Posts Tagged ‘coding’
“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless”*…
… and the digital world? Maybe, as Rob Beschizza reports, somewhere in between…
Alex set out to debunk the given wisdom that the maximum dimensions of a PDF are 381 km2, which is smaller than Germany. She presents her conclusions in an article titled “Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany,” so you know from the outset she succeeded. It’s a fascinating example of the disalignment of specifications, implementations, and reality. You can make one by hacking the postscript, and while Adobe Acrobat won’t like it, other apps will…
Borges would be delighted…
“On exactitude in PDFs“
Just how big was Alex [Chan] able to make her PDF?…
… unlike Acrobat, the Preview app doesn’t have an upper limit on what we can put in MediaBox. It’s perfectly happy for me to write a width which is a 1 followed by twelve 0s…
If you’re curious, that width is approximately the distance between the Earth and the Moon. I’d have to get my ruler to check, but I’m pretty sure that’s larger than Germany.
I could keep going. And I did. Eventually I ended up with a PDF that Preview claimed is larger than the entire universe – approximately 37 trillion light years square. Admittedly it’s mostly empty space, but so is the universe. If you’d like to play with that PDF, you can get it here.
Please don’t try to print it.
“Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany“
* Jean-Jacques Rousseau
###
As we scale up, we might spare a thought for Émile Borel; he died on this date in 1956. A mathematician (and politician who served as French Minister of the Navy), he is remembered for his foundational work in measure theory and probability. He published a number of research papers on game theory and was the first to define games of strategy.
But Borel may be best remembered for a thought experiment he introduced in one of his books, proposing that a[n immortal] monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard will – with absolute certainty – eventually type every book in France’s Bibliothèque Nationale de France. This is now popularly known as the infinite monkey theorem.
“More poetry, less demo”*…
School for Poetic Computation is an artist run school in New York that was founded in 2013. A small group of students and faculty work closely to explore the intersections of code, design, hardware and theory — focusing especially on artistic intervention. It’s a hybrid of a school, residency and research group…
The school for poetic computation is organized around exploring the creative and expressive nature of computational approaches to art and design. The school approaches writing code like creative writing — focusing on the mechanics of programming, the demystification of tools, and hacking the conventions of art-making with computation.
We value the craft necessary to realize an idea, recognizing that every writer needs space and time to hone their trade. Our school aims to provide a safe haven for you to get acquainted with the craft of coding at your own pace, make it your own, and investigate the space between creative process and craft. This takes conversations with colleagues and the right push at the right time.
The school aims to be more than a technical bootcamp. It is an opportunity to work intensively with a small group of students, faculty, and artists to explore questions about the poetics of computation. For us, computation is poetic when technology is used for critical thinking and aesthetic inquiry – a space where logic meets electricity (hardware), math meets language (software) and analytical thinking meets creative experimentation…
More about the New York City-based School here; more projects (larger and more legible) here; and more background, via the School’s blog, here.
* motto of the School for Poetic Computation
###
As we get past the do loops to just do it, we might recall that it was on this date in 1667 that Samuel Pepys took delivery of the first recorded glass-fronted bookcase. He wrote in his famous diary:
“So took up my wife and home, there I to the office, and thence with Sympson, the joyner home to put together the press he hath brought me for my books this day, which pleases me exceedingly.”
and a few days later he wrote:
“and then comes Sympson to set up my other new presses for my books, and so he and I fell into the furnishing of my new closett … so I think it will be as noble a closett as any man hath.”
These cabinets– each with paired glazed doors in 21 small panes, over a low section, also with glazed panes, made to hold large folio volumes– are believed to be the same bookcases on display in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
You must be logged in to post a comment.