Back to ProjectsMeme Engine Sampler
spreads of a small zine, whose pages contain various memes featuring uncannily rendered wojacks. unfolded views of the front and back of a piece of tabloid-sized paper. each side contains eight sections, on most of which are densely textured memes. on one side of the paper in the central four sections is the source code for the program used to compose the paper, typeset in bold Impact.

As a collaborative exercise in engineering an as hands-off as possible mememaking tool, I teamed up with Nathan Springman to program a DrawBot script that yields letter-sized memes, typeset in a range of artful and contentious fonts. With melting, machine learning-generated wojaks[1] from Nathan and my code for typesetting randomly-chosen fonts in layouts that range from a single image macro[2] to a 3×3 pseudo-alignment chart,[3] our final sampler serendipitously reveals a potential beauty in such inky, uncanny compositions.


(just in case the above paragraph didn’t make much sense, some footnotes — )

[1] a simple, black-outlined cartoon drawing of a bald man with a wistful expression.“an Internet meme that is, in its original form, a simple, black-outlined cartoon drawing of a bald man with a wistful expression.” — Wikipedia

[2] “a captioned image that typically consists of a picture and a witty message or a catchphrase.” — Know Your Meme

[3] a 3 by 3 meme of various penguins of various Dungeons and Dragons alignments.a diagram that groups/categorizes subjects to illustrate different character alignments; originates from Dungeons and Dragons. (more at Know Your Meme)

Spring 2021

2.75 × 5.5"