Sound-lligraphy
Research Topic
Chinese Calligraphy
Background
Chinese Calligraphy is one of the Chinese traditional writing. Over the thousands of years, the style of Chinese calligraphy has evolved continually. About 213 B.C., under the famous Chin Shih Huang Ti, who perpetrated the 'burning of the books', the Prime Minister Li Szu drew up an official index of characters and unified the written form for the use of scholars. This is chuan-shu and contained more than 3,000 characters. From that time to the present, there are five major styles of calligraphy:
| seal | clerical | cursive | regular |
(http://www.chinapage.com/callig1.html)
Calligraphy is not only a practical technique for writing Chinese characters, but also a unique Oriental art of expression and a branch of learning or discipline as well. As a branch of learning it is rich in content, including the evolution of writing styles, development and rules of technique, history of calligraphy, calligraphers and their inheritance in art, and evaluation of calligraphy as a work of art. This branch of learning is wide ranging and deep, forming an important part of Chinese culture.
The local name for calligraphy is Shūfǎ 書法 in China, literally "the way/method/law of writing"; Shodō 書道 in Japan, literally "the way/principle of writing"; and Seoye (서예) 書藝 in Korea, literally "the skill/criterion of writing". The calligraphy of East Asian characters is an important and appreciated aspect of East Asian culture. East Asian calligraphy is normally regarded as one of the "arts" (Chinese 藝術 pinyin: yìshù, Japanese 芸術 geijutsu) in the countries where it is practiced. But there is actually a debate as to whether East Asian calligraphy is a discipline or an art. Indeed, both may be true.As a practice
As a discipline calligraphy is, at the basic level, a pursuit －書法 Chinese: shūfǎ, "the rules of writing Han characters"－ focused on writing well. Students aim to obtain the characteristics of the writing of famous calligraphic masters. Elementary school students practice calligraphy in this way, as do elders practicing temporary calligraphy, without aspiring to artistic creation.
As an art
Calligraphy is also considered an art － 艺术 Chinese: yìshù, a relatively recent word meaning "art", where works are appreciated more or only for their aesthetic qualities.
The English word "Calligraphy" refers to that which is "beautiful writing", thus including both aspects.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_calligraphy)
Problem Identification
Many forms of the traditional ways is transforming into digital. Nowadays, the people are hardly remembering about the art of Chinese Calligraphy. They feel that using Chinese Calligraphy is a waste of time on the preparation of materials, and the traditional method of writing make their hand dirty and the smell of the ink is incredible, not everyone of us can accept. Chinese Calligraphy is great invention of writing created by our ancient, we shouldn't let it dies. What we can do is to improve and to do some transformation on the method of writing so do the traditional culture can have interaction with the human.
Aim and Objectives
To transform the old story into new media.
To encourage people have more interaction with the culture.
To let people understand Chinese Calligraphy.
To presented the relationship between sound and images.
Motivation
Encourage people to know more about Chinese Calligraphy and the meaning of Chinese text. People will be more interesting on this if there is interaction in between. Therefore, they can easily remember it all the time. By using this installation, user can try their patient as well as this is one of the purposes of Chinese Calligraphy.
Ideation or Concept
My idea is to transform the old way of written Chinese Calligraphy into a modern and digital way. Sound and images always have big relationship between each other. Although you don't know what the meaning of the text is, but if there sound playing along, the meaning is always obvious. My concept is let the user hold the calligraphy pen and start following the text stroke and sequence, every moment they make, the sound of the text will be coming out along. If user writes out of the stroke, the sound coming out will be noise to warn them. The text I plan to research will be Water, 水, bird, 鸟, and wind, 风.
Review, Analysis and Precedence Studies
On reviewing the video and article while I doing research, I found out there lots more interaction on Chinese Calligraphy like tablet, water calligraphy and etc. While sound Calligraphy that appear is just simple and non relate sound play along while calligrapher writing. My concept and idea isn't appear before, so it might work and create new interaction calligraphy.
The design of the installation will be a in traditional chinese mode and background music. There will have simple introduction before the installation start be play. User can user the own-made Chinese Calligraphy pen to interact with the installation.
