Letters from Leibniz

Letters from Leibniz digitally collages 238 handwritten and/or hand-drawn works by Leibniz (1646–1716), the great mathematician, philosopher, lawyer and inventor. Jim Andrews wrote the software used to create the collages: Aleph Null (aleph4.vispo.com). The underlying images are from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover, used with permission by them. A full slideshow of the underlying images used is available at leibniz.vispo.com as is the full Letters from Leibniz project. A slideshow of the 238 originals can be screened here: https://vispo.com/aleph4/images/jim_andrews/leibniz/slidvid4. The colours are those of aged seventeenth- or eighteenth-century German paper and ink; a restricted palette of skin tones, chocolate, olives and rust, highlighting the relation between the body (corps) and body (text). In media ecological terms, it works within a framework of the McLuhan tetrad/speaking to the enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal of communicative strategies.