Biometric Sans

Typography system that stretches letterforms according to an individual's typing speed

Biometric Sans is an experimental typography system which elongates letterforms in response to the typing speed of the individual. It is a gesture toward the re-embodiment of typography, the re-introduction of the hand in digital writing.

The work is inspired by the practice of keystroke biometrics, the idea that individuals are uniquely identifiable by the way that they type. Typing is an instance of what Marcel Mauss calls “techniques of the body”—how movement and gesture express an individual’s socially and culturally inflected subjectivity. Typing is just as embodied as handwriting. But where handwriting expresses individuality through letterforms, digital word processing makes everyone’s writing look the same.

Writing in Biometric Sans foregrounds the mediation of writing in software. This intervention comes with an awareness of the temporality of writing. Cadences of stretched letterforms might express tone that would be otherwise lost. Typing might become a feedback loop of writing and rewriting, seeking for the right letterforms to visually express an idea. All the while, the algorithmic variation indicates the omnipresent apparatus of digital surveillance on which this artwork is based.

Links

• Digital typewriter: https://jonathanzong.github.io/biometric-sans/
• Documentation page: https://jonathanzong.com/projects/biometric-sans
• Talk: Biometric Sans and Public Display: Embodied Writing in the Age of Data