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06799_Field_TCUM T364.txt
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1996-04-10
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typography is primarily that of repeatability. With typography,
the principle of movable type introduced the means of
mechanizing any handicraft by the process of segmenting and
fragmenting an integral action. What had begun with the
alphabet as a separation of the multiple gestures and sights
and sounds in the spoken word, reached a new level of
intensity, first with the woodcut and then with typography. The
alphabet left the visual component as supreme in the word,
reducing all other sensuous facts of the spoken word to this
form. This helps to explain why the woodcut, and even the
photograph, were so eagerly welcomed in a literate world. These
forms provide a world of inclusive gesture and dramatic posture
that necessarily is omitted in the written word.
The print was eagerly seized upon as a means of
imparting information, as well as an incentive to piety and