smallest-complete-2x2

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by dpla

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₫€®¡$¤r¥:©¤₦₡€₧:¤₣:℗®¤_¤₣ I meant : 1. it's not a font because of the number of duplicates; 2. internet search engines believe the contrary (we deserve smarter crawlers); 3. it's an unfinished work (I felt lazy for not designing the filters beforehand - 2x2 grid combinations); 4. I'm unsure about the final license, esp. when I have released a sub-pixel '''''font''''' with the same method.

41 Comments

Read my G°°g…lips :
This - is - the - world - smallest - legible - complete - genuine - Latin - micro - font - imagined - ever.
=}

(Edit : I was kidding, Google.)
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
Observe. http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/615592
Comment by demonics 10th march 2013
Thank you ; I'll try to get used with the GUI (more than a handful of minutes, that is)… Because I must have missed sthg (well, a lot of) about how you all good FontStructors can get detailed fonts… But speaking (grid of) pixels, my (anti)test is indeed 2x2 (and its boasting self-comment still ridiculous enough to be saved and relaunched by G°°gle.)
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
PS. And after winty5, can you tell me too that my absence of avatar is a temp delay, even a bug ? (I can see it in my FS profile, and you ?) TIA
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
OK, I got it thanks to Abneurone there : Menu > View > Filters. And I should redo everything @ 0.1x0.1, plus add all the chrs I forgot (since I overlooked this control too). So I'll update asap or in the near future.

Last trouble in my empty bag of tricks : my avatar. I'll try again here too…
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
I think the avatar problem should be fixed within a few hours. I've had the same issue.
Comment by demonics 10th march 2013
Cool. We'll see tomorrow about the avatar.

The character of this 'font' are even less identifiable using the filtering feature to its max. You had such an idea to suggest it to me ! ;-)
Many diacritics still need to be filled to get something close to complete, and that's tedious / time-consuming… I'm afraid the regular / good FontStructors use this trick to get very precise characters, with a lot of copy & paste, don't they / you ?
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
You say this font is "legible", you mean by some machine able to scan and decode it ? For me it's more a beautiful piece of abstract visual art. Do you know the installation artist and electronic musician Ryoji Ikeda ? His approach of sound is very close to what a microfont typographer as you must seek in his own domain : working on the Infinitesimal related to digital information. And the artwork design of his cds is very close to what you made here. He has his own (excellent) site : www.ryojiikeda.com
And you should try to listen to some of his incredible recordings, i think they could really talk to you
Comment by Abneurone Fluid Types 10th march 2013
The preview feature of FS shows that my division of the font into categories of the same glyph is rendering pretty well. (Unfortunately, I cannot get the preview to work again.)
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
By the way, maybe you could be interested in my font Atomizing Artlien
Comment by Abneurone Fluid Types 10th march 2013
And i'm surprised you still didn't post a comment on Yamaw nt series
which is INO one of the most beautiful hardcore minimal artworks made here on FS!
Comment by Abneurone Fluid Types 10th march 2013
The preview feature of FS shows that my division of the font into categories of the same glyph is rendering pretty well. (Unfortunately, I cannot get the preview to work again.)
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
No, I was not aware of his work. I was into the same kind of 'muzak' at that time, but our cultures and machines were so different (except the famous worldwide bestseller little Casio)… Jap'eople ('say guyz - I don't know a lot about geek Jap females) are very fond of pixel art, micro this and that… 'utmostly tecchie' (like me)… OK, I'll try to listen to sthg of him. Hopefully he isn't as cold musically as severe visually (I love colours as much as B/W !). (Electronic machines have warm and funny sounds, paradoxically - I'm not into acid, DJs etc., which is laziness and/or incompetence in art, IMDO.) If his project is to make life easier, it's OK with me (since all my searches of simplifications tend to doing better, with less - all about efficiency) ; if it's another layer of useless and infuriating dodecaphonism or elitist white noise, or anything like that, I'll skip it without thinking (having enough information and personal experience in art to be selective). We'll 'see'. Thank you. (Google Images depicts him like a V-DJ, with many borrowings to procedural patterns, which is not impressive for me, just interesting to see them move - esp. to his sounds -, hence the word minimalist used on Wikipedia I think.)


