Lady reading haiku to an elephant

[William Overington]

 

William

 

 

[William Overington]

@AdamStanislav

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/font0200.htm

William

 

[William Overington]

Lady M greets the horse L

 

 

William

 

[AdamStanislav]

7 hours ago, William Overington said:

@AdamStanislav

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/font0200.htm

William

 

I imagine linking to a whole bunch of fonts is supposed to tell me something in your mind, but I am not a mind reader, only a retired psychologist, and have no idea what you are trying to say. Sorry.

[William Overington]

10 hours ago, AdamStanislav said:

I imagine linking to a whole bunch of fonts is supposed to tell me something in your mind, but I am not a mind reader, only a retired psychologist, and have no idea what you are trying to say. Sorry.

The linked page includes the following.

> 

----

The Alphabet Synthesis Machine is an interactive art work at http://alphabet.tmema.org on the web, created for Art21 and PBS by Golan Levin with Jonathan Feinberg and Cassidy Curtis.

There are available for free download from this present webspace a number of fonts.

These fonts, produced by William Overington using the Alphabet Synthesis Machine, are available for free download from this webspace by kind permission of Mr Golan Levin.

All of these fonts contain abstract characters which can be accessed using the letters A to Z and a to z. Each font also contains digits and punctuation, which are the same for every font produced using The Alphabet Synthesis Machine.

----

Later on the same page is the following.

> 

LADY_M_G.TTF, Lady_M_greets_the_horse_L

If one tries these in WordPad in blue at a 300 point size, the sequence ML produces the painting "Lady M greets the horse L" and the sequence WZ produces the painting "Lady reading haiku to an elephant" on the screen.

----

There are various items about the Alphabet Synthesis Machine on the web.

http://www.flong.com/archive/projects/alphabet/index.html

I learned of the Alphabet Synthesis Machine from the following mailing list post

https://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2002-m02/0541.html

I posted in the thread.

https://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2002-m03/0128.html

The link in that post no longer exists, yet the

Pools of glass in ceramic

font is available from the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/font0100.htm

(By the way, please do not use the email address from which I wrote that post. It still exists but is typically full of spam so a message would be very unlikely to get through.)

To use the Alphabet Synthesis Machine an end user would first draw on screen a shape. So it could be a circle, or a square and so on, and then the machine could be run and it iterated 52 glyphs influenced by that glyph and some user set controls if I remember correctly.

The end user can stop the machine whenever and inspect the glyphs. The end user can then save the font, giving it a name. So i used to look at the glyphs and decide upon a name for the font.

Sometimes the glyphs produced just looked like abstract designs, yet sometimes the image seemed to have the look of something.

Such as the lady, as if reading a book. But what was in the book? Maybe haiku.

Another glyph had a part that reminded me of the trunk of an elephant.

Then a lady as if extending her hand for it to be kissed in a greeting.

Then that glyph reminded me of a horse.

In one font, the look of the glyph encoded as a letter G looked to me like two cranes, as in cranes that are birds. But what else? The part at the left reminded me of a decorative arch in a Japanese garden. And behind the cranes, a roundish shape. Maybe the moon. Yet not circular, so maybe a gibbous moon.

 

Cranes before a gibbous moon

 

That is an image that I produced in 2021. I got it printed as a 7 inch by 5 inch portrait format greetings card using the Papier online facility and after I received it I framed it in a large oak effect frame, sold as for a 10 inch by 8 inch photograph, that I had gotten delivered by Tesco with my grocery.

I was looking at the web yesterday evening and apparently there is a name for the general phenomenon of imagining patterns in random data, and another name as a subset where the data is an image.

William

 

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

The Alphabet Synthesis Machine is an interactive art work at http://alphabet.tmema.org on the web, created for Art21 and PBS by Golan Levin with Jonathan Feinberg and Cassidy Curtis.

Following this link goes to a "dead" page, with the message "alphabetsynthesis.com expired on 01/31/2022 and is pending renewal or deletion".

[William Overington]

3 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

Following this link goes to a "dead" page, with the message "alphabetsynthesis.com expired on 01/31/2022 and is pending renewal or deletion".

Alas, yes.

