The gathering of collective memory. A pre-literate notion of memory, in a communal way, something commemorative rather than putting a memory in a container. What we thought it was going to be changed completely. We are in that way changing our memory of what it was supposed to be. What are you able to collect? Memories? Objects? People? A collection of texts and people, collecting and composing each other? Somehow it's not even important that we have all the knowledge, what's important is the living, generative sense of the collection.

human writing

Simon Browne

human writing

see also typing

Writing “by hand” is how we most often think of the act. The hand is symbolically connected to the act of writing, to the extent that we still use icons of the hand-held utensils to represent it graphically – a ballpoint pen, a pencil, even an old-fashioned quill and nib, all often associated with letter-writing. Slowly, this iconography is being replaced by another symbol; the keyboard, signalling the contemporary dominance of typography above writing.


Image: “Proper posture for writing with pen” 1


  1. Drucker, J. (1999) The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination. London: Thames & Hudson.