Alternumerics and the 1 to 1 ratio

Paul Chan in his introduction to his Alternumerics makes some hefty claims:

“Alternumerics explores the intimate relationship between language and interactivity by transforming the simple computer font into an art form that explores the fissure between what we type and we what mean [sic]. By replacing the individual letters and numbers with textual and graphic fragments that connect and signify what is typed in radically different ways, “Alteranumerics” transforms the act of typing into a digital performance and any computer connected to a standard printer, into an interactive art making installation.”

To say that he his project has transformed the act of typing into a performance is assuming that the act of typing isn’t already a performance. Notice he doesn’t say, “transforms the act of typing from ______ to a performance. The question of what is being transformed is never addressed only assumed not to be a performance. However, the act of typing is very much an act. It is a simple act, and one that is overlooked easily, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a performance, a creation of some sort. While Chan’s graphic fonts more fully reveal the “fissure” or signification processes that we experience when we type, that does not mean the new fonts created that fissure. It’s always been there, it’s just not very apparent because we are so used to it (I feel like this is a phenomenological problem, but I’m definitely not smart enough to figure it out).

This leads to other issues. The fonts Chan created aren’t so much fonts as they are a simple code, a one to one ratio. “A” is represented by a certain type of squiggly line, “B” is a different squiggly line. When you read writing typed in this Squiggly font, you can read it if you internalize the cipher, the same way people can read computer code, or read phase space diagrams. Reading this is even simpler than learning a new language since the grammatical structures don’t change. (It reminded me a lot like reading A Clockwork Orange.) The next logical step might be that all fonts are code. That doesn’t mean that all language is code, necessarily, but fonts, maybe. Fonts after all are all graphic depictions of alphanumerics, and Zaph Dingbats or Wingdings does the same thing that Chan is doing with his graphic fonts.