Ecrire, dit-on

A poem by Dickens began. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times [...]."

I nurture a single collection, which includes hundreds of traces of what people still write by hand without being compelled to do so, and which they leave lying around. One day as I was making an inventory of the data on these lost post-it notes, felt-tip tags on dark paths or amorous boldness on cable cars, I realised that the three words that kept coming back were Fuck, Love and Mozzarella.

As I researched further and with great seriousness, I carried out a few experiments with scripts other than handwriting. Sometimes I collected comments on what people wrote on an Instagram wall. Sometimes I gave written orders to an artificial intelligence and it produced some strange images. Sometimes I've imagined that the authors of some of humanity's great texts had written them with their fingers.

And even if we can't prove Dickens right or wrong, one day in Sumer, on the banks of the Nile or in some Chinese province, an old android might wonder how anyone ever wrote with a pen in their hand.

Nathalie Perrin