This is Rhizome Today for Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Many of the discussions around the Unicode emoji set, the standard set on a phone, have pointed to the reductionism of emojis, whether it's in terms of racial diversity, desired characters, or having emotions standardized. Though some of these issues are rumored to have been rectified with Unicode 7.0, many messaging apps, including Facebook's, have proposed alternatives to the standard set.
I became interested in LINE and their Emoji Dictionary again once I used their Autosuggest, which launched in August of this year, several months after my role finished. The tool seamlessly integrates LINE's expansive emoji and sticker catalogue (tallying over 45,000) in a manner similar to QuickType on Android and iOS 8. What's interesting though is that unlike Unicode or any other app, many of these characters are designed by different artists, users, and companies, allowing pictorial language to be constantly evolving and collaborative.
While writing the post I asked the artist and second-best web surfer in New York Martha Hipley for her input on LINE:
The LINE stickers and emoji are the opposite of standard emoji: hyper-specific and endless. A sticker of P-chan [from manga Ranma ½] having a conniption has a totally different narrative than an angry face emoji.
She also added that LINE circumvents many of the perceived problems with the standard set. "Everyone whines about 'when are we getting a taco emoji.' There are already 2 different tacos in LINE. Get w/ the program."
We both found it oddly empowering how communication in LINE can exist within multiple, specific registers and narratives: cartoons, anime, Korean Dramas, popular musicians, and LINE’s own cast of characters. Instead of everyone utilizing a standardized set, users can tailor their available stickers to fit their vernacular. For example, when typing in "angry," I’m provided with 90 different options; though depending on the user’s purchased stickers, this number could be 200.
Even though I can probably lexically express the sentiment associated with 
, I would feel less competent expressing 
or 
or 
lexically, all of which come up when I type "shit."
The auto-suggest feature relies on is a hard-coded relationship between certain words and their associated images and image (perhaps future versions could allow users to modify the autosuggest dictionary to create their own word-image associations) but the sheer quantity and diversity, and quickly evolving set of images makes the stickers and emoji of LINE feel like a more fluid, open-ended extension of written language.
Artist Dan Woodger was among the team of thirteen emoji illustrators. Here is an interview with him about his experience.
Though it feels like I hear about a new emoji art project every day, these are a few that have stuck out:
John Michael Boling's music video for Oneohtrix Point Never's "Boring Angel"
In "W8TING," Sophia Le Fraga rewrites Waiting for Godot in text messages, involving a combination of emojis and net speak.
While writing this piece, I also enjoyed flipping through the catalogue and magazine of Eyebeam’s Emoji Art and Design Show from the past year.
Also: Ever wondered how Net Art gets made? An answer is now online by way of Rhizome's Senior Developer Scott Meisburger's MozFest presentation.
