New English Calligraphy

Above are two glyphs made by artist Xu Bing in a project called An Introduction to New English Calligraphy. In this project, anglophones are taught to write English words in a square Chinese-like manner. The new characters are written in vertical columns rather than left-to-right. Above you see the words play and ink.

You can learn more with a Google search. According to one of the pages I found, “When we read a new language we have to unlearn what we know, then learn a new language. We feel alone and uncomfortable, but that feeling is self-induced.”

My reaction was, “What a nifty cipher! Throw in a few real Chinese glyphs and you’ve got a great way to make text ‘hide in plain sight’!”