We don’t pretend to understand most art (with the exception of the type that has naked people in it), but nevertheless, we’re currently fascinated with Paul Chan‘s “Sade for Fonts Sake.”
Ostensibly a typography project, “Sade for Fonts Sake” is a CD loaded up with a suite of fonts (for Mac, Windows, and Linux, folks). But these are no ordinary fonts, mind you. Load up “Oh Bishop X” and type the letter a—what appears onscreen is not, in fact, the letter a, but rather “stop,”.
Type abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890- and you’re given:
stop, closer, tighter, wider, there, higher, enough, deeper, shutup, hold it, wake up, stay, harder, turn, rise down, no—bend, come, don’t, wrong, stoop, open, sit, shhh, slow, cry,
You get the picture.
Some of the fonts, like Oh Bishop X and Oh Justine, are based on characters from novels by Sade; others take inspiration from more contemporary figures, like Michael Lucas and Monica Lewinsky. It’s fascinating to see how each character transforms the alphabet (and other words)—how each of us puts on our spin on what is, ultimately, a very universal experience.
· Buy Sade for Fonts Sake (amazon.com)
· National Philistine (nationalphilistine.com)
· Thumbnail: Sasha Grey, just because (nsgalleries.com, via Ask Jolene)
