Origin/Anurous

Origin/Anurous is a short dynamic text written with complex computational type. In general, typefaces are meticulously sculpted by the hands of typographers with the intention (or assumption) that the glyphs they create will rest, statically, in print or on screen. The notion of a static type is embedded in the technology underlying the process of digital type design, facilitating certain uses but limiting others. One of the most interesting aspect of working with digital type, as some researchers have presented beautifully in the last decades, is the capacity to define and transform the most basic elements that form digital glyphs.

Two distinct approaches form the basis of computational typographic experimentation. On the one hand, artists and researchers can work from the ground up, redefining the letterform with properties that provide a level of control adapted to specific design situations. On the other hand, text written with complex digital type can exploit certain characteristic of common typographic technology to create interesting and unusual effects.

Origin/Anurous, an example of the latter, extracts the outline of a font, but frees itself from the common rasterizer used to render vector-based glyphs, top to bottom, line by line, onto the screen. Instead, the text is revealed by controlling the graphical traces and the positive and negative spaces generated by several dynamic particles. The result emerges from the interplay between algorithms controlling the movement and graphical properties of the particles, and a writing-design process that seeks to exploit and fine-tune the qualities produced by the code.

Origin/Anurous is part of a larger research/creation program involving a sustained inquiry
into how creative text-based work is being transformed within digital media. The project is centrally concerned with conceptual development articulating an analysis of how writing in programmable media extends the rich history of theoretical, conceptual and creative engagement with the materiality of text to understand the expressive consequences as language expanded from oral transmission to the printed page, and from there to the digital environment; with artistic content, specifically the creation of new forms of language-based expression and their relationship to larger societal structures of communication; and with technical innovation, specifically the researching of new font formats and related composition tools that are digitally native, integrating interactivity, variability, computation and network connectivity in ways that font formats designed for print culture cannot.


Bruno Nadeau (Canada)

Bruno Nadeau is a computation artist with a special interest for technologies to thinker with, unusual interactive interfaces, and digital typography. His interactive artwork has been shown in new media art galleries like Oboro in Montréal and the Beall Center for Arts and Technology in Irvine. His publications have been presented as part of international conferences such as Digital Arts and Culture (DAC) and Tangible and Embedded Interactions(TEI). Bruno received a M.S. in Information and Computer Sciences with a concentration in Arts, Computation and Engineering (ACE) from UC Irvine, and holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science with a major in Computation Arts from Concordia University in Montréal.

http://www.brunonadeau.com