Typography without Lines

A talk at SAFI FAYE STAGE (HKW)

Why do we persist in reading text in long, thin lines of type? Why do those lines end arbitrarily, when no more words fit in the given space, and not deliberately, in service of the rhythm and meaning of the text? What is reading even, if not the action of moving one’s eyes along a line of words in order to comprehend their meaning? The answers to these question are not as self-evident as they might seem. They are entangled in centuries of writing and reading practices.

Practices of organising language on surfaces that became conventions, understood and habitually expected by readers. Conventions that later informed the technics of a paradigm shift from writing to typography. Technics whose incredible industrial proliferation continues to define the presentation of language in contemporary digital contexts, where the material constraints of the printed page should be irrelevant.

Through the following references we will narrate a story about why we write in lines:
(1) Sadie Plant, "Zeros + Ones" (1997)
(2) Robert Graves, "Comments on Lineal and Non-lineal Codifications" (1954)
(3) Tim Ingold, "Lines" (2007)
(4) Johanna Drucker, "The Alphabetic Labyrinth" (1995)
(5) Walter J. Ong, "Orality and Literacy, The Technologising of the Word" (1982)
(6) André Leroi-Gourhan, "Gesture and Speech" (1964)
(7) Masanao Hirayama, "Book (9222)" (2022)
(8) Michael Twyman, "Typography Without Words" (1981)
(9) Lillian Lieber, "The Education of T. C. MITS" (1942)
(10) Alvin J. North and L. B. Jenkins, "Reading Speed and Comprehension as a Function of Typography" (1951)
(11) Stefan Themerson, "Bayamus" (1949)
(12) Richard Hamilton‘s typotranslation of Marcel Duchamp, "The Green Book" (1960)
(13) "Chalchera—Kalk in Transformation," designed and typeset by Kasper-Florio (2020)
(14) Johanna Drucker, "Diagrammatic Writing" (2013)
(15) Wayne Reed Porter, "The End of Illiteracy" (1999)