Abstract
Computational typography and the infinite knowable.
In Stanley Kubrick’s science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a mysterious monolith of unknown origin appears at various points in history. Each time humans make contact with the monolith they appear to make evolutionary and technological advances, from acquiring the ability to use simple tools to exploring the outer reaches of the galaxy.
Prior to the widespread use of computers, the number of characters, punctuation and symbols in a writing system were limited by the ability of the scribe or artisan. Through the invention of movable typography these typefaces became more efficient and standardized. In virtual space, however, the number of glyphs in a font are now only limited by the storage and computational capacity of the device and software on which it is displayed. Today, the Unicode consortium supports fonts for a growing number of languages, with any single font now able to contain over 144,000 glyphs.
Through a series of algorithmically made typefaces, beginning with “Monolith”, we can imagine a universal font with hundreds of thousands of glyphs, and we begin to question what new potential such a font may hold for humans. Could such a font function like the monolith in Kubrick’s film?
Through the project “Monolith” we use computational typography to explore the limits of writing systems, to reflect on what may lie beyond language, in what we call “the infinite knowable”.
