Characters

The relationship between Japan and China is one of a long history and many different qualities. The Japanese written language (Kanji) is based on the chinese ideograms (pictorially based symbols that stand for a word). So although they can communicate by using the same Kanji, the meaning of the characters has grown apart during the years.

For one day I cross the sea and show you a work by Xu Bing about language and communicating. He made a Computer Program that can translate text into a ‘language of icons’. Using a normal keyboard, the artist has devised a software program that permits the public to organized these icons into phrases or sentences. The symbols are then translated into readable ‘icon sentences’.

He gave a new interpretation to Neurath’s Isotypes (International System of Typographic Picture Education), who’s most significant sentence was: words divide, images unite.