The New Alphabet

Publication series Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet), Volume 1
Editor: Bernd Scherer
Publisher: Spector Books, Leipzig, 2021
80-100 pages, German and English edition
color illustrations, paperback with folded dust cover
ISBN DE: 978–3–95905–452–2
ISBN EN: 978-3-95905-453-9
Price: 10 €

Available at bookstores, mail order buying / postal shopping via the Webshop

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 univer-sal notational substrate, the first volume of the series Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet) 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. With essays by Ann Cotten, Yuk Hui, Ben Lerner and Bernd Scherer and with illustrations by Kanako Tada and images by Wolfgang Tillmans.