IV

Calligraphy in the Digital Realm

Nostalgia and Remediation of the Authentic

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CHAPTER 4

CALLIGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL REALM: NOSTALGIA AND REMEDIATION OF THE AUTHENTIC65

With the rise of the information age and the increased popularity of computers and

mobile phones, people begin to get accustomed to the keyboard, thereby alienating

themselves from ink and paper. This results in people spending less time writing Chinese

characters. Currently the problem is not how to write a character beautifully, but to pick

up the brush and simply remember how to write the character (tibi wangzi 提筆忘字)

(Sun Qiang, MOE of the PRC 2013, emphasis added).

During my research, navigating the calligraphic circles in Beijing turned out to be as much an

analog as a digital undertaking. Connecting with calligraphy friends (shuyou 书友) to discuss

recent developments, exhibitions, and news on governmental directives on calligraphy often

took place on digital platforms such as WeChat. A multitude of apps allow calligraphy

enthusiasts to make, upload and show off, compare, buy or sell calligraphy. In the calligraphy

classes I audited, apps where used to find models for copying. Digital calligraphic fonts are

increasingly employed as I will illustrate in chapter six, and scanned original calligraphy is

integrated into online copybooks, dictionaries and virtual museum galleries. And,

increasingly, digitally native calligraphy becomes a possibility: the computer that generates a

“real-looking” calligraphic sign. All these digital tools render the possibilities to consume

calligraphy increasingly accessible and mobile, and mediated experiences of calligraphy seem

to be as much a part of the wider calligraphy scene as those experienced and consumed

65 A different version of this chapter has been published by Concentric. See Vermeeren, Laura. 2017. “Chinese Calligraphy in the Digital Realm: Aesthetic Perfection and Remediation of the Authentic.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 43, 2, pp. 163-91. Parts of this chapter have also been used in Vermeeren, Laura and Jeroen de Kloet. 2019. “We are not like the calligraphers of ancient times – A study of young calligraphy practitioners in contemporary China.” In China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces: Creativity, Sociality and Resistance, edited by Vanessa Frangeville and Gwennaël Gaffric. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 219-235.

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through sensory unmediated perception. Meng Lei, a professor of calligraphy in Hangzhou

tells me, for example, how apps are convenient tools in calligraphy education, but that they

should be used with care, as it makes his students lazy:

We used to have a reference book, like a dictionary, to look up the characters written by

the ancients, and then we would write those down. The apps we use now have their pros

and cons. The pros lie in their convenience; for example, I now think of an ancient poem,

and I want to write four characters, all I need to do is look it up, and all the different

calligraphy styles pop up. This is the convenience that the mobile phone gives us, but the

downside of this fast pace is the effect on the memory; people will become lazy. You

don’t have to go to the source text anymore, and you will miss this research experience,

it becomes more a practical feeling. So, when we are using this, I advise my students that

they can do it if they need to be quick, but it cannot be a long-term solution. (Interview

40)

Chen Chong explains how apps help him with his business of selling calligraphy. He is a

calligraphy salesman working at a small shop at Liulichang (琉璃廠), the traditional street for

selling art, antiques and calligraphy dating back to the Ming dynasty. Business is not going

well, and he increasingly resolves to selling works via online auctions and Taobao:

Here, we have some tourists, or people who have calligraphy as a hobby. You often have

these groups here, they buy one or two pieces, that type. And then there is, do you know

Weipaitang (微拍堂)66, the one under WeChat? We sell our works there now too, but the

prices are not very high, just a couple of hundred kuai (…) The prices are not as high as in

our physical shop, because such a shop is more expensive to maintain. (Interview 27)

These developments and opportunities for calligraphy in the digital realm coexist with

a growing fear for the demise of calligraphy, and handwriting more broadly, carrying wider

consequences with regards to culture, identity, and nationality. While nearly every

interviewee is at least in one way digitally aided in his everyday calligraphy activity, at the

same time, almost all conversations on calligraphy referred to the pressing problem of tibi

66 An online Chinese platform for auctioning art. See https://www.weipaitang.com.

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wangzi (提筆忘字), which translates as “picking up the pen, and forgetting the character”;

often – somewhat clumsily – rephrased in English as “character amnesia”, or more aptly,

“dysgraphia”. The problem is as pressing as it is simple: due to the worldwide shift towards

digital communication technology, the method by which an increasing number of people

write Chinese characters has fundamentally changed. Touchpads, mobile phones with

software that allows one to choose characters from a list of Hanyu Pinyin, and voice

recognition all reduce the time actually spent writing characters on paper. The tibi wangzi

problem originates there: people find themselves picking up a pen, or brush, to write a

character, and then not remembering how exactly the character is written. 67 Writing

characters, as Victor Mair notes, is a highly complicated neuromuscular task because of the

complexity and multiplicity of the characters, and it takes hundreds and hundreds of hours

before character writing is mastered (2010). This time is simply no longer there to spend.

Already in 2001, Jennifer Lee noted how character writing is deteriorating due to word

processing, and as technology is increasingly permeating our everyday lives, this problem has

only exacerbated since (2001).

