Traces of Seemingly Insignificant Gestures

Michaela Putz

Handwriting is a direct expression of a gesture on a surface, whereas writing with machines has an abstraction layer. New technologies create new gestures and writing on computers and smartphones involves a lot of movements. These movements can be analysed by machine-learning algorithms that identify us by the way we write; our typing dynamics. In a process of mimicry, the movements involved in digital writing are being translated into characters that seem to be cryptographic. On the other hand, those characters are a kind of future archaeology, since the gesture of writing, as Vilém Flusser already stated in 1992, will be an archaic one due to new technologies that will make those gestures useless.

Diploma Exhibition
Exhibition Centre
Heiligenkreuzer Hof,1010 Wien,
14-22 June 2017

Diploma Commission
Sen.Lect. Dr. Bernd Kräftner
Univ.-Ass. Mag.rer.nat. Dr.techn. Boris Odehnal
Univ.-Prof. Mag. art. Ruth Schnell
VAss. Mag. art. Nita Tandon
Prof. Virgil Widrich

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