For millennia, paper has been the dominant medium of knowledge and its transmission. Its development and expansion are largely correlated with the art of calligraphy and then the invention of printing. A material that is both natural and easily recyclable but also an extremely polluting industry, we have an ambiguous relationship with paper. Although we try to escape it through screens, it supports the development of our gestural abilities in learning to write. Cut, folded, glued, it allows us to make the transition between plan and volume. To filter, package, protect, isolate, it remains present everywhere in our lives.
As the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us, digital technology has not defeated paper or printing. But by opposing these two mediums, could we be missing out on extraordinary combinatorial potentialities? If digital technology has not killed paper, could it augment it? It is this path to reconciliation that I have suggested my students to explore during this 7 weeks project. Here are some of the remarkable propositions that they produced.