8.1 Commentary - Trudy Painter
I liked this text as a supplement to the font reading we had earlier in the semester. This reading felt more modern and incorporated how code affects the process of screen based kinetic typography. I liked the authors’ consideration of how the software and tools artists use will affect their creative expression.
Especially, I liked the invocation of Brian Eno’s essay of smells. I knew he was a prolific songwriter and ambient music producer, so it opened up my opinion of him to hear his thought on smells. He argued that smells can only be a unique individual experience tied to specific memories. And therefore, there can be no “grammar” for smells, which “defeats the semiotician’s quest for codification.” Smells are acutely similar to growth of kinetic type. Since kinetic type is a new field, there is less of a standard for consumers’ expected attitude towards different kinetic type. Consumers have different levels of Internet literacy and digital device familiarity, impacting their proficiency in understanding nuances in the screen based medium. And I don’t see the grammar for kinetic typography being easier to define in the future considering that the consumers are becoming the producers following the advent of fluent creative software tools.