He is a sound and new media artist, curator, art historian, software designer. He got his Ph.D. ABD, and M.A. from the Department of the History of Art, U.C., Berkeley. Formerly he was a professor of computer music and executive manager at the Center for Art & Technology, Taiwan National University of the Arts. Currently he is a visiting professor of New Media Art at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou.
Beside his well-known work in experimental music and sound art, Dajuin Yao also began working with Chinese concrete poetry in the 1970s. His obsession with the Chinese language system and computer algorithm led him to an exploration, since the 1990s, with a “total Chinese character art,” using the visual, semiotic and phonetic aspects of the language system. His work crosses over sound art, installation art, net art, and performance. And he has been performed, shown and released worldwide.
Five thousand years of Chinese writing history is now facing a tremendous crisis. Ubiquitous computer keyboard inputting in daily life has been slowly disconnecting the Chinese from their writing system. Unlike phonetic writing systems, it is an ideographic script system which must be learned with motor memory using physical movement by hand, an ability that cannot be acquired only through visual memory. Within a couple of generations, most Chinese will probably not be able to write Chinese characters by hand, and will only be able to read them and to input them from keyboards on various electronic devices.
The paper first explains the structural relationship between handwriting, calligraphy and computer typography, and demonstrates how this historical rupture will end not only Chinese calligraphy but also Chinese handwriting. We will then explore the possibilities in visual design and art for future ― the art form which will eventually replace traditional “calligraphy” will be a new domain of Chinese character art and typographical manipulations made with computers. The hand will no longer be our instrument, instead, computer and algorithmic programming will be our agent with which we create this calligraphic art of the future. On the other hand, this will not be an entirely newborn art form, but an extension of what has already been practiced by the design industry for decades among Chinese characters culture countries in East Asia. The use of Chinese characters in the design industry in the past several decades will form the basis of this new art.
