GRK 1458: Notational Iconicity: Materiality, Perceptibility and Operativity of Writing

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The Research Training Group aims to investigate a topic that is of central importance in the humanities: the concept of writing in the extended sense of notational inscription. By means of collaboration between researchers from thirteen different academic disciplines in the Berlin-Potsdam area, its objective is to contribute to a change of perspective from a phonographic, language-based concept of writing to an iconographic, language-neutral concept. Whilst, particularly within the horizon of "occidental alphabetcentrisms", writing has tended to be regarded simply as means of recording spoken language, the Research Training Group believes that it is important to consider the dimensions of notation that make writing more than merely a medium used to record spoken utterances. When, for instance, people go about such activities as writing calculations, correcting texts, dealing with scientific formulas, writing musical compositions or choreographies, drafting diagrams or programming, but also in writing games like crossword puzzles, palindromes and anagrams, these activities cannot adequately be described by recourse to spoken language. Moreover, non-European non-alphabetic systems of writing reveal a distinctly iconographic potential. The Research Training Group aims to contribute to overcoming a concept of writing/notation that is not only reduced on phonography but also too narrowly Eurocentric. Our leading hypothesis is that writing is best conceived as a hybrid form, combining discursive (language) and iconic (image) characteristics. And this is true for both alphabetical and non-alphabetical systems of notation. The explorative and creative potential of writing, the connections between visibility and usability, between aesthetical quality and operational power of forms of notation in scientific and artistic, everyday, playful and religious practices will be investigated. With the guiding concept of "notational iconicity", its focus is upon the relation between writing and its implicit iconic nature.