The New Alphabet
DNA #1
HKW - Haus der Kulturen der Welt/Bernd Scherer

Operating in the space between a regulatory cosmos and the chaos of life, spoken language and its written notation unfold in different directions. Proceeding from the digital as a seemingly universal notational substrate, the first volume of Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet) series tracks the interplay between these two tendencies by looking at a series of examples: the relationship between binary code and Leibniz’s philosophy of Monadology, the technological and cosmological aspects of non­ Western writing systems, which are antithetical to a monolithic understanding of language, and the power of the Alphabet Song to teach children the alphabet, its ordering principle cloaked in poetic form. The texts are accompa­ nied by images created by artist Wolfgang Tillmans.