Artifacts

[5star]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Artifacts ... that's what in graphic design is know as those wondering almost rebel pixels of information that somehow manage to stray from the norm in a raster (a.k.a. bitmap) format.

But make no mistake, Artifacts, no matter how much 'freedom' they think they represent/enjoy are still a product of being mathematically generated and are fostered via synthetic means. Still though, they are not quite as, or allow me to say 'obediently consistent', as are all the other family raster members that go on in a more orderly fashion to create a harmonious bitmap composition.

Artifacts.

According to my savvy interwebs searches through various dictionary sites - there are other definitions.

But...

It is my understanding that the freest of free individuals, not only in America but around the world, are those Artifacts that live a daily grind normally associated with the common life cycle of birth-school-work-die ... somehow find brief moments of unattachment from the 'normal' drudgery whilst maintaining a relationship and true association to the whole!! Truth being, if not for the 'whole' there would not a be a single Artifact pixel itself!

Again, please make no mistake, Artifacts are still part of an artificial existence.

As an interesting footnote, the more you squeeze raster / bitmap pixels of information in various formats (a.k.a. file compression), and reduce quality - there seems to be more and more Artifacts.

n.

[Theunis de Jong]

As footnote to your footnote

the more you squeeze raster / bitmap pixels of information in various formats (a.k.a. file compression), and reduce quality - there seems to be more and more Artifacts

that's not true in general for "file compression". JPEG is the only graphics file format I know that (a) allows you to "reduce quality" (which is a telling sign it's not a normal compression, where you'd get the same image after decompressing), and (b) compresses more than your average format just because it may decide to average large patches of different color into one solid block. And when decompressing that, you are bound to get "artifacts".

So you seem to have a problem with a certain bitmap image. You "compressed" it using JPEG, and now you are disappointed that you do not get the "exact same image" back when you view it. Yeah -- that's how it works. If you don't like that, use a different file compression, and make sure to pick a lossless one.

[hrant]

Same with MP3 being a lossy compression format for music (although lossless formats for music are quite rare - most of those are simply uncompressed to begin with). But it's centrally important to remember that we couldn't enjoy all this digital media (certainly not video!) without lossy compression - the files would be too big to store and especially to stream.

Trying to bring this around to type...
We already have compression, but could there be a lossy font format?

hhp

[oldnick]

Digital Artifacts are simply the latest products of the Imaginary Universe which humans inhabit. Artifacts are testaments to the world as Man makes it, not as he finds it; where, more and more, Virtual Reality replaces Actual Reality; where instant access to information replaces knowledge, so that every dolt may think himself a genius.

Eventually, if devices such as the Orgasmatron in Wood Allen's Sleeper become available, humans of sufficient means may be able to forgo living an actual existence altogether. Some people call this Progress.

[hrant]

> instant access to information replaces knowledge

Interestingly, this was exactly Thamus's protestation against Thoth's invention of writing. But now we love that technology.

Also, it is not the perceived faithfulness of a photograph (or musical recording) that makes it worthwhile. Everything is an illusion anyway. Gorgias had it right.

hhp

[hrant]

Might a lossy font format nicely address issues of piracy/pricing, and/or print-versus-screen rendering?

hhp

[oldnick]

The relative veracity of a simulacrum may or may not be an issue; however, the mere fact that it is a simulacrum may.

Several years ago, I stumbled onto a string quartet performing in one of the many Smithsonian Museums in Washington, DC. Their performance of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was rapturous: an undeserved moment of grace, a too-brief experience of pure bliss. No electromechanical reproduction has since inspired the same inspired state.

[Theunis de Jong]

Hand cast type produced artifacts. Every time it got used, bits fell off and got dented, etc. So every single character was unique, if only when viewed at a large magnification.
Can that be produced by a computer font -- eroding type?

... and when all letters are gone, you have to buy the font a-new ...

[oldnick]

@Theunis de Jong

Hmmm: planned obsolescence. Quite a radical concept...

[5star]

Thrilling comments, truly inspiring.

I'm not suggesting that Vector has any sort of authority over Raster. It would be absurd to even suggest a lessening of one at the expense of the other. Quality differential seems measurable, but only if there's a reduction in the two being as not disparate communities, which is of course impossible.

Having said that there's a certain conceit in Vector stability.

The suggestion of a pixel information erosion is simply terrific. A formula to disappear, a cloaking if you will. An organic synthetic erosion seems to me quite desirable from a naturalism point of view. And of course the offer of a regenerative action, a.k.a. a cure? Perhaps that will be our last, and greatest, advancement in silicon techno;logy ... death itself.

Didn't Dupont come up with that concept back in the 1930's? Something to do with nylon garments I believe.

n.

[oldnick]

Once again: it's called Planned Obsolescence...

http://www.economist.com/node/13354332

Pre-programmed digital death is simply another iteration.