Calligraphy practice can combat character amnesia, according to the Ministry of

Education (MOE), and as we have seen in chapter one, and it lists facilitating better and more

frequent calligraphy classes for children, national and regional calligraphy contests, and more

lectures and exhibitions by well-known calligraphers as solutions. These proposed solutions

can also be found in abundance on discussion boards on the internet, and are mainly activities

that take place offline, while ironically the problem—most people agree—is a direct effect of

modern communication technology – and thus online. Although some propose to “work

together” with new technology to solve the problem, the division between the assumed

culprit (communication technology) and the solution to the problem (analog methods)

emphasizes the alleged dichotomy between online and offline worlds.

The current and increasingly digital global environment has been likened to a social

and cultural upheaval, at earlier stages described in terms of a “revolution” or “disaster”

(Bolter 2000, 19), and the “death of distance” (Cairncross 2001, 2), but more optimistic

67 According to a survey conducted by HorizonKey in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan in 2015, 94.1 percent of the respondents had encountered the tibiwangzi syndrome. Founded in 2000, HorizonKey is an international independent research organization, based in Beijing, that focuses on public opinion and social and cultural studies. See Y. Wu 2015. Another online survey conducted by Tencent, a Chinese Internet portal, showed that about 55 percent of netizens have trouble writing Chinese characters, see Lin Jing 2016. See also Lee 2001, Mair 2010, Wu and Liao, 2012 on the topic of tibiwangzi.

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tendencies to understand the Internet as a way of life prevail today as well. In these latter

accounts the Internet is praised for its openness, democratizing effect and the possibilities to

give power to consumers (D. Zhao 2014; Xiang, Cai, and Liu 2014). Xiang, Cai, and Liu,

moreover, argue that this spirit of openness comes intuitively to the post-1980 (balinghou 八

零后 ), the post-1990 (jiulinghou 九零后) and post-2000 (linglinghou 零零后) generations

because they grew up with the internet (V).

The continuing conundrum of technology versus analog writing is, however, not

solved by its perceived openness, as the moral panic over the loss of writing due to the digital

lies much deeper, and relates closely to a fear of losing an essential part of culture, or even

the culture itself. Benedict Anderson asserts that the written language of a nation is

instrumental in the idea of a national identity, as it creates an illusion of a national community

(1998, 28, 55), and Gunther Kress adds to the debate that

Writing is such a potent metaphor for culture in general, that the move in the current

landscape of communication from the dominance of writing to the dominance of image

in many domains has given rise, understandably, to much anguish, soul-searching and

deeply pessimistic predictions about the future welfare of civilization (2003, 54).

According to Bachner, this is especially accurate in the Chinese context, where “a multiplicity

of regional languages and dialects was pitted against a highly standardized written form:

classical Chinese” (2014, 5). She goes on to quote David Damrosch, who maintains that China

“has had a national script rather than a national language” (2007, 207).

Taking these arguments into consideration, this chapter scrutinizes the social

affordances of digitally produced, disseminated and shared calligraphy, with the assumption

that calligraphy, as suggested throughout this study, is increasingly happening within the

everyday. The digital realm, as I will show, is seen not as a separate space, but as increasingly

part of the social totality of the everyday in which quotidian calligraphic practices now

increasingly occur. But how, technically, does calligraphy appear on our screens? And why?

What do these calligraphies look like, and what do they afford?

This chapter argues that the digital medium makes headway by catering to a desire

for immediacy, while simultaneously, digital calligraphy introduces hypermediacy, a form of

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awareness of the chronological layering of different types of media. This desire for immediacy

is closely linked to sentiments of nostalgia. The craft of writing calligraphy has become a life

style choice practiced in digital spaces, informed not only by a nostalgic longing for an

idealized past, but also by the desire to continue the practice in the technologically advanced

present. This chapter will further argue that reflective nostalgia in digital spaces (Boym 2001)

mobilizes the past as a critique of the present, or rather, as a way to achieve a better present.

To this end, I will demonstrate how calligraphy that is presented via the computer screen

translates back to analog calligraphy, and, importantly, how the calligrapher is affected by

these changes. How does the calligrapher move and act—as an artist, hobbyist, connoisseur

or consumer—before and after digitization? How does digitization affect the way in which

both connoisseurs and amateurs read and experience calligraphy, and how does that tie in

with nostalgia and the desire for immediacy?

While chapter five will specifically research how the aesthetics in type font design68

mobilize, revisit, or appropriate calligraphic qualities, this chapter explores the digital

calligraphic sign as it is created and used in online and app-based communities that connect

together through learning, motivational friendships and exhibitions. It does so by analyzing

three case studies. First, I explore the ways in which calligraphy is brought through our screens

through scanning and encoding with an example of the calligraphy database CADAL. Then, I

move to analyzing what happens to calligraphy once it is brought there, by looking at two

digital communities: (1) the calligraphy app Ink Pool (墨池 mochi); and (2) the WeChat group

“Handwriting Temperature” (shouxie wendu ⼿写温度), which is a spin-off of the arts and craft

sharing APP “Little Interests” (qingqu 轻趣). Through these two case studies, I scrutinize the

role of Internet-based platforms in developing calligraphy consumption, promoting

connoisseurship, and forming appreciative communities.

Following Dominik Schrey, I am less concerned with the technical differences between

the “analog” and the “digital” than in the affective affordances of these respective fields

(2014, 28). Yet, given that the digital offers a growing platform to present, represent, and

68 Throughout, I will use the terms font and typeface, which in the age of digital design are used interchangeably by professionals as well as everyday users. Traditionally, “font” refers to the specific size and weight of a typeface. The typeface is then the collection of these different fonts that all have a similar look. In Chinese, 字体 ziti is used, which translates as calligraphic style, typeface, or font.