“legible” ? where ? in my trolling 1st comment ? that was a G°°gle intended joke. This said, to be legible everytime in any context by some script containing a lot of high level of AI, one should be a true master in statistics beforehand, since too many dupes would output too many possibilities of words in the sentence. I can explain a bit more later, but as I'm neither a mathematician, nor a Nobelized dude, and since I never coded or read much of such decryption methods in natural language, I could easily get ridiculous myself… Ask e.g. the CIA if **u h*** a ******e f*** o* ***s ;-) Last words : if you can design an OCR tool this robust against such incomplete information, you can get millionaire. I'd love to be able to scan a micro font without knowing its typeface. Speaking more 3x3 and 3x4, you'll soon see that actually, all our micro stuff must refer to a particular 'genre of shapes', else they'd be all a melting-pot of styles, that the human reader should have the knowledge of, which is not quite feasible. By explaining visually the source, *** and *** the logic of the change, people can learn faster the main tricks, and focus on memorizing the unavoidable bunch of 'mutant' characters.


Yes, “abstract”, hence my wording : “concepts”, in the headline / warning. But not only. More seriously, you can compare it to Small Fonts (in WordPad preferably, even via MS Ofice perhaps) : all the characters are 'mapped' (i.e. attributed - they have a correspondance), which means no blank or anomaly ; besides they are smaller (except for the 1-px wide size of Small Fonts - winty5 released recently an efficient derived 1x3 font). winty5, could also achieve an incomplete, yet dupe-free 2x2 font. It was new to him. Mine is thus quite different, like complementary, from its opposite and main characteristic : the great acceptance of duplicates of the same kind (which I ban in my unreleased 3x3 font, for the programmers' sake, and IT considerations in general). I.e. there are uppercase, lowercase, digits+some manually selected punctuations, small upper punctuations, small lower punctuations, all the rest in either categories manually… which is reasonably enough to look like a font once rendered, and viewed at distance. Mystification (because of the dupes), but useful in many areas all the same, like e.g. the most famous and ancient use in word processors : chrs distribution (how the fill the page), and number (precisely). The format is destroyed though, where Small Fonts may be more adapted, because blind somehow.


Midnight… fatigue. CYA.
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
PS. About Yamaw's “nt series”, that's because I had to do a tough choice : all what cannot fit a stupid box cannot fit the simplest arrays, the 'food' for any micro font. The quality of the micro art that doesn't match this embarrassing prerequisite, I confess, I couldn't give a damn of it {hey ! whot translated like that ?!}, else I wouldn't have almost reached my goal (you know, circumventing the difficulties when one knows that the effort will be of greater benefit than an extra touch of style)… I'll post some comment on the aesthetic consideration only asap, which means I cannot say when… I need to be interesting, you know. And since I did not dowload them, my encouragements would not be sincere.
Comment by dpla 10th march 2013
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Comment by dpla 11th march 2013
Almost completely offtopic, but since you think it's related, why not ? So here's my negative comment, temporarily hopefully. I just listened to the Test Pattern on Amazon, of Ryoji Ikeda (August 5, 2008) : he's playing with the envelopes, like a n00b. This deserves the title, indeed : a test. Where's the music ? did G°°gle fool me again ? OK, in his other CDs. But, I'd need his good music, not his worst attempts. What ? everything is of the same kind ? even worse ? what ?! … … … (it's speechless.) Great experience ! Next time sell me a blank CD, I need to buy some silence ! Fortunately about synthesizers, I enjoyed doing the same as a curiosity, in old computers, but this inherant poverty was not the purpose in my experience of the sound. There's plenty of white noise in Ikeda (as expected), without a melody (as expected - else I would have known or remembered him before, since I love sweet melodies), hence it's icy for me (and so, not really my cup of Japanese tea, nowadays, because it does not surprise me at all, and it brings me nothing - but you can help me). Most of his simplest effects were already heard in the early videogames (before, after or at the same time). Maybe that's what attracts people : it may be new to them, and that makes them feel a bit proud, even elitist. Back to history, there were a lot of such pieces of machine code that we could copy and type in to liven up our mediocre little games at that time, with all the modifications and bedroom searches, and genius hacks also, that never deserved a financial interest, except later for the most talented / resistant / lucky ones, in the then budding videogame industry. Now, what I would have enjoyed, is a melody, again. Noises never stay long in my mind, how carefully studied or subtle they can be, instead of strong melodies. I know he must have used many machines to produce his pathetic little noises (let's compare to the work of any pro in Sfx, I doubt the ones that dared to put forward the word 'original' would boast about their descrition). Minimalism could have been applied to its composition as well, e.g. via his overused loops. But I doubt he's a musician, in a classical sense of the word ; almost all the DJs are not (the rare and best ones may become composers themselves, and it's better with me : I dislike cockroaches that go round in circles and make us crazy or always more poorer musically, by ripping each other, and facilitating the disposable tunes). Perhaps is he a researcher? I'm unsure ; as he supposedly lives in Paris, he must know the great Ircam. But you know, how many Parisians climbed the Eiffel Tower ? What I heard from these samples, I'm afraid, is someone stuck like by frost to the past century, probably to fit a niche of nostalgic people crying on their lost youth and ingenuousness. I don't know about his actual motivations, preferences and reasons of immobility in his timid style (I'm talking about the result, not the means), but he sounds terribly sad, in his work, or at trying to control everything, like everybody seem to describe him. IMO, his musics, aesthetically speaking, are not better than any good computer-generated 'music'. His method to avoid a complete noise is, as ** short ** as I can see, the repetition, mainly. I need more free samples to see whether it's as interesting as it's written, about his precision, or his elaborated rythmics. Yes, it's clean, but so empty ! I love harmonics, contrasts, surprise, life. And I'm not the only one. Dull people, or pseudo-scientific ones, how boring ! Yes, I mix the 'music' and its 'musician', because he deserves it a lot from his obstination. Why so many 'little something', 'tiny that', 'nano sound I know since decades but why alone it's so laaame' ? It's the contrary of the power, of joy. I really hope there's some mathematical thingamajig I missed to enlighten me, will you ? You know what, the very first tracks made me think of the Seti. Let's record a pulsar, and wait till the arrival of a comet ; eat a bag of crisps, and wait for the burp, and the fart, voilà ! you've got the ultimate orchestration worth universal and eternal celebrity and wealth. If you enjoy ambient music, my OEM PC was bundled with the Magix Music Maker 2013 trash. Another ready-made way of thinking, I'm afraid. So, please again, where are the bindings with the micro fonts ? Mine are neither blurred with interference, nor randomized or virtual shapes : I use the Unicode charts as an portrait that I try to reduce like a monk ; simple, yet difficult like that. You see, you'll have a lot to teach me about this Japanese maniac ; I'll do my best to be a good student. :-)
Comment by dpla 11th march 2013
WOOW! I crown dpla the Official Master Of Long Comments.

