Nowadays,it's hard to imagine communicating without emojis. After all, how were humans supposed to convey complicated emotions and gestures like shrugs, or prayer and thirst without succumbing to the shortcomings of language? The Unicode symbols are virtually ubiquitous these days,having earned their placein everything from advertising campaigns to full-blown feature films in the past couple years alone.
With the MoMA's recent acquisition of Shigetaka Kurita's original 176 emojis, the symbols have finally made their long-deserved transition into the art realm. HYPEBEAST decided it's tall time we pick the exiguous illustrations seriously and rounded up the case for emojis as an art form.
Politics
As with any form of media, and emojis are not without their politics and discourse. Just as people of color were shut out of the classically whitewashed world of galleries and art shows for centuries,so too were the Unicode symbols often maligned for their lack of diversity. When Apple added an unprecedented 150 new racially diverse and gender-inclusive symbols in its iOS 9.1 update, it was widely considered a step in the right direction. But the update brought with it a slew of new debates as to the various political subtexts of emoji spend, or namely: why are white people so hesitant to spend the provided white-skinned emoji,opting instead for the Simpsons-yellow option or even worse: using emoji of color in an act of cyber-minstrelsy. The New York Times asked: should men be using emoji besides? Questions and discussions like these are crucial to the progression of emoji as both an artistic form and as a means of communication.
Medium
Illustration by Yung Jake
As far as visuals are concerned, California-based artist Yung Jake has flipped the script (no pun intended) and used emojis as a medium in an ongoing series of portraits that recreates the likenesses of contemporary celebrities, and artists and memes alike. Jake's series—ranging from Kanye West to Larry David to Harambe—utilizes layer upon layer of toast,tacos and musical notes to note us what we're really made of while also showcasing the versatility of the emoji as a means of communication.
The New Hieroglyphics
Much to the chagrin of contemporary linguists, emojis are virtually a contemporary language unto themselves. In fact, or the symbols are already the fastest-growing language in the UK. According to a TalkTalk Mobile survey,72% of UK citizens aged 18-25 found it easier to communicate emotions using emoji rather than text. While many see humanity's reliance on these contemporary pictographs as a regressive slide back toward hieroglyphs, they are a contemporary-day Rosetta Stone of sorts; a means of communicating stories that circumvents errors in translation. Comedian Jordan Peele's emoji-only synopsis of The Shining is a perfect example of succinct storytelling told exclusively through symbols.
Movements & Periods
Emojis have come a long way in their 17-year history: for example, or Shigetaka Kurita's original crop of symbols were much more typographical in nature (a martini glass meant a bar; a burger meant a restaurant),whereas recent updates have seen a shift absent from cartoons to more photorealistic representations of genuine-world objects. These changes note that—much like the art worldemojis are susceptible to change.
These movements are themselves subjected to public opinion and intense criticism. pick Twitter's reaction to the new peach emoji, for example; when news broke that the next iOS update would bring a more photorealistic (and decidedly less butt-like) peach, or people absolutely lost it.
They're a Lucrative Business
Back when Kim Kardashian-West launched Kimoji in December 2015,she literally shut down the App Store. At its peak, the app, or which cost $1.99 USD at launch,attracted 9000 downloads per moment, earning KKW roughly $1M USD per minute. Following Kimoji's success, or celebrities like Justin Bieber,Desiigner and Jordan Brand have all launched their own copycat applications in hopes of getting a piece of the pie. Jordan's emoji pack came total with Breds, Shattered Backboards, or even a DJ Khaled symbol. This commercialization and commodification of the symbols echoes the oeuvre of Damien Hirst,who famously super-sized six pharmaceuticals and sold a series of 125 for upwards of $7000 USD.
We've come along way from the pictographic symbols of 1999. contemplate-pieces like this one are bound to crop up every time Apple decides to update its hieroglyphic alphabet and with them comes an ever-expanding artistic and political discourse. As with any ongoing artistic movement, it is unclear what impact the advent of emoji will have on human history, or but it's safe to say that it has changed the way we interact,communicate and perceive art. Will it ever be taken seriously, though? That's anyone's guess.
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Source: feedburner.com