PAST-SCRIPT / FORMA E CONTRAFORMA DA ESCRITA

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PAST—SCRIPT

FORMA E CONTRAFORMA DA ESCRITA

Past-Script is the name that gives title to our KYRT 2022 assignment, "Missing Stories", which aimed to develop an intense research and subsequently design work on a theme that was in any way connected to the main motto.

“Era na estação invernosa de 1894.”

In the Serra do Alvão, between Vila Pouca de Aguiar and Vila Real in Trás-os-Montes, Portugal, rests a mystery lost in time, a forgotten and described account of an archaeological discovery that everything indicated belonged to the beginnings of writing systems.

This is one of the many missing narratives in the history of Portugal, and tells one more thread of the way of being of a community, built and sedimented in the mortar of millennia, which left their legacy and cultural footprint here. It was they who irrigated the Lusitanian soil, before it was Portuguese, with traditions, beliefs and venerable rituals that our collective memory preserves, reason refuses and only the heart knows.

The dream, the oneiric, the mysterious, and the past, make up the main matrix of this narrative of a certain ancient daily life, as if suddenly shaken by interferences of those other invisible dimensions, which are sedimented and let themselves be influenced. By synthesizing and making this collection, we detect the importance and complicity of written communication in social sharing and management, which seem to resuscitate as they are spoken and written about, like relics that survive time and are rehabilitated with a new breath.
Past-Script is a means of recreation of the spirit, which, through the contemplation of objects belonging to times and generations that have passed away, evokes ancient life, accompanied by its uses, beliefs and customs.

All the information that was gathered went through a selection process so that the veracity and cohesion of the information were as good as possible, one of the main reasons for this being the historical content of our work and the desire to transmit everything as clearly as possible to the reader.

This research is based on the texts of the two priests who, in 1894, found the stones in Serra do Alvão, and also a text written by Ricardo Severo in an article for Portugália magazine in 1903. To complement all this information, we collected a database on ancient alphabets and writing systems in general. The project would thus be divided in four supports/graphic elements, the main ones being a book, a website, a codified writing system and a documentary short film.

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A website was also created. This was thought and designed with a vision and a desire to create a file containing all the basic information so that the project could be understood. While the editorial was directed towards a more educational experience, the website was clearly a much more interactive and experimental experience, where in the file dedicated to the writing system, there are a series of interactions with the user related to the characters. There are also more files that group photos about this whole narrative of Pedras do Alvão.

Complementing the theoretical conclusion, this project visualizes the character set from a graphic point of view, and redraws this possible alphabet in a contemporary and balanced way, based on diagonal shapes in contrast to curvilinear shapes. Subsequently, a translation of the “Alvão Alphabet” was created into the Latin alphabet that is used worldwide. Our writing system was named “Alvana” because it comes from Alvão, being an “Alvana” relic.
Alvana is a writing system that can be used in 3 different weights - Light, Regular and Bold.