© 2003-2006 David Moles

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¿Qué haría Borges?

11 o'clock, July 10, 2005

I should get a bumper sticker that says that. In Braille.

Anyway: a brilliant piece of Borgesiana, first brought to my attention on Hanzi Smatter (a web site dedicated to savage mockery of the misuse of Chinese and Japanese characters, kind of the flip side of Engrish.com): The Tianshu of Xu Bing, a.k.a. A Book from the Sky:


Figure 1. I think it says “To Serve Man.”

a piece of art consisting of thousands of faux “characters” that are made up of various elements of Chinese characters, but don't actually exist as part of the written language. Xu apparently created wooden block type for the characters by hand, and printed them is a manner suggesting ancient religious texts.

David Stone

Comments

Dunno about in Braille, but you just get those printed up and I will totally buy 10 of 'em. One for now, and the rest for backup.

—— Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little, 6:32 PM, Sunday, July 10, 2005

Cool!

I forget: do you know about Codex Seraphinianus? It's been described as being like an encyclopedia from another universe.

—— Jed, 10:02 PM, Sunday, July 10, 2005

Oh, that’s brilliant. Next time I have €200 lying around, I gotta get me one of those.

—— David Moles, 8:20 AM, Monday, July 11, 2005