And I agree with you about the music. I like music that actually has a melody, not the white noise and crappy sfx. Modern music, like heavy metal, just seems dumb how it just loops white noise, crappy sfx, and a random guy singing the undecipherable language of heavy metal music.
Comment by Noah F. Ross (winty5) 11th march 2013
You talk about Ryoji Ikeda as someone who would criticize a microfont not knowing the recognition of letters is not the real goal and saying : i also can myself put 211 squares and rectangles in 2 mns. The same critics i myself received from people who think a "real" font must ressemble Helvetica to be validated as a font, and believe they could do my "messy" things in 5 mn when sometimes it took 3 years to me. I thought you were more open minded and could percieve the extreme subtility of Ikeda's work because i thought the infinitesimal esthetic is what you seek to find, create and discuss here as he is. I also love melody, but then i listen to something else, as i also love beautifully cleanly shaped font, but then i won't take a harshly distorted one which i also love in reference...
Comment by Abneurone Fluid Types 11th march 2013
winty5 — That was a big one, but if you added all will.i.om’s together, FS would likely explode. :-)
Comment by demonics 11th march 2013
No kidding. xP

@AFT: Agreed! I went to FS, much like you, to escape from the boring everyday Helvetica (yawn) and Times New Roman (zzzzzzzzzzz) Now almost every sans serif these days looks practically EXACTLY like Helvetica. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the work that went into those fonts, but why can't we start moving away from the boring Helvetica sans-serif idea? Why can't we make original fonts of our own design?

Yeah, yeah, that was a rant.
Comment by Noah F. Ross (winty5) 11th march 2013
Abneurone Fluid Types, I'm extremely serious when serious things are involved. My 2x2 (and perhaps forthcoming 1x2) micro font was a CONCEPT, NOT A FONT. Ikeda's work is a CONCEPT, NOT MUSIC. Basta.
Comment by dpla 11th march 2013
Now I'll release my real 3x3 micro font elsewhere, since except all FS related graphists - I mean in the micro stuff, please - cannot understand what is supposed to be a FONT : they are not cliparts ; they should be legible ; they should fit wordprocessors. Otherwise do work on AI & PS and debate with both of these communities about your fonts ; You'll be as offtopic as here.
Comment by dpla 11th march 2013
Typo : “except all ” = “almos all” of them. (There are a few valuable micro fonts here.)
Comment by dpla 11th march 2013
But Conceptual Art is also Art. And it seriously occupies dozens of artists since 1965, when Kosuth, Wiener, Art&Language, etc... put the basis.
Comment by Abneurone Fluid Types 11th march 2013
Lol! You guys teach me, too! :~)
Comment by William Leverette (will.i.ૐ) 11th march 2013
Great.
Comment by Ivy Meadows (Isaiah Garcia) 11th march 2013
Seriously, I have no idea what you guys are talking about... o.O

You guys have a great skill of English. Me as a foreigner can't understand all. But it looks an interesting topic :)
Comment by cablecomputer 12th march 2013
Don't worry Cablecomputer, English is my first language and I don't understand half of these somewhat esoteric discussions ;)
Comment by p2pnut 12th march 2013
BOOM !


