Shared Territory: an Investigation of Bilingual Letterforms As an Instance of Bakhtinian Dialogism

Shared Territory: an investigation of bilingual letterforms as an instance of Bakhtinian dialogism Soheil Ashrafi A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy UNSW, Art and Design August 2014 Table of Contents Page Acknowledgment………………………………………………………………………………………………..i Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….ii List of figures……………………………………………………………………………………………………iii List of images……………………………………………………………………………………………………xi Chapter 1. Statement of Topic 1.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………..1 1.2. Thesis overview…………………………………………………………………………………………..6 Chapter 2. Literature Review 2.1. The Theoretical Literature of Typographic Bilingualism………………………………..7 2.2. Practice‐Oriented Literature of Typographic Polyphony……………………………...13 2.2.1. Two‐dimensional monolingual works……………………………………………………14 2.2.2. Two‐dimensional bilingual works………………………………………………………….17 2.2.3. Three‐dimensional monolingual works………………………………………………….21 2.2.4. Three‐dimensional bilingual works……………………………………………………….25 Chapter 3. Towards a Theory of Letterforms 3.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………28 3.2. The question of fundamental structure of letterforms…………………………………28 3.3. Research design and methodology……………………………………………………………...31 3.4. Exposition of the fundamental structure of letterforms……………………………….34 3.5. Examination of the general arguments: the theoretical grounds for the morphological primitives………………………………………………………………………………....48 3.6. Farsi letterforms………………………………………………………………………………………..69 Chapter 4. Towards a Dialogic Coding System (DCS) 4.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………79 4.2. Dialogic integration……………………………………………………………………………………80 4.3. Experimental demonstration of the general principles………………………………...97 4.4. Spatial de‐integration………………………………………………………………………………115 4.5. The DCS at sentence level…………………………………………………………………………124 4.6. Exhibition………………………………………………………………………………………………..137 Chapter 5. Towards a General Theory of Dialogue 5.1. Aha and Oho moments: two dialogic frames of experience…………………………164 5.2. Exposition of the Category of Relation………………………………………………………166 5.3. The problem of form, material and colour in the DCS………………………………...179 5.4. The formal‐material structure of letterforms…………………………………………….180 5.5. Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic……………………………………………………………….181 5.6. The issue of legibility……………………………………………………………………………….184 5.7. Formal discourse analysis of letterforms…………………………………………………..186 5.8. Discourse analysis of the architectonic forms of the DCS……………………………189 5.9. Subject’s competence and the architectonic forms…………………………………….193 5.10. Asymmetric dualism of letterforms………………………………………………………...194 Chapter 6. Conclusion 6.1. Summary………………………………………………………………………………………………..196 6.2. Communicative implications……………………………………………………………………197 6.3. Cultural implications……………………………………………………………………………….198 6.4. Political implications……………………………………………………………………………….201 6.5. Final remarks: A failed yet still prospective project…………………………………..202 References…………………………………………………………………………………………………..cciv Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………………..ccxi Acknowledgment I would like to express my special appreciation and thanks to my supervisor Dr. Michael Garbutt, you have been a great mentor for me. I owe a very important intellectual debt to you for encouraging my research and for allowing me to explore creatively the research issues. Your advice on both research as well as on my writing have been priceless. I would like to thank the school of Art and Design, UNSW, for providing me with fabulous research facilities in the past four years. I am also thankful to the members of the scholarship committee for awarding me scholarship without which this research would be impossible. At the end, words cannot express how grateful I am to my mother and father for all of the sacrifices that you have made on my behalf. I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my beloved fiancé Rahil Abedini for her generous support and encouragement throughout my long preoccupation with this research. i Abstract This thesis addresses the gap in both the theory and practice of bilingual typography by extending Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism and its aesthetic principles to the domain of letterforms. Rather than linguistic content, which may constitute an obstacle to communication, the thesis focuses on the formal-material structure of letterforms as a shared territory of bilingual discourse. This approach allows for developing a formal-material system of relations through which bilingual letterforms are dialogically integrated such that the readers of both languages can simultaneously experience a dialogic moment. This proposed ‘Dialogic Coding System’ (DCS), is