#code based

[mintydandydannie]

F L Y ||

I love my little code bab <3 this is a combo of @ask-r00tsans and a character i made called Data. Anyway hes a cutie. Please enjoy him. :3

the binary says: The multiverse is filled with good, one simply has to seek it out, and when they find it, it's like a supernova against the dark.

[steveedwardsartist]

I've been playing with a code similar to my previous flowing paint code but this time the brightness is kinda increasing/decreasing the "steering" of the particles. And I've also made it much more of an app rather than just an automatic script. So I can paint and control the settings as I go. I've found it great for experimenting, creating and pretty much finishing artworks.

[steveedwardsartist]

More and more I find merging all my different little codes (or code concepts) that I've created yields amazing results. Here I have use my own colour pallette tool, a mouse recording and my flow code married with my paint brush simulation code.

[recentactivity]

Recent thoughts/readings

Thus an entire font of letters and other symbols can be specified so that each character adapts itself to varying conditions in an appropriate way. Initial experiments with a precise language for pen motions suggest strongly that the font designer of the future should not simply design isolated alphabets; the challenge will be to explain exactly how each design should adapt itself gracefully to a wide range of changes in the specification. (Knuth, 289)

In this sense a "meta-font" is a schematic description of how to draw a family of fonts, not simply the drawings themselves... and the rules will ideally be expressed in terms of variable parameters so that a single description will actually specify many different drawings. (Knuth, 290)

As I'm reading 'Digital Typography' by Donald Knuth, it's becoming clearer the potential and intrigue in automating typesetting processes and altering parameters can have on adapting to a variety of contexts, progression of form in interpolation as a system, and even the creation of new forms / visual experimentation. He's a witty writer too, which helps understand specific mathematic algorithms yet bigger picture connections.

George Forsythe once wrote that "The question 'What can be automated?' is one of the most inspiring philosophical and practical questions of contemporary civilization." We know from experience that we understand an idea much better after we have succeeded in teaching it to someone else; and the advent of computers has brought the realization that even more is true: The best way to understand something is to know it so well that you can teach it to a computer. Machines provide the ultimate test, since they do not tolerate "hand waving" and they have no "common sense" to fill the gaps and vagaries in what we do almost unconsciously. (Knuth, 291)

I'm interested in the potential of altering/creating unpredictable (or randomizing) features in code-based type that can alter and respond to unique contexts. If there is no pattern to track or observe, or each time we communicate we use a unique font/weight/glyph/contextual alternate — could this be a form of encryption? Something along the lines of applying theories of randomization and encryption to the altering of parameters in code-based typography. Could be a stretch — but the next 6 months will be a worthwhile exploration of continuous experimentation.

So whether that means exploring METAFONT (thanks to Wei for the link to Metapolator, which is a web-based parametric font editor), exploiting Robofont opentype capabilities, (Superpolator by LettError), or learning Python to create randomizing scripts etc that can be applied onto existing type systems — will make itself known in the coming months. (or testing the waters in all of the above)

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—The above excerpts are from 'The Concept of a Meta-Font' originally published in Visible Language, 16; 1982, 3-27. PDF HERE

—'Digital Typography' by Donald Knuth was published in 1999.

—further reading by Luc Devroye 

—top image from: http://metapolator.tumblr.com

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'Donald Knuth’s Metafont project, based at Stanford University in the Silicon Valley heartland, was of immense theoretical and philosophical interest; witness the published debates about Metafont in the early 1980s. However, in its assumption that typeface characters could be modelled as simple strokes rather than outlines, Metafont backed the wrong horse. 

Kinross 'critiques' (briefly) METAFONT in 1992, which can be argued,

then points out something interesting: 

'But in any case, as its name suggests, the aim of the project was to develop a program for conceiving typefaces rather than for drafting them.'

—Robin Kinross, 'The Digital Wave'. Eye Magazine, summer 1992: 

oh yeah. happy thanksgiving weekend.

[recentactivity]

'Our typeface would have a high resolution distortion of its digital outlines with lengthy rasterizing times as opposed to most developments in digital type: the unsmooth and slow versus the slick and quick.'

Erik van Blokland & Just van Rossum

First published in Emigre magazine issue 18, 1991

http://letterror.com/writing/is-best-really-better/