« I thought you were more open minded and could percieve the extreme subtility of Ikeda's work »

Perhaps I'm not ; I cannot judge about myself. At least I hope I'm not what you thought I was anymore, so I'm glad you make me confirm it several lustra after my tastes went mature. I explain and share again. You may not have come into sound design (ADSR / LFO / sampling / tracking etc.) among your personal and very first experiments, to get what is one's evolution of tastes, or just specialization in this wide technophile field. With time, people can look for something different or fulfilling, limitate to or strengthen less styles, stop being curious (conceitedly, like I think is Ikeda about harmony - now I fell curious about his possible former, standard DJ remixes : length/reknown of activity, quality of musicality for the masses)… all exists and is necessary in human's LIFE. IMHO again, techniques are the mean (as a general rule), rarely the goal (see the previous social/psychological statement). Why/Because game… Why noises alone, and what are noises ? I have my own answers (BTW. this would lengthen insanely this post), so I don't need Ikeda's. If you didn't find them, most musicians think noise is unorganized (hence annoying). I'd say (intentionally limitating to) : music = noise + human mark ([brackets open] else birds and wind would be valid musicians, like poets claim - they can imagine a genius singing blackbird accompanied by howling wolves, accidentally modulated wind loops, repeated drop counterpoints etc., but as with Ikeda's simple studies, I can tell what is acceptable music, and what is inacceptable resemblance ; the same with fonts and their substitutes, I must repeat. The micro style cannot be the exception to the rule, or I need your detail. One miserable pixel does not make it a valid font, because I limitate my need, which is smart filtering, not dumb blinders. The same with music, and your nice invitation to learn or appreciate something I already know and cannot stand anylonger [brackets closed]). There are plenty of studies available on this (sometimes faint) difference ; if you crawl the web, you'll end up e.g. on the 'Noise music' page of En.Wikipedia.org. On that page, you can grab a nightmare list of most of the most terrible sound experimenters, beautiful chords repelled zombies, bleeding ears suckers I know and I don't wanna know… I quote Wikipedia : « Ianns Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Helmut Lachenmann, Cornelius Cardew, Theatre of Eternal Music, Rhys Chatham, *** Ryoji Ikeda ***, Survival Research Laboratories, Whitehouse, Cabaret Voltaire, Psychic TV, Blackhouse, Jean Tinguely […] industrial, industrial techno, lo-fi music, black metal, sludge metal and glitch music ». Of course, I cannot enjoy their products [I am/was into chip muzak, the only valuable and compatible stuff with all big pixelz gfx, believe me], disregarding the value - sometimes cultural - of their non-music specific work. So, Ikeda's family, i.e. ACIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiD dope, dodecaphonism horror, “child-1s”hhhhhhhhh attempts and so on, that's what you call “extreme subtility”, am I right ? Or just his own stuff ? Perhaps only his installs ? Let me understand. Because I prefer being narrow-minded than sick, by preserving my nerves from insanely rotten music substitutes. I can detail this point : Youtube's aggressive ultra sharp beeps, you know, on some Ikeda's footage, are nothing but attacks to anyone's eardrums. And I am more than authorized to zap the vid, skip the 'keda. Paying to see a boring install (I can compare with the demoscene ; he/his scenographers should learn from them), losing decibels and gaining tinnitus forever, pertain to masochism. The same by paying for a CD (or whatever medium) containing sounds that we already know individually for a long time. (I can add references - and Ikeda has some too, as a noise DJ). The precision in his work makes no difference, to stay on-topic.

While I was writing this message, I could listen a lot more to him thanks to Youtube. These free samples allowed me to reconsider my standpoint (as one between thousands of listeners, thus it's quite relative), which you did not help to. As I'm not stubborn, I tried to be positive in my listening. Unfortunately, the Youtube show was of no particular interest for me (and quite boring as a coder, even any demoscene familiar friend, IMO). I stay on my first feeling.

