Type and the Spirit of Our Times – Putting it all together & Evalutation

 

Using InDesign, I set my page up like this. The size is A3, with 5mm bleed and the rulers set at equal spacing.

I decided to keep the theme very plain for the zine, I wanted to present the ideas in a factual and almost clinical sort of way to reflect the ideas of precision and emotionlessness associated with machines. I used Futura Bold again for the headings, to keep it inline with the “Man & Machine” title pieces I did, and for the same reasons I used it on those. For the body, I used Courier New for the body text, as that is the font used in many coding programs so it’s instantly recognisable as that. I thought about using something else but the way the content is set out means it visually needed to be in Courier. I increased the tracking and leading no the body text slightly to make it lighter on the eye and I think the fonts work well together because of it. Futura really draws attention and then Courier is nice and easy to read. It has a good science-fiction feel to it. The images are placed centrally with a moderate space in between. The fact they are predominantly black means people will focus on that first, even though they’re always on the right hand page. This means they’ll look at that first, then backtrack to the explaining text on the left side of the spread. Having Machine on the front and Man on the back is something I think I should have done the other way round, after all the phrase goes that way. I like them place dead centre, but at the same time I think I should have experimented more first with other arrangements. Another idea could have been to make the back page black with “Machine” in white, to make it clearer where to start.

For the poster inside, I decided to ask the question I’ve been trying to answer all along, to get people to think and discuss it. I used the generative graphics circles as the background, and gave it a slight gradient to fade it out towards the quote. This works nicely, making the quote stand out more from the background than it did to begin with. I had to credit Asimov of course, and I also included the date the quote came from, to add a bit of a shock factor that people were thinking about this sort of thing back in 1981 – typically we think of robots and AI as modern; the future, but clearly it’s been around for longer than expected, so maybe the answer in a hundred years will be no, robots are not creative. Typesetting the quote, I used Futura again, and set the alignment to justified to make it clear that it’s a quote and to turn it into a block which counter balances the title question at the top, and the name at the bottom.

The Final Zine

Overall, I feel this project turned out okay. I definitely think I should have spent more time experimenting with type than working on Processing and generating ideas around my topic. My final piece is nice and clean, which I’m really happy with, but I just have a nagging feeling that I should have included something more, like the idea of the instructions and breaking rules that I thought about in the first two weeks.

Type and the Spirit of Our Times – Generative Typography

Following on from the work I did in Processing, I needed to get a way of using it to create a font or express something, to actually make typographic use of the generative images. I quite liked the idea of the different styles being representative of humans and robots – the circles look like fibres or connections in the brain, and where they overlap it looks like a messy ball of string. Compare this to the squares one, where everything looks systematic, like a city from above, or simply a circuit board. For a while I thought about programming something to make letter forms, but quickly found I’m not capable enough yet to do that!

After that, I quickly worked out that I could just crop some of the generative images into a pre-existing typeface and use that to make the visual comparison between man and machine.

So, I changed the code to produce much larger images, and these are the two I used in the end. I took them into photoshop and masked off an area in the Futura Bold font. I chose Futura because it’s Sans Serif and quite punchy, like Richard Long’s Type Landscape pieces. It’s also reflective of the work looking to the future, and how I’m trying to guess what might be possible in 100 years. I chose the words ‘Man’ and ‘Machine’ because it works as a phrase, as well as them being the most poignant words to sum up my project.

I think these turned out really well. They’re legible, and have the added depth of the generative graphics embedded in them. They sit well on a page when I tried it quickly, and you can kind of see it here with the whitespace framing them nicely. (even though they’re not the same size in this preview) I am most likely going to use these as the front and back covers of my zine, as they draw people in to the bold type, and then draw them in even more when you see what they’re made of.

Type and the Spirit of Our Times – Processing

The first time I’d ever used Processing was during the Digital Media project, so trying to make generative graphics was a good step up for me to learn how to use the program. I used the framework from what I’d learned before on how to set it up with

void setup()
{
 size(255,255); //(1748,2480);
 noStroke();

 //white rectangle
 fill(0);
 rect(0,0, width, height);

 //rectangle fill
 noFill();
 stroke(255,255,255);
}

After this I used the Processing website to look up various features on how to draw squares, circles and triangles. It all went a lot easier than I expected, triangles being the hardest to work out.

They all operate sort of similarly, where you put in the co-ordinates first and then the size after, so I used randomly generated numbers to produce different sized shapes each time.

I really like these; they look visually interesting, and show at a simple level what’s possible by machines today. I’ll use these images as the example of what can be done today, but by discussions in a tutorial, I need to find a way of using them typographically.

Type and the Spirit of Our Times -Richard Long

To help understand ways of using type expressively, I looked at Richard Long’s “Land Art” work.

http://www.thethirdray.com/conceptual-art/the-artist-and-the-land-richard-long/

His process was to walk a set route, and simply note down things he saw, heard, smelt and experienced. He sets it out like a poem, sometimes with an image in the background, sometimes just plain white. The font he uses is a modern sans serif typeface, in all caps. To me, that gives the impression of a very factual piece of writing, as if reading from a textbook. Then you read what it says and you understand that it’s his experience of moving though the landscape.

In this one he changes the format slightly by having the text run vertically down the side. The content is still virtually the same, title at the top, experiences taking centre stage and then a descriptive line to finish. He puts it on the right hand side as that’s where the eyes will move last, so it works in the same way as the first example. The type tracking is quite spaced out, and the leading even more so. This turns the type into an art piece, and makes it feel rooted to the page. You can see the title is as wide as all the content below it, and the descriptive line matches the height of the poem. The composition flows and is well balanced in that way.

