Gesture as data: explorations in hybrid calligraphy 

A talk by Mariana Leal
This talk is about calligraphy - the ancestor of typography. But not calligraphy as we know it - hand, pen, ink, paper. It's about calligraphy in another realm: the digital and algorithmical. I will show my most important work made since 2019. All of them mix calligraphy and programming. By coding with the data that comes from my hand gestures I can break, recombine and create the ductus in new and unexpected ways. These ways will be the main content of this presentation. I will also share the insights that I got from this ongoing practice regarding calligraphy, computation and the new expressive capabilities that the mix of these two areas can have. After this talk I hope the audience come to see calligraphy and programming in a more poetic sense and feel inspired to find their own way into calligraphy or creative coding, as I did.