The Internet was created as a way to share information by U. S. military-industrial complex in the late 1960s. In the early 90s, with the emerging of World Wide Web and thousands of Internet programs, the Internet was transformed into an everyday form of communication, such as postal mail and telephone. However, unlike the conventional ways of communicating, email and chat room are solely type-based. Since there is no voice to be heard and no handwriting to be seen, the messages become generic and lack of human emotions, personalities, and characteristics. In order to compensate these unexpected shortcomings, a unique way of using type has developed where the type became a pictorial form (chart #1). Types are no longer limited as elements of words, but also components that can be used to construct images to enrich expression. The usage of this transformation in type will certainly decrease following the rapid development of the Internet technology. Project, Cosmo-T, was developed to celebrate and record this interesting phenomenon in which an imaginary world of types.

The animation, WTBA Championship Boxing, is part of the ongoing Cosmo-T project. I have created a none-linear animation by utilizing computer programming languages. The match and the fighting sequence in this animation are randomly generated, and the winner is decided base on an automatic scoring system. As a result, the fight, the length of the animation, and the outcome will all be varied every time.

C. J. Yeh
May, 2001

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Chart #1
Commonly used smilies (vertical style)

Commonly used smilies (horizontal style)