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remediate forms of calligraphy, it is necessary to explore how digital forms of a calligraphic

character are made, before we can understand how we should approach these signs, and how

they are important actors in the two latter case studies. Should they be understood as useless

skeuomorphs, reminiscent of an earlier sign that is somehow more authentic, as a “digitally

assisted genetic mutation of Chinese” (Bachner 2014, 202)? Or as “remediations” (Bolter and

Grusin 2000, 5), as such posited as possible saviors of the script many are so fearful of losing?

In the next section, I first lay out the theoretical framework for this chapter, inspired

by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (2000) and shaped by three interrelated concepts:

remediation, immediacy and hypermediacy. Through these three concepts, I approach the

three case studies, to connect them to a concluding argument that nostalgia lies at the base

of the remediation of the calligraphic sign in the digital realm.

REMEDIATION: IMMEDIACY AND HYPERMEDIACY

It has become a rather conventional trope to call the time we live in today the “digital age,”

and indeed, it is hard to overstate the permeation of digital practices and new media in our

everyday lives. In the 1990s, early scholarship in the field of internet studies highlighted the

internet as a newly emerging separate space and celebrated the democratic potential this

new virtual realm exhibited (e.g. Rheingold 2000).

Research on online communities, internet-based political action, and cyber-

nationalism, to name a few, demonstrated how this new virtual realm—often understood as

a non-physical space in the early days —could redefine politics, communities and identities

(Yang 2011; Ginsburg 2008; Rheingold 1991). The idea of the internet as a social and cultural

realm separate from the real world, was subsequently challenged by Daniel Miller and Don

Slater in 2000, who argued, using a case study on internet usage in Trinidad, that an

online/offline divide is untenable. They maintained that rather than creating new cultural

practices and virtual communities online, Trinidadians appropriate the World Wide Web and

deploy it to suit and advance their own cultural practices. Miller and Slater suggest that this

is a generalizable theory:

We need to treat Internet media as continuous with and embedded in other social

spaces, that they happen within mundane social structures and relations, that they may

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transform but that they cannot escape into a self-enclosed cyberian apartness (2000, 5).

A similar statement is made by David Berry, who argues that since digital media are not a

separate space, digital objects therefore also do not come out of nowhere to disrupt our

analog lives:

It is not that we should be thinking solely in terms of ‘digital object’ but rather that we

must be able to dialectically think in relation with a number of moments within

instantiations of the digital (Berry 2014).

If we are to understand how computation is now part of the “social totality,” rather than

looking for “digital objects” outside of it, we can develop a “holistic understanding of the

interconnections and relationships that technologies introduce to our everyday life and action”

(Berry 2014, 13).

But what happens to cultural practices that do not seem to lend themselves naturally

to the medium of the screen? Chinese calligraphy is a case in point: so deeply intertwined

with, and valued because of the proper analog tools: brush, ink, inkstone, and paper, it is

challenging to envisage how digital platforms might create, manipulate, or transmit such an

art. At this point, the idea of remediation inserts itself as a suitable theoretical intervention:

Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin assert that new media are best understood by looking at the

ways these media “remediate” and refashion earlier practices, arguing that “no medium

today seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in

isolation from other social and economic forces” (2000, 15). This extends to their idea that

traditional media, as well as new media, are now both trying to reassert themselves,

appropriating bits and pieces from one another in order to refashion what is old, while the

old, in turn, reaffirms its status to answer the challenges of new media.

Both new and traditional media, Bolter and Grusin further emphasize, work along two

principles of remediation: immediacy and hypermediacy. The first principle dictates that

media are trying to create a sense of presence in what is represented. In order to achieve

that, the medium should disappear as much as possible. For example, a Hollywood film should

be shot on location with accurate historical details, so the viewer has a sense of really being

there (2000, 5), or digitally simulated calligraphic characters should be almost identical to

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brushstrokes made on paper so that the link with it preceding form is as clear as possible. This

desire for immediacy, for an experience without mediation, is counteracted by hypermediacy,

which makes the user constantly aware of the media s/he is using. They argue that in the

attempt to make the medium disappear, the medium paradoxically becomes even more

apparent. For instance, a webpage containing mixed media, video, sounds, and hyperlinks

constantly reminds us that we are in the presence of multiple media. Such a webpage

“acknowledges multiple acts of representation and makes them visible” (2000, 34).

In this assemblage of immediacy and hypermediacy that makes up the principle of

remediation, the question of authenticity arises. Mark Deuze argues that we reproduce digital

culture alongside a change in our perceptions of reality and authenticity (2006, 66). In other

words, what is real and unreal, authentic and inauthentic become agonizing questions in the

age of new media. Here we are reminded of Walter Benjamin’s famous concern over the loss

of the “aura” of an artwork in the modern age: can what is reproduced mechanically still be

considered authentic? A reproduced artwork, Benjamin argues, lacks presence in time and

space, and therefore lacks a unique existence. It also depreciates the original work, which

loses its authority along with its authenticity. On the other hand, he lauds the democratic

potential of the new art forms that the modern age brings, making it possible for the masses

to be involved in art, culture, and politics (1968, 9-10).

