A self-initiated project exploring what we are loosing from our increasing use of the Internet chat as a form of communication apposed to our most primitive form of communication face-to-face interaction.

My investigation began to lead me to the characters themselves and how written language has always been about trying to translate how we naturally communicate down into symbols. We have managed to do this pretty well, adding characters like commas exclamation marks question marks, all there to allow us to express more warmth and emotion to the written word.

Now however in the world of Internet chat, our use of language is changing along with what how we need to express. Conversation on the Internet unlike writing letters or telling a story is a quick fire dialoged much like that of face to face interaction but some thing is missing. In face-to-face communication words very much take a back seat and body language, facial expressions and tone of voice take the lime light.

I have created a series of marks some that add to existing letters some that stand alone, trying to inject some of this ‘non-scripted’ communication back into the typed language. The final out come is this book explaining how current punctuation came into use and how my new characters fit in.

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Photos courtesy of Fuzz