First, I disliked the visuals : they're in general made of more or less strict repetitions (hence of poverty/void - a lack of work/skill/ideas in this case, not just an artistic choice IMO), and they're not that minimal. Strict minimalism cannot afford multiplying the black and white patterns/objects as he does ; one element or pattern is enough I would say (else he could have created/showed off e.g. complex 3d installations, like sculptures made of the same object like other modern artists do very well). No, it's just definitely __poor__, not / more than minimalist, hence rather uninteresting for me ** yawn **. More detail on this essential notion further on about the sound. But I have to admit again : it may be new, even an introduction to people lacking the basic knowledge of old computing, audio tools, etc. (like 3d design, since I saw wireframe models too). Now I'm going to think you have these naïve eyes. It's not a reproach at all if you're not a lot into computing, like most of the typographers must be. But as a visual reference for you, I state that Ikeda is just popularizing tecchie images for the masses/sheeps (popularizer, that's my positive word for a boring video DJ…). Let's imagine now with humour what could be your guru : « -- Hey, baby, let's dance ! Baby, hay ! wake up ! -- Hhi ! the night club is downstairs ; you are at Mister Ryoji Ikeda's exhibition : “Bull#sh17”. Take a glass of plain Champagne, sit down, stop speakin, don't move, don't stink, be happy, waste your time, feel the Gray matter enter, blow your eyes and feel your ears sore as you fall into this marvefully refined psychedelic boredom of modern and elitist immobile frenzy… look at Mister Ryoji Ikeda : isn't he marveful ? Wowww ! I love him. I belong to him. I want to be his thaing ! We are in a new era, you know ! We are free. Forget the primitive tribes. Everything is just fine. I love black. I love white. Another black… white ! Ah ah ! Wow, it's so c o 0 1 ! more SM, DJ ! ». Here and there, we have a lame mix of pixelated (p)references (pixelized is my fave spelling), i.e. Space Invaders (from Japan, Ikeda's birth place - seen in a Youtube avatar, so why not many of Ikeda's fans), matrix (idem - a lot by him). And from Google Images, installations (esp. walls) of digits (e.g. as dominos, from Asia - maths inspiration), vectors and lines (Asian electronics), rows of lines (DNA/sectors alike : biology/computing), interference (maths/physics), sound diagrams (maths/physics + Asian components)… All in B&W, as if he had severe colour disabilities (?), since it looks like filtered by a monochrome monitor, or an old TV set. If the purpose of the absence or total desaturation is minimalism, again, it's not a lot. His work renders as __gray__ at distance, because of the (sometimes infinitely) repeated white elements (digits, dots, lines, rarely curves…) on a black background (or in the dark). And gray is not minimal (it's infinite, which can be either nothing, or everything). He could have used plain levels of gray (luminance) from the beginning, in order to multiply the possibilities of his boring visuals (esp. if he's color-blind). Conclusion at this stage : true minimalism would have been a single white or gray element. And where do we encounter such elemental studies, if not in science ? (E.g. in maths : the fractals - a niche that is already fulfilled, or a voluntary artistic omission ?) Ikeda, the scientific worker, DJ or MC/NP (Master of Ceremony and Nobel Prize). I'm not mocking, merely creating a character out of what you said he represented for you, and out of my experience of what he remixes/retrashes visually. Is he a graphist too ? I don't think so (not a representational artist at least). Because 'his' abstract art (rippings of) is close to ugly to me (like any lousy digital draft - yes, he's not Michelangelo carrying out this exercise). I remark that contemporary artists, when they fail to provoke an emotion (as Google thumbnails, he can't ; whereas others are mouse button magnets), all believe that enlarging their productions can transmute lead into gold. We know that the artists are penniless in general, so this desperate overused trick tests our sense of 'suckernessibility', or just our will of predigested cultural mass productions. Artists, with a capital A (not artisans), are neither commercials, nor showmen IMO (check these words out : they are at distinct pages in the dictionary, else let's call them e.g. 'artcomen'). I'm rather rational : at a greater scale, his B&W thing can look even worse IMO. E.g. with the same logic : an ugly stamp harms less than an ugly wallpaper ; the parallel with Ikeda's images enlarged from antique monitors, to the size of facades. The bigger, is not automatically the better (which cannot match the agents' opinion). But people should check his installs. Yes, everybody : do visit Ikeda's exhibs. But don't ask me to, I don't care about the //added// value (e.g. the immersion, where I'd prefer e.g. the dynamic Omnimax in 3D, even static classic frescos). Gimme the toy, not the wrapping ! BTW. Ikeda's installs should be amusing (his drawings are not to me, instead, like an austere void), at least I suppose such visuals may look funny to the digital newbies (if they're not epileptic). But if you had your own experiments, the fun could turn into annoyance, not necessarily into veneration. That's what I said in my previous post. And you took it badly, just because of my surrounding funny ornaments… You may have mixed the style and the content, IMO. Another opinion : excellent performers are no genius musicians, because it'd take at least two lives. That's why a single person cannot be as interesting as a worthwhile organizer, musician, searcher, and painter (of light mostly) taken individually… More difficult to understand : even the team couldn't be, since they spin their impact out, by mixing their activities, divided and shared in time and place. In other words, let's do one thing at a time, else it's pure loss of concentration. I don't mix entertainment with research, e.g. Lady Gaga and IRCAM (BTW. I've more listened to the popstar than to the research institute's, unfortunately, because of our way of living, but that's another story). Do you follow me ? Ikeda's shows are just amusing people. If you needed a source or knowledge on minimalism, not specifically pixels related, you can indeed see his visual work or appropriations as starting points to the aforesaid topics of interest, mostly of computing (a retro one for the blocky stuff, though such stuff are horrible nowadays, except in the loving eyes of nostalgic people like me - who can scent the business-minded imitations). Now, split his work, and evaluate the slices individually. That's what I did in my messages. He can evaluate my 2x2 denunciation font made in a few minutes (I experimented the FS GUI for the first time - great job, meek ! I thought it was vector-/outline-based), that's not the point. I have nothing against him ; he's doing his job, as much as he can. I just don't need him, unlike you I see. I need inspiring people (their creations), not transparent ones (their copies). I'm not making a living on stage by ripping the other's creation. I don't waste the current power worth of Japanese-restricted cities. I use a lot of colours if need be, so I don't try to make everybody feel a bit down from my releases. I am not participating into modern art speculation, and fine art depreciation. And so on. Public people need public comments, not only cash from admission tickets or granting cultural politics, else it's like another dictatorship that looms on the horizon, over this ocean of 'mediocracy'.