What “authenticity” means in the context of calligraphy is far from a contemporary

concern, as we have seen in the previous chapters: the skill as well as the physical

reproductions of calligraphy have survived by the grace of the widespread copying culture,

by way of techniques such as tracing lines, rubbing stone steles, and the exact and creative

copying of the ancient calligraphy masters. A vast field of research in calligraphy, Chinese

painting and seals, concerns itself with questions of authenticity and connoisseurship, and

thus, when Benjamin maintains that art has always been reproducible, calligraphy serves as

an apt illustration. Although the adaptation, integration, and assimilation of new tools,

writing surfaces, cultural shifts, and societal changes have all had their part in the changing

purposes and ways of appreciating calligraphy, Chinese calligraphy has remained strikingly

homogenous in both form and shape. The representation of what is already there is what

shows the artistic skill of the artist/writer. Authenticity, then, should be sought in the

execution of the calligraphy: the choice and interpretation of models, the speed of the brush,

and the display or deliberate disguise of personal expression or spirit. But how can a digital

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reproduction generate something authentic? This is the most apparent contrast between the

digital and the analog: while coding and scanning afford a hyperreality of digital sameness,

analog reproductions will always maintain subtle variations, achieved through human craft

with its subsequent aesthetics of imprecision. The question then, remains: how real does it

feel, calligraphy online? The next case study will show how calligraphy is brought to us

digitally.

SCANNING AND ENCODING

That we encounter calligraphy on our screens in the first place, has been enabled by computer

experts through one of two methods, the first facilitating the development of the latter: (1)

scanning; or (2) encoding through vector graphics, handwriting recognition, or texture

mapping. Both methods have their (dis)advantages: scanning and uploading can be time-

consuming and allows one to view the calligraphy as a static image, whereas encoding

schemes enable computer users to edit, manipulate, and digitally process the graphic

information.

The method of scanning is applied to efforts of online preservation and archiving of

calligraphic works. The need for calligraphic models for the purpose of practice and teaching,

as well as for research and connoisseurship, has extended to the digital realm, where an ever-

increasing volume of images from art collections has become available in the last decade to

everyone with access to the internet. In addition, anyone with a mobile phone camera can

now go to a museum, take a picture, and upload it to the internet, where it can take on any

shape or form: the sociotechnical affordances of the internet have allowed for the retrieval,

preservation, dissemination, and consumption of digital artworks and images. In order to

keep up with these challenges, institutions such as museums and libraries have been making

great efforts to digitize their objects, images, and records through scanning. Wayne Clough

states that archives and libraries were one of the earliest to adopt an “open access” approach,

leading to “a shift in focus from dispensing information to facilitation and assistance.” The

lesson to be learned, Clough argues, is that there “is place for both the physical and the digital,

with one complementing and leveraging the other” (2013, 4).

CADAL (China Academic Digital Associative Library) is an example of such an effort,

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and serves as an example of the mechanisms of hypermediacy and immediacy as well. CADAL

is a collaborative project launched by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the U.S National

Science Foundation. In 2002, it started to build a digital academic library through the scanning

of paper books, providing digital access for learning, teaching, and research-support

purposes (CADAL, 2010).

As of December 2015, CADAL had digitized 2,757,413 books of which 237,999 are

ancient books from before 1912 – CADAL is now the world’s largest non-profit digital library.

There is a large collection of books available containing calligraphy, to be visited on a

designated section on the CADAL webpage.69 There, the internet user can do several things

with the scanned calligraphy: it allows one to browse ancient calligraphic works based on

time-period and calligrapher; to search for separate characters within the works – they have

been pried apart per character. A digitized image can be magnified to study traces of ink and

wrist movements, and be compared, shared, and classified to answer questions on

authenticity and written content. Visitors can be asked to help identify unknown characters

and globally dispersed researchers can communicate more efficiently because the images are

reproduced and made visible to many people simultaneously.

On this page (see figure 29, 30), the double logic of remediation explained by Bolter

and Grusin becomes evident in the efforts to create an immediate experience. Around the

edges of the webpage, we find markers of traditional calligraphy: faded traditional calligraphy

on a beige surface reminds of aged rice (xuan 宣) paper, as well as a photographic image of

69 Navigate through here: http://www.cadal.zju.edu.cn/NewCalligraphy/ (Accessed 14-06-2017).

Figure 29-30. Left (fig. 29): the calligraphy section of the CADAL webpage. Right (fig.30): the CADAL webpage containing separate characters. Retrieved from http://www.cadal.zju.edu.cn

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calligraphy brushes and ink stones. In the top left corner, a traditional calligraphic typeface

spells out the word “calligraphy” in running script, and within the black-and-white frame

containing the scanned images of the calligraphy, we find an illustration of a man wearing the

archetypal garment of a scholar, which has indicated the status of a member of the literati

since the Tang dynasty.

Significantly, the calligraphy section of the CADAL website remains the only section

featuring these types of visual reminders of the analog; possibly in an attempt to ease the

tension between the analog skill and its remediated online counterpart. The webpage is thus

engaged in a constant dialogue between the remediated and the authentic. The elements

that are supposed to convey the “real” calligraphy (xuan paper, inkstone, brush) are

counteracted by the hypermediated website where the scanned ancient characters are

embedded: hyperlinks and even video animations make the user acutely aware of the

medium. It appears to be a hodgepodge of signals—the internet user is pulled back and forth

between the “real” and the digital.

