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1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

hypertalking.com

51–60 of 73 posts

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#51
post #41

I took my father to see the original in Tokyo today. It's a sight to behold and worth a look next time you're here. You can also watch a Sumo match nearby.

It's a woodblock print — there were thousands printed, and ~100 known to still exist. I've seen the British Museum's copy.

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#52
post #3

This site design is one of the best retro Mac site designs I've seen. The author really nailed the pixel perfect fonts — it looks perfect on my low-DPI and high-DPI displays. If anyone's interested, there's an active HyperCard community with some fun projects. There's a Discord server, too. https://hypercard.org/ I found that community through the Avara community, a port of the classic Mac multiplayer networked mech…

The website is really good but the font is blurry on my windows machine, only in this blog post.

If I adblock the (beautiful) “Great Wave” image, the font reads perfectly.

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#54
post #10

I don't understand- in what sense is this "1 bit"?

If you transmitted it one pixel at a time left to right top to bottom scan, or boudestrophon l r l r l r if you prefer then the pixel stream would equal a 1 bit value toggling on or off.

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#55
post #50
post #41

I took my father to see the original in Tokyo today. It's a sight to behold and worth a look next time you're here. You can also watch a Sumo match nearby.

I thought he made and sold many prints of each piece, so that identifying the original one wouldn't really be possible.

The original are the woodblocks (it’s multi-colour, so I assume there were multiple blocks). Those wouldn’t show the full picture and would have been worn down, if we still had them. We don’t, though. The next best thing would be prints made by the artist.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/great-wave-spot-differenc... has a nice description using wear and tear to distinguish earlier from later prints.

Edit: nowadays, artists write things like “3/50” on their prints (meaning they made fifty prints, and this is the third). That informs collectors/drives up prices for the low numbered prints.

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#56
post #44

Bill Atkinson of Apple developed a new dithering algorithm for early Macs. I wonder if it was used for this rendering. https://beyondloom.com/blog/dither.html

The author says “Software-wise I use Aldus SuperPaint 3.0”, so I expect it was drawn 100% by hand.

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#57
post #9

Of possible relevance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Views_of_Mt._Fuji,_by_Hok...

Hokusai (1760 - 1849) also did tentacle porn NSFW art - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%2... Book - https://pulverer.si.edu/node/277/title

This painting was prominently featured in several episodes of "Mad Men".

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#58
post #55
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought he made and sold many prints of each piece, so that identifying the original one wouldn't really be possible.

The original are the woodblocks (it’s multi-colour, so I assume there were multiple blocks). Those wouldn’t show the full picture and would have been worn down, if we still had them. We don’t, though. The next best thing would be prints made by the artist. https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/great-wave-spot-differenc... has a nice description using wear and tear to distinguish earlier from later prints. Edit: nowadays…

Yep I also saw some in a Hokusai museum in Osube near Nagano

Re: 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave”

#60
post #41

I took my father to see the original in Tokyo today. It's a sight to behold and worth a look next time you're here. You can also watch a Sumo match nearby.

I saw an original copy yesterday in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, along with the 50,000 piece LEGO version! They have a large exhibit about Hokusai, along with many of his contemporaries such as Hiroshige, works from his students and teachers, and many many examples of how the Great Wave has been reflected in art and culture over the years. They didn't have this beautiful little 1-bit piece though.
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