Second, the 'sawnd'. Not better IMO. I believe that if he were of any reference in this domain of creation, I would have already listened to his work (discarding his aforementioned family of rotten style), or seen his contribution to the tools I used. Does he work for a hardware company ; a genuine engineer ? Was he praised for his theories ; a genuine physicist ? None of these, I'm afraid. Is he a self-made man ? I don't know, but in general, DJs imitate each other ; it's a question of 'clientele'. Now about you. When someone is playing an instrument (his amusing hardware on stage, because it's all about childish game), don't you feel the need to experiment it by yourself (like children do instinctively) ? Don't you want to check if it's valuable by training yourself or by comparing with his own references (like grown-up do with effort) ? Or are you from this part of persons that get always impressed for nothing, as if he was a god of an unattainable light of knowledge ? The previous paragraph is clear about how the visuals must not interfere in my appreciation of (his) work (I state he tries to, else why not turning the lights off ? e.g. I'm not aware that he does it in the 2nd half of his events ; that would reflect self-confidence in the quality of his music, or sheer honesty). So, no surprise, I disliked his sound 'construction'. The lame repeated loops, especially : several seconds are enough, since it's the duration of most of his useless loops, and the length of his noisy information (noises, beeps etc.). In doing this, he complicates the message ; then it's not minimalism, another fake actually instead. It adds nothing except the DJ touch, which is here pointless to me, even frustrating about the aborted opportunities. If you need to listen to, even to see what is minimalism, that got utterly mature (from the classical music lineage) once Mastered (and not djS[acrilege] rebastered) by a very inspiring artist and designer (i.e. by a valid and immortal musical architect, not a demolition worker and ripper from the evanescent noise music company - cf. the state of genius you gave to your noise-/buzzmaker human machine), you can for instance jump to videokaox66's playlist favorite on Youtube (this user enjoys Ikeda too - perhaps the same with you) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATbMw6X3T40&list=PL119430C2CDA2DB39 … I dared to say it's minimalism because the single element involved (the sound form, or sample basically) is nothing more than a brick of information ; Ikeda, in his lame loops (I can detail later why it's so bad - DJs limitations), has nothing to do with this way of building a serious music (let's say an elaborated one, I'm not spiteful), from which I owe a lot, in electronic music, micro fonts etc. Minimalism is not a new word for looping a sound effect. If you thought so, I can't agree. No, if one loops a noise, it's poor. And I love looking a beautiful artwork, more than empty ones, as if the zen commercial trend emptied the baroque lover of you ! The only times I could feel such a slight will in Ikeda, it was by underlaying pitifully a ripped, standard music foil to his admittedly useless 'notes'. As elements can be assembled, JS Bach's work is nothing less than science, and harmony is what is lacking Ikeda, I repeat, again and again. I love experimenters, but don't make them musicians ! I tried myself : my listeners were divided into the ones that somehow insulted me because they expected pretty and clean sounds (all the consensual and boring soup I couldn't stand anylonger - fast tracking plus easy listening made people's tastes uniform with time), while all the specialists of the genre praised the quality and originality of my work (which, yes, sounded lousy, but it was intentional in a few parts, and you know, when one dislikes, one generalizes easily, and 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' to avoid any matter of conscience). So I understand Ikeda (and my critics can be of the same nature if unfounded - I left a lot of interrogation marks about him).