The second method for generating a calligraphic image on the computer screen is

done through encoding brush simulations. Several impediments make the digitized

simulation of Chinese calligraphy particularly challenging, and methods to retrieve separate

calligraphic characters to use as a prototype have proven difficult to generate. Techniques

such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Handwritten Character Recognition (HCR)

digitize typed, handwritten, and printed text so they can be edited, stored and displayed

digitally. The shape and topology of a calligraphic character, however, are more complex than

ordinary handwritten texts. Brushstrokes within a character can be very complex: strokes are

often unpredictable in shape, and the wide variations in calligraphic styles, shapes and sizes

make the input very difficult. Moreover, scanned characters from historical stone steles often

contain excessive “noise,” such as stone degradation, that has to be filtered to create general

properties of the characters that are extractable and utilizable as a statistical model (Su et al.

2002; X. Zhang and Nagy 2011; Xu, Lau, and Pan 2009) Calligraphy is, as Xu et al. put it, “type

fonts on the loose” (2009, 14).

Another complication is the large character set of the Chinese script. Converting

(ancient) calligraphic characters to a digital font is only possible when their analog characters

already have digital counterparts. Up to the end of 2016, 80,388 Chinese characters had been

encoded in Unicode (Tsu 2016). In 2011, the government, together with nearly thirty

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universities, research institutes, and enterprises, embarked on a digitization project named

“China font bank” (Zhonghua ziku 中华字库), aiming to further digitize another half million

Chinese characters that are currently not available in digital form.70 This section of a larger

project will make code available for ancient characters and the characters used in different

languages of ethnic minorities. As Jing Tsu puts it, “Characters that have long resided in the

dusty pages of old manuscripts will come to life in the digital medium” (2016).

Computational science specialists have spent the last two decades developing

methods to realize calligraphy simulations on the digital screen: they have attempted to

recreate the movements of the hairy brush (initially called the e-hairy brush), to mimic the

layering of ink and the behavior of the ink on paper as accurately as possible. “Though a

computer cannot capture the creative spirit of an artist, it can simulate the brushstroke

characteristics that are so important in its manifestation”, argue Su et al. (2002, 1).

This rather optimistic note is the start of a study presenting a novel way of simulating

calligraphic brush strokes through a model based on a “parametric curve.” Strassman was the

first to develop a method to digitally mimic the behavior of a brush and the deposition of ink

70 This project is listed as one of the larger projects in the Outline of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan for National Culture Development in 2006 and was included in China’s Plan on Reinvigoration of the Cultural Industry in 2009 (according to developer Founder International).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Figure 31: Real versus simulated strokes: (1), (3), (5),

and (7) are simulated. (2), (4), (6), and (8) are real.

Retrieved from Girshick 2004, 30

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on paper. Resulting in brush-like strokes, this approach is, however, time consuming and not

applicable for drawings with many different strokes. A second approach to imitating analog

brush strokes is the “skeletal strokes” method (S. Hsu, Lee, and Wiseman 1993). This

technique allows a stroke or image to be scaled, transformed, and textured at a control point.

Wong and Ip (2000) advanced this further by generating a virtual brush that is able to capture

3D geometric parameters, brush hair properties, and ink variations. Girshick then proposed a

Parametric Hairy Brush (PHB), especially designed to realistically imitate a Chinese brush. The

main distinguishing property of the PHB is its ability to “simulate a wide range of stylistic

effects ‘out of the box’” (Girshick 2004, 1, see figure 30). A year later, Yu and Peng presented

a framework to specifically synthesize realistic grass script calligraphy through texture

mapping, which is based on brush texture patches collected from handwritten artworks. They

claim to be able to reproduce typical grass script strokes, brush variations, the wetness of the

brush, and the visibility of the amount of ink (Yu and Peng 2005). The results are, indeed,

striking, as figure 32 shows.

When developing a system to synthesize digitized calligraphic characters that

resemble the “real”, the level of precision demanded from scientists again reveals a desire for

immediacy or the “transparent presentation of the real” (Bolter and Grusin 2000, 21). “Real”

calligraphy, all studies assume, is written with a soft brush and ink on paper. Yet, this does

Figure 32: The left shows a “real” work, in the middle we see the digitized strokes with indicated turning points and the right image shows the synthesized image. Retrieved from Yu and Peng 2005:150

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not necessarily mean that developers assume the “real” is also the best, or the most visually

attractive. Xu et al. state that with computerized calligraphy, “for the first time, it is possible

for the tool’s performance to surpass the skill level of the user” (2009, 5). The elicited result

thus no longer corresponds to the skill level of the tool’s user, which brings us back to earlier

questions with regards to immediacy and authenticity: if, given the right parameters, a digital

application has the ability to surpass the skill-level of the user, who, then, is the artist?

In their wide-ranging study on digital Chinese painting and calligraphy, Xu et al. introduce a

method to generate artistic Chinese calligraphy automatically. An algorithmic framework

simulates the human process of learning calligraphy skills and makes it possible for the

computer to automatically produce new calligraphy based on these learned examples. A final

illustration of research in digitally generated calligraphy is the study by Cao Shi et al., who

propose a five-layer framework to generate Chinese characters based on “calligraphic prior

knowledge and visual aesthetics” (2012, 23–36). The generated characters, which are based

on the handwriting of Yan Zhenqing, were mixed with Yan Zhenqing’s real, analog calligraphy,

and shown to a test group of 14 people. When they were asked to pick the characters with

the “worst visual acceptance,” the results showed that the digitally generated characters

received “almost the same visual acceptance relative to Yan Zhenqing’s calligraphy” (Ibid. 30).

