Nghi vấn / Questioning
characters or has spelling errors that make it impossible for users to read and
understand the information. The government has issued font standards to
unify administrative and legal documents and minimize typography errors. The
standards are built to maximize the readability of the text, often in favor of the
normative experience. The artists question whether these standards offer
unified and right solutions to all, or unintentionally make errors in the eyes of
the non-normative.
This work is a series of erroneous characters plucked out of the Vietnamese
Standard TCVN 6909:2001(*)’s standardized grids and hung with various
heights to form a floating scene. It opens a site of questioning where the
viewers can shift gears to view typography as not parts that construct the
meaning and, therefore, readability. Instead, typeface becomes an end in
itself, an artifact, a material, a building block that both complies and resists
standards, communicates with “readers” via all senses.
* Vietnamese Standard TCVN 6909:2001 (Tiêu chuẩn Việt Nam TCVN
6909:2001) on information technology - 16-bit Vietnamese character code is
a legal instruction issued by the Ministry of Science, Technology and
Environment, which specifies the Vietnamized (Việt hoá) Unicode/Times New
Roman font, black to be used for all formal documents.
Nguyễn Hoàng Gia Bảo and Thanh Nguyễn-Văn
Installation (6 paper wallpieces, paper, cut and printed acrylic, strings,…)
3x1x2m