Type Misunderstood

AI/ML technology as a segue between deconstructing and reconstructing

3 min readOct 10, 2022

Even if technology is always watching — is it always reading? Is it always understanding?

We treat technology like we treat our children: we teach them enough so that they can teach themselves. One of the first things we teach children in school is how to read; so, let’s ask, what have we neglected to teach our technology about reading? Can we (the humans) keep some of this knowledge to ourselves, so in turn, we can keep some of our human-to-human messages kept to ourselves? The ability to read was once something that separated humans from one another; is there a future where the ability to read separates humans from computers? If so, how must we choose how we write? Who’s already cracked the code?

The Experiment: a series of typography that’s too beautiful for technology to understand.

Find some beautiful text. The definition of beautiful we are using in this context: “a hand-made element/quality”
Point the iPhone camera at it. See if the technology makes an attempt at transcribing the text you intend it to. If so, continue to step 3.
Capture the image as well as a copy of the text it claims to read.
Paste this text somewhere. This will be the title of the new “case”. Each case will be a diptyque of the original text and proof the attempted scan.
Write a short narrative from the POV of the phone. If the phone thinks the transcription is what the image is really about, what does it think is going on in my life?