This indicates another tactic of remediation: we see that the age-old tradition of modeling

after the master continues in the digital realm, this time between man and machine— he who

models the master calligrapher best is most highly appreciated.

The development of these types of simulated brush strokes serve two main purposes.

Figure 33: A character in several styles. The first row shows the training examples, and the other rows are generated by the system. Retrieved from S. Xu, Lau, and Pan 2009, 216

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First, they construct digital characters that can be used as a (personalized) font; second, they

generate customized Chinese characters for “digital entertainment in cyberspace” (C. Shi et

al. 2012, 24). The following sections explain what forms these digital calligraphic

entertainments can take on by looking at two digital environments in which calligraphy is

consumed, brought online by scanning.

INK POOL (MOCHI 墨池) AND HANDWRITING TEMPERATURE (SHOUXIE WENDU 手写温度)

José van Dijck describes how, with the rise of Web 2.0, users have increasingly moved their

activities in everyday life to digital environments (2013, 6). Social media platforms and their

apps permeate more and more of our daily lives, not only by facilitating activities that would

otherwise have been ephemeral and private, but also because, as van Dijck argues, “the

construction of platforms and social practices is mutually constitutive” (Ibid., 6). Calligraphy

apps illustrate this idea. The app Ink Pool (墨池 mochi) is China’s first mobile calligraphy

community platform, currently boasting 200,000 registered users and 70,000 more WeChat

users. As a spin-off of the popular calligraphy site shufawu.com, the app is a space for the

user to demonstrate their calligraphy skills and to learn from comments of other users (by

adding the hashtag to your uploaded calligraphy: “#please criticize!” #请⼤家拍砖 qing dajia

paizhuan). It further offers a platform for discussing calligraphy-related matters and

scholarship on calligraphy, and it features a mentor scheme, allowing users to learn from

professional calligraphers.

A major feature of the app is the exhibition tool. The write-up of the app reads:

You want to give yourself a solo-exhibition that never ends? Distribute your works

through Ink Pool and set up your own solo-exhibition with your own topic, for example

#Xiaomings exhibition, and thousands of calligraphy lovers will see your work. You can

enjoy the attention of a wide audience! (Shufawu.com)

This caters to the needs of many calligraphy enthusiasts, as it provides a very convenient way

to show off skill – no physical space is needed, nor is there a benchmark-level setup; everyone

is allowed to exhibit in this digital space.

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The app does not include a tool to create digital calligraphy; instead, users upload

photos of their brush-and-ink calligraphy, created offline, to give it an online platform. This

“offline to online” move shows a fluid interaction between the natively analog and the digital,

underscoring Miller and Slater’s (2000, 5) as well as van Dijck’s (2013, 6) proposition that

online practices are embedded in offline everyday practices. This idea is also apparent in the

app’s auction feature. Users can purchase calligraphic works on paper through a bidding

scheme that will be sent by post after purchase. The commodification of homemade

calligraphy also raises the question of ownership structure and implies a hierarchy, not

between professional and amateur calligraphy, but between the digitized copy and the

authentic “real.” Although the app is free, and thousands of works are available online, the

authentic copy remains the commercial feature of the app (besides profits derived from

advertising). Van Dijck argues that tactics such as the popularity principle and ranking

mechanisms that allow for bidding are “firmly rooted in an ideology that values hierarchy,

competition, and a winner-takes-all mind-set” (2013, 21). In this capacity, Ink Pool appeals to

all users – hobbyists and professionals – and invites all not only to create, share and create

appreciative communities through these activities, but also to take something from it offline.

Figure 34-36: Three screenshots from the app Mochi. The first screenshot (fig. 34) shows a piece

of zhuanshu calligraphy. The second screenshot (fig. 35) shows the bidding feature on the app,

and the last screenshot (fig. 36) displays calligraphy that was rated “hottest” over the previous

24 hours. (Screenshots taken on 24-04-2017)

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A second example of an online calligraphic environment is the WeChat group

Handwriting temperature (shouxie wendu ⼿写温度).71 This is a self-sustained spin-off of the

arts and craft sharing app Small interests (qingqu 轻趣). In this particular WeChat group,

around 400 people – the number fluctuates as people come and go – have gathered with the

aim to share a line of their handwritten characters with each other every day. They are

inclined to do so, as they want to “keep the beauty of handwritten calligraphy alive.” Every

morning, the same cheerful message appears, with the assignment of the day that goes like

this:

Good morning friends! This is ‘theme 301’. Let us persist in writing by hand and ‘clocking

in’ (daka 打卡) everyday, to sense (ganshou 感受) the beauty of calligraphy and literature.

What follows is an image containing a short classical poem, slogan or aphorism in a

digital font, accompanied by an image – often of a calligrapher or a poet in traditional dress.