« But Conceptual Art is also Art »

100 % OK. I don't need anyone to meet my tastes of academic drawings preferences. (One can be eclectic.) I just stated that Ikeda's work, I know very well, not him, what he copies. BTW. if all the experimenters (call them modern artists if you want) were researchers, this world would look like Gotham City (you know : B&W, and a cool asylum).



@demonics : meek won't blame me, hopefully !
@winty5 : still agreed, hopefully !
@will.i.? : puzzling pseudo, can you explain it to me, hopefully !
@Isaiah Garcia : what is great ? I'm trying to put an end to this **** thread, hopefully !
@cablecomputer : it's all about retro style : where inspiration can be found ? not in Ikeda's hopefully ! (My current posts took me zillions of cheats via online dictionaries hopefully ! (it's not interesting, hopefully !))
@p2pnut : can't understand myself after a single proofreading, as a non native English-speaking grids/lines/pixels filler, hopefully !
@Abneurone Fluid Types : still there, hopefully !
@myself (bad cerebral hemisphere) : sorry, I can temper this concept of annoying posts, hopefully !
@myself (good cerebral hemisphere) : no, come on ! keep on destroying their eyesight ; they're nearsighted micro font freaks ! and they saw children up, before replicating the scene on their screens as web shared trophies, you know that ! save the innocent !
Comment by dpla 12th march 2013
PS. When I scroll this post down, I like the way it looks like Ikeda's work… (Am I a DJ, after all ?)
Comment by dpla 12th march 2013
Out of service avatar ?

Edit : OK, thank you Admin !
Comment by dpla 12th march 2013
I now crown dpla the Official Emperor Of Long Comments! (will.i.om is the Official King Of Long Comments)
Comment by Noah F. Ross (winty5) 12th march 2013
@cablecomputer: Heh, i'm 10 years old, and not a very good english student so then we're equal. :)
Comment by Noah F. Ross (winty5) 12th march 2013
"Now I'm going to think you have these naïve eyes." I think you're absolutely right, and that's the reason why i think your contribution here could be of great interest and your contribution could be valuable. So please continue to share your "macro" typographic work even if only a few people could receive it as it deserves. I myself have much difficulties to make understand my own approach here. But with time, step by step, more people can get the main part of it, i think.
I'm sorry to have insisted about IKEDA, this is because it had a great importance for meabout 10-15 years ago as the perfect canalizer "naively" i admit, of the ultra clean pseudo scientific minimalistic sensation put in sounds and global esthetic to counterbalance the ultrabaroque distorting feel that naturally "fires" my brain to sometimes a dangerous excess. I must also say that these last years Ikeda and such have been replaced for me in this role by the ambient/drone/sleep scene... So all my apologies from someone which knows nothing at all about computing but to which the global esthetic feel of it is very important as an artist.
Comment by Abneurone Fluid Types 12th march 2013
@Cable, P2P, Winty, the funny part of it is that both dpla and me are french and we discuss here for days only in english !
Comment by Abneurone Fluid Types 12th march 2013
@AFT: that's the fun of a 'foreign language' group ;)
I wonder how many people from different languages/countries are meeting in FS ?!
Comment by Aeolien 12th march 2013
@all : First off, thank you if you could read at least a single line of my 'highway encounters' (a hidden reference) !

