Teaching Arabic calligraphy to a robot
Experimental Design Creative Coding Calligraphy Type Design
2021-2022
This all happened within the seminar “Hello Robot” instructured by Christian Schmidts at Berlin Open Lab, at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).
The project employed a custom-made stroke-based Arabic font based on the Letter Spirit project by Douglas Hofstadter and Gary McGraw. The font was programmed using a Rhinoceros 3D /Grasshopper workflow and “taught” to be written by a UR5 robotic arm that carried a custom 3D-printed calligraphy pen holder and a Pilot Parallel pen.
Borrowing quotations from Islamic golden age thinkers Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), the project aimed to open the conversation about language accessibility, compatibility with tech, and representation in current and future areas of knowledge production.
