Alphabet Project

The evolutionary track of our language is intriguing. The path that began with a series of pictographs created to record or document what one literally sees in the physical world in order to communicate ideas grew into a complex symbolic language in which letters when grouped together come to mean different things.

The question I have in this project is how these individual letters which set alone have a single definition or a single root, depending on the origins (whether you look at Hebrew vs. Greek. vs Latin), come to mean something more than that simple definition? Before this question is approached a more epistemological question that needs to be addressed is: how did letters derive from pictographs? Was each pictograph broken down into contextual elements or single pictographs which were then made common in relation to other pictographs and then out of this pool were individual letters conceived?

The Hebrew alphabet is interesting in that individual letters and words when group together hold their original meaning and gain more significance and gain more associations and complexity with each added letter. For example two root words are father and mother, when placed together they create the word for offspring or son or daughter. When all three are placed together then the word family is created.

Visualizing language is an intriguing concept. Language is spoken and is written and from both the written and language come abstract ideas that can be then visualized. Spoken and written language is transfered internally first from the mind then to paper then back to the mind when it is read, comprehended and then the abstract (or not physical but mental) idea becomes regurgitated back into conceptual from visually through art. This process is like the formation of pictographs all over again but instead of founding your visualization on something perceptible thing that you sense in reality you are using an abstract source that at one time was a pictograph; or the very thing that you are trying to create. However unlike the Egyptians or the Aztecs we have what seems to be two separate language, one visual one written. Both feed off of each other, sometimes the written is based off of something that is seen and sometimes the visual is based off of a written idea, concept or story. However even with this said which came first? The literal and the visual senses are based off of the sensual nature and capacity of man.

I think I can go on forever so i am going to stop here. The book Mysteries of the Alphabet is interesting in that it breaks down our modern alphabet letter by letter describing the origins and what they mean cross-culturally. This would be a good start to this project. Look up my initials, find out what they mean and branch out from there.