@Abneurone Fluid Types : sorry about the length of this post again. « naïve » : Oh, sh** ! I should'nt have used that hurting word, my apologies ! I don't need your apologies for myself, but I accept them sincerely. When people don't have the practice, how can we explain them it's real, or fake ? Then, that was a real difficulty for me, and as a translation, moreover… Since I enjoy the challenges, you see, I got ready (but sooo painful). That was the same when I started thinking a 3x4 font could not be feasible. It was a long time, as like a lot of FSs do now, I only had the uppercase. Impossible, really ? (I leave apart other 'unfeasible' things I could code.) Next I was amazed to see how many detailed characters I could redo by hand (with the logic in mind of course - 2x2, even 1x2 are nothing without it). About Ikeda's work, well, I think I said everything. It's cool stuff, even very soft (perhaps nice, I don't know) from the way he masters his controls, except when he wakes up the sleeping listeners by a blow in our eardrums. I did the same in my trackings (I may release them as ** official ** MP3, since the world must know that the horrible list of experimenters is not as short as in Wikipedia) I wonder if any old school friend would be interested in Ikeda's references of visuals, or in his supposedly personal sounds. But if you need to, I can submit a list of a lot of his references, from the playlist of your choice. Of course, if he's ripping his friends of the Noise music scene, I wouldn't be able to say it was a tribute. All I know, about his work, is machines from the museums, their sounds, their pixels, and an evolving list of programs and effects that any demo maker has used. I'm retired from this dead scene for a long time, and I won't post my pseudo. There are plenty of such great people that are now professionals, but I state that none of them would see Ikeda's work as serious. It's entertaining and new to the new generations. I just don't want him, nobody, to make them decide or let think what is « future of art », esp. when it's the contrary ! The retro flavour he used (though I think he does not limit to this reference, he's just looking for B&W patterns…), it effectively belongs to the past (when he was a child, electronics was emerging, the city got filled with new little sounds ; this must have impacted him). BTW. there's not a lot of pixelation in Ikeda's visuals. What is of the most interest for you ? (based on Google Images.) Now, OK, I'll share what I know. (And I know almost nothing about FS.) I'll do what I wrote in my private invitation, at least to be able to post my 3x3 font (3x4 later) in a context that makes sense. Your comment about Ikeda is interesting, even puzzling about « ultrabaroque distorting feel ». Can you make it clearer ? I think I know what is/was baroque in classical art, like JS Bach's link above (pertaining to music only), but 'ultrabaroque'… Baroque is rather extreme, inherently, for its details and repetition, the absence of blanks. Is 'distorting' bound to 'baroque' in any way, or is it just 'distorting feel' alone ? Because in the 1st case, you'd imagine a 'distorted baroque', which I'd be glad to see if it's of any aesthetic value (it may look like a doodle, from the disintegration of its patterns), and in the 2nd one, it just makes you sick, which is no good… Micro font stuff are safe… hopefully !-) IMHO you don't have to feel ashamed to have insisted so much about this artist (performer/experimenter I'd say), it just made me think you were bewitched by him, with no possibility to check his sources anylonger. (Every DJ has some, and every V-DJ the double of it.) « my apologies from someone which » : great rhetorical imagination. Is is voluntary ? No, it isn't. But that'd have been embarrassing for me, as I don't want anyone swallow one's pride of drawing/building micro stuff. « only a few people could receive it as it deserves » : so yes, we are on the same boat, let's try not to kill ourselves, and promote this style. The only difference with me today, it's the meager interest in the look, compared to the major importance of the usability.

@winty5 : gimme the large crown and all the you gold you have ! (I need cash from melted gold !)

@winty5 : I thought you were kidding in your Zips ; you're skilled !

@Abneurone Fluid Types (again) : shh! that would limit the searches for angry people I owe a lot of disquettes for decades on this demoscene !

@Aeolien : meek's logs could be unveiled one day, you're right… FS உள்ள அனைவருக்கும் வணக்கம்!
Comment by dpla 12th march 2013
** NEWS **

I'm busy currently on : my 3x3 font (complete ASCII and more, as legible as it can be at that small size, and with correct proportions) ; its FontForge TTF version ; the website that will showcase it (a forum to make it a standard) ; my own and new pixel art stuff (to help people read/draw between the pixels) ; even sub-pixel fonts (in a lame RGB Png format at the moment) ; a Xlsx file (it lists the 512 glyphs, describes pretty well what is an invalid character from a coding standpoint, and helps encode/output images etc.) ; soundchip musics (20 years after I composed them, since they're minimalist in the style too) ; hopefully a video for the first release of my 3x3 font (featuring one of my aforementioned old musics, before conversion and edition)… and you get the big multimedia task.

I'll reply to your messages on your FontStruct pages ASAP, don't worry. Next, once the forum is open, I may ask for your contributions/remarks, TIA. CYA
Comment by dpla 9th april 2013
** NEWS **

2x4 font ready :-)

See my comment in CMunk's 'Way too small' font (since his bold work inspired me this forthcoming and new record…) :
http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/298592
Comment by dpla 4th may 2013
** NEWS **

'bin*x*grid' series of micro 'fonts' released on FS…
Get the 3x3 tutorial from there :
http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/bin3x3grid_safe

Here is a 2x2 tutorial :
http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/bin2x2grid_rough


One day, I may share some 'Bin*x*font' on FS as well… :-)
Comment by dpla 8th may 2013

** NEWS **

Actually, only one subset of US-ASCII is complete and valid as 2x2 (I'll show you when I can release my typeface, or some protected sample [I'm still actively on this project]). Of course, this is not true with the design I chose in this "smallest-complete-2x2" joke (= a filler text fake font).

Comment by dpla 13th january 2018

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