ELECTRIC
CALLIGRAPHY
#ELECTRONIC-ART
#LANGUAGE-AS-MACHINE
2023
Electric Calligraphy is a series of anachronistic Arabic typeface designs that imagine an alternative timeline where the Arabic language played a leading role in the development of early digital typographic display technologies, once cutting edge, now obsolete. It attempts to re-examine the evolutionary path of the Arabic script within these inherited technological constraints, to uncover new pathways for its development, adding new perspectives to the contemporary type design discourse.
These grids explore what contemporary calligraphy might have been were it more intimate with the electronic revolution - calligraphy that is guided by light, and constructed with segments and modules - the artifacts of reduction, the dogma of the digital age.
The Names of Allah are usually displayed in intricate calligraphy to reflect the beauty of their meanings. Displaying them with light brings forth a new way to honor the names while displaying them in contemporary times, showing how the Names of Allah can be displayed beautifully within technology, without having to mimic traditional calligraphy.
By Fatima Abbas and Lana Abou Selo
with software by Levi Hammett
These grids explore what contemporary calligraphy might have been were it more intimate with the electronic revolution - calligraphy that is guided by light, and constructed with segments and modules - the artifacts of reduction, the dogma of the digital age.
The Names of Allah are usually displayed in intricate calligraphy to reflect the beauty of their meanings. Displaying them with light brings forth a new way to honor the names while displaying them in contemporary times, showing how the Names of Allah can be displayed beautifully within technology, without having to mimic traditional calligraphy.
By Fatima Abbas and Lana Abou Selo
with software by Levi Hammett