I transcribed what I wrote in 2002.

William

 

[PaulEC]

Of course, it is possible that this web page is itself a work of art!

"Robert Rauschenberg was invited to take part in the group exhibition Les 41 présentent Iris Clert [or 41 Portraits of Iris Clert] for the inauguration of Galerie Iris Clert’s new exhibition space in Paris in 1961. Calvin Tomkins reports that Rauschenberg, who was in Sweden for the installation of another exhibition at the time, forgot to make a portrait as promised. At the last minute he sent the telegram stating “THIS IS A PORTRAIT OF IRIS CLERT IF I SAY SO” for inclusion in the show. Rauschenberg’s purely conceptual contribution destabilizes all conventions of traditional portraiture, proclaiming identity as a subjective condition: unstable and at the whim of the speaker (or reader). The referent of the “I” in his text becomes ambiguous as each viewer reads the work. While Rauschenberg’s absurd gesture follows in the Neo-Dada spirit of the time, it simultaneously presages the trend toward emphasizing the conceptual in art that would come to the fore later in the decade." (Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick)

[William Overington]

3 hours ago, PaulEC said:

Of course, it is possible that this web page is itself a work of art!

That is an interesting idea.

At the moment of writing this post, the first post in this thread has three posted reactions, one 'Like', from @Richard Fillebrownand two 'Confused', one from @AdamStanislavand one from @jmwellborn .

Also @Richard Fillebrownhas given a 'Like' to the second image that is in the thread.

Thus far the thread has had 180 views.

I don't know how that works. Is it the number of people who have viewed the thread or is it that if someone looks at the thread several times, does each look count separately, or only count separately if there is another post between two views, or something else?

William

 

 

 

 

[Alfred]

17 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Thus far the thread has had 180 views.

I don't know how that works. Is it the number of people who have viewed the thread or is it that if someone looks at the thread several times, does each look count separately, or only count separately if there is another post between two views, or something else?

I just viewed the ‘Share your work’ index page, where I saw a count of 185 views for this thread. After clicking through to the current page, closing the browser tab and revisiting the index page, I found that the view count for the thread had risen to 186.

[William Overington]

35 minutes ago, William Overington said:

At the moment of writing this post, the first post in this thread has three posted reactions, ...

The situation has now changed!

William

 

[AdamStanislav]

7 hours ago, William Overington said:

The linked page includes the following.

I wish the forum had a TLDR button.

[William Overington]

Here is an A4 size PDF version of the Lady reading haiku to an elephant picture.

This picture is landscape format.

The file has no bleed area.

The file is intended for printing using a printer attached to a home computer. The print can be framed in an A4 certificate frame if readers so choose.

William

 

Lady_reading_haiku_to_an_elephant_A4.pdf

[William Overington]

Here is an A4 size PDF version of the Lady M greets the horse L picture.

This picture is landscape format.

The file has no bleed area.

The file is intended for printing using a printer attached to a home computer. The print can be framed in an A4 certificate frame if readers so choose.

William

 

 

Lady_M_greets_the_horse_L_A4.pdf

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, William Overington said:

The file has no bleed area.

Why is that noteworthy, William? No picture with a plain white background needs a bleed area.

12 minutes ago, William Overington said:

The file is intended for printing using a printer attached to a home computer.

Again, why is that noteworthy? The same file could be used for printing via a commercial printing service, if necessary after exporting to PDF with printers’ marks.

[William Overington]

15 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Why is that noteworthy, William? No picture with a plain white background needs a bleed area.

If a print were required from a printer such as Viking virtual print house there will need to be a bleed area at print time. Now, they could add one automatically, but would that involve scaling my PDF or placing it onto a white background? So if I were trying to get a print from them I would upload a version with a bleed area, for completeness

15 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Again, why is that noteworthy? The same file could be used for printing via a commercial printing service, if necessary after exporting to PDF with printers’ marks.

I was not sure which type of PDF to export, so I used digital high quality.

If, hypothetically, this picture were to be printed as top quality art printing, I do not know which type of PDF to use.

So I added the note so as to indicate the possible limitations of the output.

