Galileo Galilei, in his "Dialogue on the Two Principal World Systems", was certainly not the first to note the importance of the paper - but he is possibly one of the most prominent to this day:

"But how does the spiritual height of one who undertook to find a means of communicating his most hidden thoughts to anyone else, however distant through space and time, rise above all astonishing inventions? To speak to those who are in India, to speak to those who are not yet born, who will not be born for a thousand and ten thousand years? And with what ease? By variously connecting a few twenty characters on a sheet of paper."

The importance of the blank sheet of paper for modelling worlds will be the focus of the presentation. I will focus on European examples from the last 500 years or so, a period that was significantly shaped by the media revolution of letterpress printing with movable type.

Three functions of the blank paper and the writing to be applied to it can be identified: First, we have to do with the blank page, which in itself may seem a trivial piece of materiality, but on closer inspection is very remarkable. For the page to be described forms a space of its own and, as a place of production with all its possibilities (and impossibilities), demarcates itself from its environment. This space has to be organised (secondly) by fabricating a text on it. Linguistic set pieces or other sign-like forms are arranged in this space according to clearly defined rules. Through this progressive and regulated activity, an artefact of another world is (thirdly) created on the blank page. This world is not given, but is artificially produced, so it cannot be considered as a representation or reflection of the world outside the page, but lays justified claim to the dignity of its own form of existence.

The significance of these materials and practices can hardly be overestimated in the context of European cultural history. For the text, brought into its own space in this way, is the fundamental utopia of the modern Occident: Reality is not only brought into paper form, but writing in turn affects reality. The sheet of paper is a place of passage where this transformation takes place.