Every Icon >>
John F. Simon, Jr.
An inexhaustible 32x32 grid explores both the void and saturation of
iconographic imagery with Every Icon.
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||| HIAFF 3.0 | university of colorado | department of art and art history | digital arts area | in conjunction with alt-x | atlas | blurr
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[Intro] John F. Simon's Every Icon is a Java Applet programmed to run through every
permutation of a 32x32 monochromatic grid to produce every possible image,
beginning with entirely white and progressing to entirely black. At one point,
Simon's creation will resemble a Nike Swoosh, the Mona Lisa or a tube of
toothpaste. Every Icon shifts away from one image as art, to every image as
art, but it will be a long time until all these images are revealed. It took
1.36 years for the top line to complete, but as it progesses it requires an
exponentially longer period for the variations to finish. Simon will not live
to see its completion, nor will his grandchildren. In fact, it will take
several hundred trillion years to be realized. The concept of having one
artifice represent all images is what makes Every Icon a success, but Simon
also shuns the image entirely by programming its unrealizable longevity.
Simon's concept of image is a self-negating and fleeting montage of
monochromism.
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