Have you ever dwelt on how old writing is? Since when has humankind learned the gestures of penmanships?
It’s been 37.000 years since the first characters have appeared in history, however, nowadays we are substituting handwriting with digital devices. But at what cost? Nobody ever spends some time to think about the complexity of writing, its history, its importance in human expression and life.
Based on the existing literature, taking into account the statements of the research, and with the help of the results of the experiments carried out, I would like, in this work, to deal with the question “why today is the writing as an analogue means of communication abandoned”.This diploma thesis emerged from the personal analysis of the writing, starting from his two pillars: the hand and the gesture. Using practical exercises, interviews, and videos, “A mano libera” came about: a project regarding the importance of handwriting and of the existing links among the body, the writing and the soul, in a period characterized by the digital world, which is dominating, and almost everything can be done using the computer.
The project includes the realization of a program that allows the transposition of manual gesture’s characteristics in digital writing. Through the assimilation of some input parameters, the program creates changes in real time to the typography. Just as with analog writing the font changes with the writing act, in this project the digital writing follows the expressive nuances of the writer’s hand.
Sometimes we should focus on details, sometimes we should look at the entire picture. The possibility to do both allows us to understand every nuances of what we are observing.
The purpose of this book is being a vehicle towards writing, switching between macro and microscopic view. From penmanship to digital writing, using the program “A mano libera”. An introspection on the gesture giving space on self evaluation, without expressing verdicts or issuing sentences.
A journey, as was mine, from the manual gesture to digital writing, with the emphasis on how we can approach these two worlds that, at times, seem unable to coexist.