 

From this, I’ve learned I don’t need to present huge amounts of information to make a piece work; I can use just a few words, make them big and bold, and as long as they’re typeset correctly they’ll work as an individual item. I think I’ll use sans serif in my work too, it’s modern and so is representative of the topic of machines and AI. It’s also more striking when used in such a bold manner, so will draw attention nicely.

Type and The Spirit Of Our Times – Week 3

 

I developed my idea further by thinking about ways that we can prove someone is human. I quite liked the idea of the robot being a repetitive machine compared to humans being creative and spontaneous. I decided it would be useful to get definitions of key topics within my research.

Creativity: The use of imagination to invent something.

Robot: A machine capable of carrying out actions of automatically.

AI: A computer that can match human intelligence.

Online, some sites use these ‘Captcha’ as a way of determining human from machine. The idea is that only a person can read it and type in the phrase, preventing bots from spamming websites with malicious comments or Denial of Service attacks that could shut it down. However, looking into this, there’s already AI that can beat these, according to this article from two years ago! http://www.gizmag.com/captcha-beating-ai/29559/

I moved on to the next idea of proving human-ness through creativity. This whole concept is about creativeness and whether machines can match or surpass us in coming up with original ideas and designs, so it makes sense to use that as a tool of determining who is really a person. I could lay out some areas where I get the reader to fill in the blanks, draw emotions, shade a picture with only one colour. Things to get the reader to think outside the box and not just systematically make something. Then again, I’m worried I might be getting too hung up on this idea of proving who the reader is, especially as I probably won’t be there in 100 years to see who’s looking at it!

Thinking more about those definitions, if a robot is creative, it surely must have some kind of AI, because it has to match human intelligence/ ability. For a machine to reach this state, it must either be made with that purpose, or break its rules. A truly creative program would have no rules, or at least have an understanding of rules but then not obey them. This links quite well to my previous idea of having instructions on each page, telling the reader to turn the next page and make it loop round – only humans or equally creative people would decide to ignore the instructions and open it up to find the poster inside.

Another aspect of this topic is the singularity:

The technological singularity is a hypothetical event related to the advent of artificial general intelligence (also known as “strong AI”).

So, this is the point where machines overtake humans in ability and, according to Terminator, will take over the world and destroy us all… yay! It makes sense though, that in order for robots to be able to create things knowingly, they must greater or equal to us. Take a look at this quote from 1981 by Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer:

“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be…
This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”

― Isaac Asimov, Asimov on Science Fiction

I think maybe I need to focus more on what can be done now as opposed to trying to differentiate who my reader is. I could look at generative graphics and other sorts of art made by AI and machines.

Type and The Spirit of Our Times – First Two Weeks

The week began with an experimental way of coming up with ideas. Gabbi played us a video, but no one was allowed to look at the video, only listen. While it was playing I wrote down key words and drew some symbols that I thought represented what I could hear.

I found this to be a useful technique in producing ideas, as we often try to come up with a solution before we choose the question. This way, I can get distilled ideas, and use the key words as a starting point which isn’t too specific to restrict development and experimentation.

I then repeated the exercise at home, using this article on BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33868728

From this, I produced this brainstorm:

From this, I started getting ideas about repetition, and questioning what creativity actually is. I made a list of possible questions/ starting points and narrowed it down

This question is something to be asked in 100 years time, so I had to think what could change in that time. The one I chose in the end was something along the lines of “Do robots match humans in creativity?” I think it’s really interesting to see how popular culture has tackled this idea, with films like Blade Runner, Terminator and iRobot all making us think what could happen if robots became effectively sentient. If a robot is creating something, then who do we credit it to? The person who designed the program? Take ‘Processing’ for example, that can be used to make generative graphics, but we don’t attribute ownership to the app itself, we give that right to the programmer. Should the same apply to more advanced A.I.? That leads me to expect certain mass production of art and design in the future – what if someone taught a machine to be the perfect artist, continuously coming up with new ideas and executing them perfectly? Who would stand to profit and who would receive said profit? I can imagine a robot tirelessly working away on designing while its creator sits in their penthouse apartment laughing away.

I made some experimental type based on circuit boards (or rather my imagination of circuit boards, as I didn’t really use any reference material). I think this has turned out quite nicely, it has a unified style to it and is reasonably legible, but I stopped because I kind of realised they needed to be based on something real. I think I need to have another go though, using actual circuit boards to refer to. I could even isolate sections of the boards that look like type and photograph them. Another idea is to use programming languages, get a huge block of code and align the text in such a way that it look good. I’m imagining removing all paragraph breaks and having a big wall of code. Something suggested by my peers is to include secret messages, something that wouldn’t be picked up by machines, but humans would instantly see.

That brings me on to my next idea – proving someone is human or a robot. I don’t have the Voigt-Kampf detector from Blade Runner, so I’ll have to think of something else! On the internet, websites use ‘Captchas’ to test whether one is human. It uses a randomly chosen pair of scrawled words, usually very hard to read, and asks you to type it in. In actual fact, AI can already bypass this, so that won’t be any good proving you’re not a machine in future. – https://gigaom.com/2014/12/03/google-kills-captchas-with-new-ai-system/ Coming back to the original brainstorm, I wrote down the word ‘again’ a lot. This was because they were talking about robots working in factories and doing incredibly repetitive tasks that would probably bore humans to death. In my fold out poster, I could have instructions on each page, telling the reader to turn to the next page and then, back to the start. This means if someone were a machine which followed instructions, they would just keep going forever. To prove you’re human, you’d have to get bored or ignore the instructions, open the page and reveal the poster inside, proving your creativity

!