PASADENA, CALIF.- What does it mean to create when the relationship between humans and algorithms is constantly shifting?
The commercialization and distribution of personal computers and software beginning in the 1970s, paved the way for the significant advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence the world is currently experiencing. These algorithmic technologies have rapidly transformed the possibilities of typography, visual communication, and culture, both aesthetically and systematically.
An algorithm is a sequence of instructions or parameters that automate a process to create a generative system. Digital Witness: Algorithmic Spaces for Typography and Language is an exhibition that explores how collaborating with computers through algorithmic thinking and computational processes are influencing typography and language. The work featured in the exhibition highlights how creativity has evolved into a dialogue between humans and machines.
In conjunction with Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s concurrent exhibition, Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film, which examines the broader influence of image manipulation tools, this satellite section at the HMCT Gallery focuses on typographical generative processes. It is a space where the artists’ input and interaction with their tools of choice are as integral and unique as the visual output.
The exhibition features the work of Vera Van de Seyp, Martín Azambuja, Andrea Trabucco-Campos, Allison Parrish, Michael Schmitz, and Anne-Dauphine Borione (aka Daytona Mess).
Michael Schmitz’s genoTyp is a program developed 20 years ago that allows the computer to “breed” typefaces through a process that mimics biological genetic rules. Allison Parrish’s work utilizes machine learning to create computational poetry, addressing “the unusual phenomena that blossom when language and computers meet.” Vera Van de Seyp explores generative design tools, computational typography, and artificial intelligence to speculate where these might lead graphic designers and typographers. Artificial Typography by Andrea Trabucco-Campos and Martín Azambuja responds to the rapid integration of AI into mainstream culture via the introduction of AI engine Midjourney in 2023, exploring letterforms as if created by iconic modernist and classical artists. Anne-Dauphine Borione’s variable type experiments, created in the font design software Glyphs, incorporate code solutions from ChatGPT to realize complex yet precise ideas that shift in and out of legibility.
Digital Witness: Algorithmic Spaces for Typography and Language is presented in conjunction with Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film, on view at LACMA from November 24, 2024, through July 13, 202