As seen in figure 37, this digital font is placed, traditionally, on the right side and runs

vertically. The participants of the group are invited to copy these characters on paper at

71 I am a member of this group, and have included the period from 30 April 2018 to 15 May 2018 in my analysis. It should be noted that this particular group was dissolved in September 2018, and different subgroups have emerged that are structured similarly.

Figure 37-38: The daily message in the WeChat group (fig. 36). A digitally edited, handwritten piece of calligraphy (fig. 37). (Screenshots taken on 16-05-2018)

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home, take a photo of their work and send it to the group, by saying “punching in” (daka 打

卡), as if clocking in for a working day. The group motivates each member to practice every

day and to improve themselves by sending each other lines and appreciative emoticons,

encouraging each other along the lines of: “I admire you for your well-written words and your

hard work!” or “Well done today!”

The aim of the group is to encourage members to maintain the habit of writing, and

the output that is posted in the group demonstrates a great variety: quickly scribbled ballpoint

writings alternate with skilled traditional calligraphy and more unskilled calligraphy. Often,

heavily digitally edited written works are posted. Different apps are employed to alter their

writings: morphing the backgrounds, so that the works appear to be hanging in museums, bus

stops or gallery halls; writing surfaces are transformed digitally, so it appears the characters

are written on traditional stone steles, or are framed in elegant frames, as seen in figure 37.

The handwritten calligraphy is transformed through these digital edits: color is added and

shapes are made thicker, coarser or more flowing, and as such, it is nearly impossible to

discern if this is a handwritten, uploaded and edited work, or that a premade calligraphic font

is used and edited afterwards. Such edits obfuscate even more the already imprecise

differences between producers and consumers, but also between the skill of the digital

designer and the hobbyist writing on paper and uploading his works on the screen.

The variety of handwriting and digital edits posted in the group – all receiving equal

praise – as well as the ease with which these works are digitally modified and remediated,

suggest that concerns about realness or authenticity are virtually absent, and the hierarchy

between the digitized copy and the authentic “real” as observed in the app Ink Pool is not

here. Moreover, the creativity of this exercise seems to lie as much in the writing itself as in

the employment of creative editing-apps.

These two observations combined, I maintain, reveal the ultimate concern of this

online calligraphy community: the practice of craft and the maintenance of skill through

online appreciative community. This is further evidenced by the general narrative in the

WeChat group that is often focused on approaching their daily writing as labor; as work that

the group has to persevere in doing to become better at it, but also, paradoxically, before

calligraphy is rendered obsolete. The daily message encouraging the group to “persevere”

(jianchi 坚持) showcases this attitude, as does the reminder that people who have not sent a

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photo of their handwritten will receive a note from the administrator, while people whose

calligraphy is not up to a certain standard often receive extra encouragement.

Participating in such a technologically-aided quotidian calligraphic practice is, I

suggest, motivated by a desire to live something similar to a “literate life in the information

age” (Hawisher et al., 2004: 1), in which literate could be followed by “crafty” in this case, and

relates closely to structures of nostalgia. It is fueled by the desire to still be in the situation of

having to write calligraphy every day, because there are no ballpoints, computers, and no

mobile phones.

This feeling of nostalgia, upon which I already touched in chapter one, is not new to

China, nor is it new to the practice of calligraphy. Already a decade ago, in 2006, Wu Jing

observed that nostalgia had become key content for the creative industries in China (2006).

She reads nostalgia as a popular sentiment that “steps in to help us cope with the turbulence

of time, to manage change and make sense of it, through a symbolic denigration of change

and a wishful return to the stability of the past” (2006, 360). It is a highly modern structure of

feeling – to use the term coined by Raymond Williams (1977, 132) – that is directed against

modernity and its insistence on progress, change and mobility. Wu explains the rise of

nostalgic sentiment by stating that a reinvigoration of allegedly traditional Chinese cultural

forms helps to consolidate an insistence on Chineseness. Wu Jing focuses on the imperial

past, the revolutionary past and colonial Shanghai as sites for nostalgic appropriation and

reads the mediated return to these pasts as a longing for a coherent, unified national identity.

In Wu’s account, it seems merely a conservative force, one involving a partly withdrawal from

the present through a celebration of an imaginary and sanitized past, but one also to sustain

the workings of the nation-state. However, as Boym writes, nostalgia is deeply connected to

technology as well; as both are ultimately concerned with mediation:

Now it is technology that has become the opiate of the people, that promises speed, ease

and oblivion of everything except the technological products themselves. (…) Technology

is not a goal in itself but an enabling medium. While nostalgia mourns distances and

disjunctures between times and spaces, never bridging them, technology offers solutions

and builds bridges, saving the time that the nostalgic loves to waste. Yet fundamentally,

both technology and nostalgia are about mediation. As a disease of displacement,

nostalgia was connected to passages, transits and means of communication ( 2001, 346).

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I take Boym’s position to further complicate the notion of nostalgia, which now has

become a structure of feeling that can express a longing for an imaginary past in which people

were used to write daily and surround themselves with calligraphy, but can also articulate a

critical reflection upon the contemporary and on the passing of time. Technology takes on a

vital position in this configuration. Technology, as Boym argues, offer solutions to bridge the

time that is so longed for by the nostalgic.

