Baji rien wo mitsuru

Information

Description

This is a piece that I created in order to demonstrate the importance of the spacing between characters in calligraphy. It is the final line of one of my poems, and I wrote it in Zhou-dynasty seal script.

I used AI to create an animation (opens in a new window).

• Click on the “Play” button to set the characters moving about the page randomly. They will bump into each other, the signature and seal, and the page borders.
• Click on the “Pause” button to stop the characters in their current positions.
• Click on the “Reset” button to return the characters to their original positions.
• Adjusting the “Temperature” slider increases and decreases the speed at which the characters move.

Two Japanese avant-garde calligraphers once said that, “in the best calligraphic works, the white space resembles the surface of a pond or river, upon which characters drift.”

By watching the animation, you can see that this assertion is ridiculous.

In calligraphy, we capture motion and freeze it in time. The juxtaposition of dynamic strokes and their fixed positions creates a tension that gives calligraphy its power. Shifting the positions of the strokes breaks that tension. There is a Japanese phrase which, I believe, is used in kendō and is appropriate here: 静中動、動中静 (JP: seichūdō, dōchūsei) “movement in silence, silence in movement.”

What is more, calligraphic strokes are written fluidly, and the position, size, and quality of each is determined by the strokes that come before and after it. This happens both within and between characters in “the best calligraphic works.” Changing the relative positions of strokes breaks up the rhythm of the piece as a whole.