John F. Simon Jr.
Every Icon
1999
- Artist / Artist group
- John F. Simon Jr.
- Title
- Every Icon
- Year
- 1999
- Category
- Computer-based
- Material / Technique
- Apple PowerBook 170, LCD screen, plastic frame, specially developed macOS software based on the web-based Java applet ‘Every Icon’ (1997)
- Dimensions / Duration
- 28,7 x 20 x 5,5 cm, installation: installation dimensions variable
- Collection
- Sammlung Tilman Baumgärtel
- Description
- Every image that fits into a grid of 32 × 32 squares is contained in this work. No one will ever see them all. The artist John F. Simon Jr. first set the work down as a rule: each of the 1,024 squares may be black or white, and every possible configuration of the grid is shown once. The rule is carried out by a program that has been counting through the combinations one after another since 1997, a hundred per second. The first row of the grid took a year and a half; the second will take some 5.8 billion years. The program works faster than a human eye can follow, and takes longer than the Earth has existed.