Noon Passama
Our relationship with numbers and language characters is defined by the way they are represented in systems around us. Counting and calculation as well as the direction and manner of writing differ from one culture to another. We see numbers in our surroundings, on advertisement boards, car plates, TV and phone screens, but we also have a very intimate relationship with numbers that is based on our personal rituals, events in our lives and the habits we develop. Bangkok-born, Eindhoven-based designer Noon Passama began her research into a non-verbal, tangible equivalent of alphanumeric characters with her Formal Research collection in 2014-2016. Her statement: ‘Making a chain is like composing a sentence out of a transformable typeface,’ became the starting point for this new body of work, titled 0 – 9. The gesture of writing a number guides the formation of each shape. Passama designed a complex logic behind the creation of the work, in which each piece represents one number: ‘one’ has a single element in a given piece; ‘two’ has two elements, and so on. Therefore, the value of each number is represented in the amount of parts and elements that compose it. With 0 - 9, by re-thinking the representation of value and order rather than symbolising common glyphs we all can recognise, Passama enables the wearer to relate to numbers in a more intuitive way.
Marina Elenskaya