978–3–95905–452–2
ISBN EN: 978-3-95905-453-9
Price: 10 €

Available at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Webshop

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 univer-sal notational substrate, the first volume of the series Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet) 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. With essays by Ann Cotten, Yuk Hui, Ben Lerner and Bernd Scherer and with illustrations by Kanako Tada and images by Wolfgang Tillmans.

Table of contents:

Introduction
Bernd Scherer

ABCs: A Holiday Card for Alexander Kluge
Ben Lerner

イロハ
Ann Cotten

表語文字 — Gods, Logographs 表語文字, and Dad-Jokes
Ann Cotten

Cosmology of Perspectives and Digital Code
Bernd Scherer

Notes on Writing Systems
Ann Cotten

Reexploring Kanji Body System
Ann Cotten and Kanako Tada

From the Project Neue Welt 2011 – 2020, 2020
Wolfgang Tillmans

On the Cosmotechnical Nature of Writing
Yuk Hui

From The Hatred of Poetry
Ben Lerner