In other words, it makes that time readily available to anyone, as virtually any time

can be revisited through technology. Simon Reynolds talks about the “crisis of

overdocumentation triggered by digital technology” (2011, 56) when referring to the ever-

expanding resources available to us. There was, Reynolds argues, always more culture and

information available than any individual could consume, but it was safely stacked away

outside everyday use, in libraries, museums, galleries. As for calligraphy, this is also the case:

although physical museums of calligraphy are growing in number, and copybooks are now

even available in supermarkets, a vast amount calligraphy is still part of personal collections

and libraries. Now, Reynold argues:

Old stuff either directly permeates the present, or lurks just beneath the surface of the

current, in the form of on-screen windows to other times. We've become so used to this

convenient access that it is a struggle to recall that life wasn't always like this; that

relatively recently, one lived most of the time in a cultural present tense, with the past

confined to specific zones, trapped in particular objects and locations ( 2011, 57).

This past trapped into objects thus becomes increasingly available as our resources of

memory increase, and importantly, are increasingly easy to access. The nostalgic can access

the times so longed for by just going online. At the same time, that same technology is used

to insert oneself in this past, making it their own. This is an important affordance of digital

technology, as it changes not only the present, but the experience of the self in that present.

Nostalgia thus mourns both the past, steps in to make sense of the present, and is

deeply intertwined with technology as they are both structured around the passage of time.

In such a complex configuration, I argue, we should position the different types of

calligraphies that are practiced through digital media. Calligraphy can simultaneously be

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handwritten and uploaded, digitally embellished, remediated and consumed and be allowed

a platform in different online environments to combat its demise.

CONCLUSION

I started out by stating that there is a widespread fear that calligraphy and handwriting might

be lost in the processes of cultural digitalization. A binary distinction between what is “real”

calligraphy and what is digital has quickly proven untenable. As the real world is increasingly

augmented with digital information, it is safe to say that “the digital” is not happening

“elsewhere” (Schneider 2015, 87), but is increasingly interwoven in quotidian life. In this

everyday digital environment, we find calligraphy museums to visit, numerous ancient

calligraphy reference books to browse, calligraphy friends to meet, and calligraphy auctions

and exhibitions to attend. Calligraphy enthusiasts now copy from the screen, digitally

embellish their handwritten works, and look at, or even write with calligraphy simulations

that are rated as well-executed as Yan Zhenqing’s characters.

Moreover, the range and scope of calligraphy available to internet users, perhaps

previously excluded from such sources, has grown enormously thanks to easily accessible

digital databases and online museum projects. This makes it conceivable that non-canonical

primary sources now have a chance to be (re)discovered and researched by a large group of

online aficionados, potentially creating a shift in the idea of what representative or “good”

calligraphy is, or should have been. This is an important consequence of the increased

availability of calligraphy made possible through the digital.

I argued that online digital reproductions of calligraphy raise the question of

authenticity. In considering what the reproduced copy might lose in the process of

digitization—aura, authority, or expressiveness, but also texture, color and physical

proximity—it is useful to ask if other copies of the manuscript exist, and how important the

role of authenticity is within the culture in which the artwork is embedded. The longstanding

practice of copying suggests a more relaxed attitude towards reproduction. On the other

hand, the subtlety and preciseness with which brush movements, layering of ink and

calligraphic shapes are normally assessed, would imply that every digital alteration would

carry large consequences.

And indeed, the difference between a manual copy and a digital one becomes more

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pertinent when considering the corporeal aspect of calligraphic reproduction. We have seen

how digital calligraphic websites attempt to incorporate – or remediate – elements to

enhance bodily involvement by implementing interfaces with analog characteristics.

Smartphones and apps also increasingly employ touchpads, digital brushes, and new

technologies that allow for finger writing. These technologies mimic and even predict the

movements of the finger to create a feeling of corporality, while share-and-like connectivity

enhances the sensation that there is more than you and the computer screen engaging in

calligraphy. It seems that the calligrapher, the connoisseur, and the hobbyist are rather

enriched by advancements in the digital, but it is up to the user how they negotiate and

appropriate the involvement of these digital tools and options in their quotidian calligraphic

habits. It is therefore more accurate to speak of dispersal rather than a shift of calligraphy to

digital environments.

The development of and engagement in calligraphic apps are, as I suggested,

motivated by nostalgic desires. Nostalgia mourns the bygone times in which handwriting was

an everyday necessity, and digital technology steps in there, both feeding and bridging this

disjuncture between the then and the now. In this connection between technology and

nostalgia, we find again that the maintenance of skill and the visibility of calligraphy are

valued over concerns of authenticity.

I stated in the beginning that the digital might be imagined as an extension of everyday

life, holding the potential to creatively rearrange traditional practices and thereby making

imaginable a calligraphy practiced differently. The examples of both Ink Pool app and the

WeChat group Handwriting Temperature have shown that these have not turned calligraphy

enthusiasts into mere passive “consumers” of pre-fabricated productions, but into producers,

makers of their own who are operating within a culture of calligraphy, yet redefining this

culture on their own terms. The creation, enjoyment, and consumption of calligraphy in the

digital realm may thus be theorized as an active and dynamic part of the quotidian life of

internet users that might rearrange the set of beliefs of what calligraphy is or should entail.

The “real” and the “unreal”, with their imprecise definitions, I suspect, will coexist until these

alleged dichotomies become irrelevant. Or until, as Douglas Davis suggests, “Artist and viewer

perform together. The dead replica and the living, authentic original are merging, like lovers

entwined in mutual ecstasy” (1995, 381).