explored and demonstrated with reference to two culturally and formally disparate sets of letterforms, namely, English and Farsi. The development of the DCS requires an exposition of the fundamental structure of letterforms in order to determine the elements of integration. Through the method of analytic induction the thesis develops a general theory of letterforms: ‘The Theory of Letterform Genome’ (TLG), which sheds light on the letterforms’ morphological commonalities and the dialogic potential across writing systems. The DCS is instantiated by a gallery installation featuring English and Farsi integrated forms. This permits a discussion of the theoretical implications of the system by analysing the formal-material structure and processual nature of the dialogic experience. An ontological-semantic account of the category of Relation is proposed that includes dialogue to distinguish between the concepts of plurality, polyphony, and dialogicality, which are frequently used interchangeably in the interpretation of Bakhtin’s dialogism. In consequence, the study itself serves as a dialogic point of encounter at which Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism and the theory and practice of bilingual letterforms are mutually informed and extended. ii List of Figures Figure 2.1: Letter A in its typographic (1) and calligraphic (2) variations 7 Figure 2.2: Tam, 2012, Bilingual typography: Hong Kong Case Studies 9 (Slideshare.net) Figure 2.3: Rubin, 1915, Rubin Vase 13 Figure 2.4: di Sciullo, 2001, Mon beau pays 15 (di Sciullo, 2003, p. 25) Figure 2.5: Hofstadter, 2001, Light is a wave/particle 16 (Introspections.org, 2008) Figure 2.6: Kim, 1981, FALSE/true 17 (Seckel, 2004, p. 140) Figure 2.7: Kim, 1997, Elise Esther Diamond 18 (Kim, 1997) Figure 2.8: Kim, 1988, Origami 18 (Kim, 1988) 19 2002 ,العربیه :Figure 2.9 (CNN Arabic) Figure 2.10: Lozano-Hemmer, 2006, Third Person 20 (Lozano-Hemmer, 2014) Figure 2.11: Egan and Thomson, 2010, It’s a point of view 21 (designboom | architecture & design magazine, 2010) Figure 2.12: di Sciullo, 1997, approche 22 (di Sciullo, 2003, p. 25) Figure 2.13: Ashrafi, 2009, time is money 23 Figure 2.14: A closer view of time is money, letters ‘t’ and ‘i’ in the word ‘time’ can be seen from the vantage point 24 iii Figure 2.15: A closer view of time is money, letter ‘m’ in the word ‘time’ can be seen from the succeeding vantage point 24 Figure 2.16: Kisman, El Mir, and Youssef, 2010, StoryLine 25 (Najielmir.com, 2014) Figure 2.17: Kisman, El Mir, and Youssef, 2010, In The Shade (Najielmir.com, 2014). The English words ‘in the shade’ can be seen in the farther blocks, and the the Arabic translation of ‘in the shade’) in the closer blocks in) ’فی الظل‘ Arabic words the image 26 Figure 3.1: Relational contrast between letterforms in print (1) and the DCS (2) 29 Figure 3.2: Typeface variations of letter ‘A’ 29 Figure 3.3: Superimposition of the variations of ‘A’ 30 Figure 3.4: Letter ‘A’ 35 Figure 3.5: Pattern-plane analysis of ‘A’ 36 Figure 3.6: Three possible definitions of letter ‘A’ 37 Figure 3.7: Common typeface variations of ‘A’ (1); and graphically altered variations of ‘A’ (2) 38 Figure 3.8: Analysis of the form inside and outside the word structure 39 Figure 3.9: Counter-forms of the variations of ‘A’ 40 Figure 3.10: Analysis of the form and counter-form of ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ 41 Figure 3.11: Characteristic arguments denoting the fundamental structures of ‘B’, ‘C’, and ‘D’ 41 Figure 3.12: Analysis of ‘E’ 42 Figure 3.13: General characteristic argument 42 Figure 3.14: Characteristic arguments of the uppercase letters composed of enclosed and semi-enclosed spaces 43 Figure 3.15: Analysis of ‘F’ 44 iv Figure 3.16: Characteristic arguments of the uppercase letters whose fundamental structures composed of line segments 44 Figure 3.17: General argument 1 45 Figure 3.18: General argument 2 46 Figure 3.19: General argument 3 46 Figure 3.20: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic variations of letterforms 47 Figure 3.21: The extension of the form’s outward contour and its glyphic character 49 Figure 3.22: Analogical resemblance of the relation between the letterform’s form and counter-form, seen in figure (21), to a building’s façade and interior space 49 Figure 3.23: Topological transformations in contrast to tearing and glueing 51 Figure 3.24: Three interconnected sets of properties constitutive of a letterform 52 Figure 3.25: The relationship between fundamental structure and glyphic surface through geometric expression 53 Figure 3.26: The significance of geometric expression in determining the form’s variations 54 Figure 3.27: Linear organisations of ‘O’ and ‘D’ 55 Figure 3.28: Linear organisations of ‘N’ and ‘H’ 55 Figure 3.29: Linear organisations of ‘U’ and ‘V’ 56 Figure 3.30: Linear organisation of ‘L’ and ‘I’ 56 Figure

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