[Nick Shinn]

My favorite Artefact

[5star]

Nick Shinn some of that work is pulled real tight nice - awesome stuff that you could work in self-promotion. Or is the act of self-promotion more to point of being an Artifact, lol :)

Old Nicks, I'm more interested in the dichotomy of authoritarianism and free will with an undercurrent of nature's organic DNA. So, planned failure is far more interesting than crude planned obsolescence because you can come back from planned failure. There's an organic quality to it that planned obsolescence doesn't seem to me to have.

An Artifact is an organic extension.

[Nick Shinn]

Neil, that was a self-promotion!

My Artefact represents the kind of deconstruction that went on in the 1990s.
Caustic Biomorph most looked the part of artifact as incidental consequence, Beowolf played it best.
But really, the trace of process has a long history in type, coming to the fore as each generation of technology is capable of more acuracy than the previous and, with McLuhan’s Laws kicking in, previously obsolesced ground is retrieved, becoming a key component of the new form.

[oldnick]

Neil,

Your organic analogy is precisely that: an analogy, not an equivalence. Except in unusual circumstances, digital replication is lossless. A digital artifact does not evolve nor devolve. A digital artifact does not explore new niches. It is an inorganic, lifeless, thoughtless, soulless simulacrum. The creator of a digital artifact is the artifact's God.

You may amuse yourself with hypothetical what-if, but the end product still ends up as planned obsolescence. Art merely imitates life: it doesn't replace it.

[hrant]

> digital replication is lossless

?!

hhp

[oldnick]

digital replication is lossless

Replication—duplicating a digital file—is lossless; digital simulacrums—such as audio recordings—are not.

[John Hudson]

Theunis: Hand cast type produced artifacts. Every time it got used, bits fell off and got dented, etc.

And pre-mechanical inking was inevitably uneven, resulting in significant variation even with new type.

So every single character was unique, if only when viewed at a large magnification.

By way of illustration, here is a collection of lowercase a sorts from a single page of Baskerville’s 1760 edition of Paradise Regained. The type in this instance is quite large, so these differences are easily visible to the naked eye and do not require magnification.

[Theunis de Jong]

Nice one, John.

Even if you can find software that supports Opentype's rand feature, you can only have it choose among a set of pre-drawn glyphs. (But see Adam T's practical considerations against it -- from 2005.)

To get a totally random appearance -- not two a's alike -- you'd need to find a Postscript interpreter that actually can use the Type 1 rand operator. ... Is there any that does? I could build a font that uses this operator, but how would I test it?

[Riccardo Sartori]

Related? https://typography.guru/forums/topic/101109-forwarding

[brianskywalker]

Hand cast type produced artifacts. Every time it got used, bits fell off and got dented, etc. So every single character was unique, if only when viewed at a large magnification.
Can that be produced by a computer font -- eroding type?

In a way that's exactly what I was getting at in my "multiple cuts" thread. Riccardo posted the link.

[5star]

Nick, gottcha! Thanks for mentioning Marshall's work, I had forgotten all about him.

Old Nick, by 'organic' I mean to say - inherent relationship to each other and not like a carrot you'd pull from the ground. Hopefully this rather simplistic image will help demonstrate my point...

...on the left is a simple rectangle and the one on the right is the exact same one re-saved for the web with a Quality of 50%, originally done in red - put into gray scale for definition. So, where did these Artifacts come from? I surely did not put them there!!

Of course in more complex bitmap images such as line work freshly scanned there are tons more instances of Artifacts! But even from my above simplistic rather crude example Artifacts have taken form! They are an organic extension from the original to be sure. File compression has a way of doing this as I mentioned before. So ya, Artifacts can evolve. Can they devolve, yes of course they can. I'd have to do up some examples but off the top of head I'd say that a single Artifact can evolve or devolve in bit depth (bpp). Can it explore new niches, as in 'is it mobile'? It's not appropriate to equate human mobility with pixel information mobility, but ya I'd say that Artifacts can move within their digital realm. And that's a sad sad thing if an Artifact can realize a realm outside of it's realm - so to speak. Kinda like Romeo & Juliet sort of, in way. And might I just say now that that is to the very essence of this thread (more on that later as we go).

Are they soulless? No, of course not. Everything has a spirit.

John, per-mechanical inking seems almost gestural!
So awesome!

n.

[hrant]

Or an artifact is when an algorithm comes out to play.

Planned failure? There was a US car like that in the 70s... and now everybody does it.

hhp

[Té Rowan]

@5star – The JPEG compressor put them there. All lossy compression schemes bear such artifacts with them. You may not have clued to it yet, but you have just discovered for yourself why JPEG compression is most emph not recommended for line art.

[dezcom]

In the steel mills, they called it slag, the left-over stuff that remained from making the metal. I knew a sculptor named John Lilly who used to get slag from where J&L steel used to dump it. He then made sculpture from it. At that point, he called it an Artifact.