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The Plastic Arts
Opening Tuesday, September 7 and running through October 23, 2010
at Gallery 400, University of Illinois Chicago
Curated by Anthony Elms
Perhaps better imagined as the GHOST that comes in advance of a particular lettershape, a MetaFont character is defined only by a set of equations rather than hard-coded coordinates and outline shapes. . . . So it is then possible to treat parameters such as aspect ratio, slant, stroke width, serif size, (curlyness!?) and so on as abstracted input values that can change in each glyph definition, creating not a set of set letters, but instead a set of set parameters, any of which can be changed each time the font is rendered. By changing the value at one location in the MetaFont file, a consistent change is produced throughout the entire font. The resulting collection of glyph definitions and input parameters is not then a single font, but instead, a meta-font. Let’s try that again. . . . You may recall from earlier that MetaFont is both a language and its own interpreter. What does that mean?
The Plastic Arts is made as a demonstration room for the recently designed Meta-the-difference-between-the-two-Font font and produced as vinyl wall texts.