I have produced these PDFs in case, in hope I suppose, that some readers who have a printer may want to produce a print and display it, possibly, but not necessarily, in a frame.

If there is interest I would try to produce versions for paper size(s) used by American size paper, but I have not done so at this time as I am unsure of which size or sizes to use. I am aware that Affinity Designer has some of them available as preset sizes.

William

 

[William Overington]

Here is an A4 size PDF version of the Cranes before a gibbous moon picture.

This picture is portrait format.

The file has no bleed area.

The file is intended for printing using a printer attached to a home computer. The print can be framed in an A4 certificate frame if readers so choose.

William

Cranes_before_a_gibbous_moon_A4.pdf

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

If there is interest I would try to produce versions for paper size(s) used by American size paper, but I have not done so at this time as I am unsure of which size or sizes to use.

A4 is 297 mm × 210 mm, or approximately 11.69″ × 8.27″. US Letter paper is 11″ × 8.5″.

[William Overington]

3 hours ago, Alfred said:

A4 is 297 mm × 210 mm, or approximately 11.69″ × 8.27″. US Letter paper is 11″ × 8.5″.

I have now produced a Letter size PDF document.

I started with a copy of the A4 afdesign file and then changed the size to Letter.

This rescaled the font from 450 point to 462.6 point.

I changed it to 450 point so that the image produced would be the same size as for the A4 version.

William

 

 

Lady_reading_haiku_to_an_elephant_Letter.pdf

[William Overington]

Please know that the download figures for the PDF documents each include one from me, as I always check the upload.

Also, the download figure includes not only downloads but also online views.

So unless anyone says I will not know if anyone has downloaded any of the files and produced a print.

I don't need to know, but if anyone does send me a private message about having done so I will treat that information as private and confidential.

In England one can readily buy frames, frames without a mount, for A4 as it is a size widely used for examination certificates.

Can someone in the USA readily buy a frame for Letter size please?

I have found that frame sizes in England are typically for the sizes of photographs in the old Imperial units, and A4..

Thus 6 inches by 4 inches, 7 inches by 5 inches, 10 inches by 8 inches, and A4.

I can get various frames i those sizes delivered with my grocery.

Ready-made larger fames may be readily available from specialist shops.

I have yet to find an A5 frame advertised anywhere, even though a lot of high quality greetings cards are A5 size.

A5 is an interesting size for a greetings card as it seems that the size limit for a letter sent by Royal Mail, that is the maximum size and thickness such that a letter is not classed as a Large Letter that needs higher postage, may have been set to the size that it has been set so that an A5 greetings card in its enveople is not regarded as a Large Letter. 

.William

 

[Alfred]

28 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I started with a copy of the A4 afdesign file and then changed the size to Letter.

This rescaled the font from 450 point to 462.6 point.

If you choose the ‘Canvas’ option instead of the ‘Document’ option when using the ‘Resize…’ command in Affinity Designer, the elements in the design will not be rescaled.

[Alfred]

13 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I have yet to find an A5 frame advertised anywhere, even though a lot of high quality greetings cards are A5 size.

Try here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/market/a5_frame

[William Overington]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

If you choose the ‘Canvas’ option instead of the ‘Document’ option when using the ‘Resize…’ command in Affinity Designer, the elements in the design will not be rescaled.

I did not use a Resize command. I did not know that there is one.

I went to

Document Setup...

and changed from A4 to Letter

Everything scaled automatically.

I did not us the Anchor option to keep the text size unaltered, adjusting it manually afterwards, because I wante the text box to be scaled and located appropriately for the Letter size document.

William

 

Lady_M_greets_the_horse_Letter.pdf

[William Overington]

17 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I did not s the Anchor option to keep the text size unaltered, adjusting it manually afterwards, because I wante the text box to be scaled and located appropriately for the Letter size document.

However, I did use the Anchor facility for the Letter size version of Cranes before a gibbous moon, as it is portrait format and Letter is not as tall as A4 in portrait format and using Rescale reduces the size of the text.

William

 

Cranes_before_a_gibbous_moon_Letter.pdf

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, William Overington said:

I did not use a Resize command. I did not know that there is one.

Now that you know there is one, have you tried it?