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This encapsulates something I've been trying to get my head around for a while now.
For starters, she's made something worthwhile out of the Daily Mail, a feat of genius if ever there was one. Then, there's the simple beauty of fucking with perspective by creating a flat 3D image of something out of that thing. But the main thing for me is the information content has changed, despite the file size staying the same.
If you were to accurately describe where each letter on that page was, in terms of co-ordinates from a corner, the list would be the same length before and after rearrangement. The definitions would change - line one, column one, - T to line one, column one, - A, etc, but the list would be the same length. Given the list of locations, you could re-create either page from the differing lists, but the size of this data would be the same, because both have the same number of the same type of letters, and the same number of locations.
Except.
The first page, if re-created, would give you a message. A meaning (unless it's the Mail). The second, re-organised one, would not. Despite taking up the same amount of information, it carries extra data.
It's not that there is actual data, but just the convention that we agree that certain organisations contain meaning, while others don't. This fascinates me. There's probably a branch of philosophy based around it, but I don't know what it is, and I'm just stood here doing the typing equivalent of staring at the back of my hand and going 'Woah.'
For starters, she's made something worthwhile out of the Daily Mail, a feat of genius if ever there was one. Then, there's the simple beauty of fucking with perspective by creating a flat 3D image of something out of that thing. But the main thing for me is the information content has changed, despite the file size staying the same.
If you were to accurately describe where each letter on that page was, in terms of co-ordinates from a corner, the list would be the same length before and after rearrangement. The definitions would change - line one, column one, - T to line one, column one, - A, etc, but the list would be the same length. Given the list of locations, you could re-create either page from the differing lists, but the size of this data would be the same, because both have the same number of the same type of letters, and the same number of locations.
Except.
The first page, if re-created, would give you a message. A meaning (unless it's the Mail). The second, re-organised one, would not. Despite taking up the same amount of information, it carries extra data.
It's not that there is actual data, but just the convention that we agree that certain organisations contain meaning, while others don't. This fascinates me. There's probably a branch of philosophy based around it, but I don't know what it is, and I'm just stood here doing the typing equivalent of staring at the back of my hand and going 'Woah.'
