November 08, 2023
Quasi: Experimental Writing Systems
Where fictional alphabets and invented scripts come to life
November 17, 2023 through April 14, 2024
On view at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT) Gallery
ArtCenter College of Design
Opening reception: Thursday, November 16th from 6:30 p.m. until 9 p.m.
The Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT) at ArtCenter College of Design presents Quasi: Experimental Writing Systems, November 17, 2023 through April 14, 2024 at the HMCT Gallery, with a public opening reception on Thursday, November 16, from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
With a history spanning more than five millennia, the practice of writing serves as a testament to the enduring human impulse to record, preserve, and transmit information across time and space. Writing systems—sets of standardized symbols and rules used to convey language visually—can carry within them a culture’s history, traditions, and collective knowledge, making them powerful vessels of cultural preservation and expression.
Quasi: Experimental Writing Systems is an exhibition curated by Lavina Lascaris about invented and fictional writing systems. Klingon, Elvish, and Kryptonian are popular contemporary examples, but they represent only a fraction of a much broader landscape. Unlike writing systems that have evolved organically over generations of collective usage, the projects showcased in the exhibition present new configurations of signs and symbols, meticulously crafted at distinct points in time, each born with intention and purpose.
The urge to craft a writing system may emerge from a variety of personal or cultural motivations. A few examples from an inexhaustible list of creative impulses are encoding messages through cryptography, preserving endangered languages, methods for faster writing, writing devoid of semantic content, investigating historical symbolism and its contemporary relevance, and even channeling otherworldly entities through automatic writing. This “secret vice” of inventing languages—as J.R.R. Tolkien refers to it—exposes us to linguistic operations outside our everyday experience and reveals a fascination with otherness where mythology and utopia are recurring themes.
The concept of Quasi developed from a personal connection to its theme. Around the age of eight, as a reaction to a loud and active home, curator Lascaris designed her own writing system—an encrypted cipher based on the Greek alphabet—invented for writing private thoughts. A decade later, she developed a mild obsession with the stories set in Tolkien’s Middle Earth and the fictional languages drawn from his vast backdrop of mythic narratives. Another ten years on, amidst a career change, her journey into typography began, revealing its intricate connection to language. Now, these personal chapters come together from what started as a research project at the intersection of typography, linguistics and fiction.
Participating designers: Ximena Amaya, Johannes Bergerhausen, Coline Besson, C.C. Elian, Sina Fakour, Kobi Franco, Patricio González, Aleks Hafermaas, Simon Fréour, Calder Ruhl Hansen, Ilka Helmig, Marianne Hoffmeister, Simon Johnston, Stephan Kamp, Michelle Koza, Aspacia Kusulas, Lavinia Lascaris, Zeke Oyinloye, Barry Spencer, Simon Thiefes and The Repository of Wonders.
The HMCT Gallery is located at 950 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena, CA 91105. For more information, visit hmctartcenter.org, or contact hmct@artcenter.edu.
Admission to the Gallery is free; open daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
HMCT Gallery
ArtCenter College of Design South Campus
950 S. Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA 91105
Social Media
@hmctartcenter
@artcenteredu
About Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography: The mission of the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography is to set the standard of excellence in typography education; elevate and advance the teaching and understanding of both letterform design and typographic practice; provide valuable support and service to the educational and professional communities, reinforcing the meaning and value of typography; and to honor the past and anticipate the future of typography in a society of rapidly changing visual communication methods.
About ArtCenter Exhibitions: ArtCenter Exhibitions is a program of public-facing curated spaces. Our programs seek to ignite emotional resonance, provoke intellectual dissonance and conjure unexpected pathways of thinking by connecting art and design with the social, scientific, humanitarian and poetic dimensions of our time. Galleries include the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at the College’s Hillside Campus, Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery at its South Campus and ArtCenter DTLA in downtown Los Angeles. Additional curated spaces include the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Gallery (HMCT) and Hutto-Patterson Exhibition Hall located at ArtCenter's South Campus, as well as the Hillside Campus Student Gallery.
About ArtCenter: Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. ArtCenter offers 11 undergraduate and 10 graduate degrees in a wide variety of art and design disciplines. In addition to its top-ranked academic programs, the College also serves the general public through a highly regarded series of year-round online and on campus extension programs for all levels of experience. Renowned for both its ties to industry and its social impact initiatives, ArtCenter is the first design school to receive the United Nations’ Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Throughout the College’s long and storied history, ArtCenter alumni have had a profound impact on popular culture, the way we live and important issues in our society.
Contacts:
Teri Bond
Media Relations Director
ArtCenter College of Design
teri.bond@artcenter.edu
626 396-2385 office
310 738-2077 mobile
Lavinia Lascaris
Graphic Designer & Curator
Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT)
lavinia.lascaris@artcenter.edu
Susan Malmstrom
Director/Archivist
Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography (HMCT)
susan.malmstrom@artcenter.edu
