I am an old and cannot properly communicate in emojis in this space

October 28, 2016 8:15 AM

We are thrilled to announce the addition of NTT DOCOMO’s original set of 176 emoji to the MoMA collection. Developed under the supervision of Shigetaka Kurita and released for cell phones in 1999, these 12 x 12 pixel humble masterpieces of design planted the seeds for the explosive growth of a new visual language.

posted by Etrigan (33 comments total)

Now that they are art maybe I can get some explanations for some of these. Wtf is [<-END]??
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:20 AM on October 28, 2016

Emojis have really heightened my own awareness of how poorly I process purely visual symbols. I know I'm supposed to derive a meaning from them, but most of the message evades me. Thank god for holdouts like MeFi where I can remain immersed in words sweet words.
posted by Miko at 8:20 AM on October 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Dang, I remember hearing about DOCOMO back in the early 2000s (when I had a cell phone that had a one-line 7-segment display) and all the innovations they were making. The fact that they are 12x12 pixels and are more-or-less pretty clear is, like, astounding to me now, especially considering that rising emoji fidelity has definitely been a thing.
posted by griphus at 8:33 AM on October 28, 2016

💩 💩 💩
posted by Mayor West at 8:34 AM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

I like the movie camera. It look like a very surprised fish.
posted by jedicus at 8:41 AM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Left arrow-END indicates the end of something often a relationship.
Or at least it used to...
Never seen an emoji for it - perhaps somebody younger can oblige?
posted by speug at 8:48 AM on October 28, 2016

of the original 176 emoji, two are recognizably cats 😸
posted by exogenous at 8:50 AM on October 28, 2016

The 4 diagonal arrows are sort of oddly scattered across the set rather than being grouped together. I wonder why that is.
posted by jedicus at 8:50 AM on October 28, 2016

Interesting how this original set didn't include any to represent emotions, which is the most valuable feature of modern ones as far as adding layers of meaning to text messages. These 1999 ones are instead just iconographic shorthands for standard words.

They should add whichever set of emoji had the first set of facial expressions into their collection because those were the real game changers.
posted by Spacelegoman at 8:50 AM on October 28, 2016

Interesting how this original set didn't include any to represent emotions, which is the most valuable feature of modern ones as far as adding layers of meaning to text messages.

I think they were still mainly using kaomoji for facial expressions as they could get a lot more detail in than in a 12x12 emoji.
posted by griphus at 8:51 AM on October 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

We are moving full circle back towards hieroglyphics.
posted by Brodiggitty at 8:52 AM on October 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

All of these gentlemen I've been talking to online sure do seem fond of eggplants.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 8:56 AM on October 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

Interesting how this original set didn't include any to represent emotions...

They should add whichever set of emoji had the first set of facial expressions into their collection.

There are several facial expressions, just to the right of the hearts, which can represent emotions themselves. There's a happy face, an angry face, a sad face, a "feeling unwell" face, and a surprised face, at least as I read them.
posted by jedicus at 9:02 AM on October 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

We are moving full circle back towards hieroglyphics.

Hieroglyphs were read phonetically for the most part, rather than as logograms. They definitely had logographic meaning too but most writing in the system used them as an abjad, similar to the Arabic and Hebrew writing systems.

But there are languages in use today that are written entirely or mostly in logograms and they manage just fine. Written Chinese is almost entirely logographic, and Japanese is largely so.

But in any case, I really, really doubt that emojis signal any kind of broad movement towards logographic writing in English. When you see somebody post a tweet or something that's entirely in emoji they are doing it as a joke. That's not how people typically communicate, not even snake people.
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 9:04 AM on October 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

There are several facial expressions, just to the right of the hearts, which can represent emotions themselves. There's a happy face, an angry face, a sad face, a "feeling unwell" face, and a surprised face, at least as I read them.

Interesting. They're so minimalist that I didn't notice them... I'm used to seeing them "in" a head.
posted by Spacelegoman at 9:07 AM on October 28, 2016

of the original 176 emoji, two are recognizably cats 😸

There's only one cat. The other one is a dog.
posted by jedicus at 9:09 AM on October 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ah! The venerable, iconic 69 emoji.
posted by naju at 9:13 AM on October 28, 2016

Now that they are art maybe I can get some explanations for some of these. Wtf is [<-END]??

Emoji mean exactly what you choose them to mean—neither more nor less.

Unicode Consortium:

Q: Do emoji characters have single semantics?

A: No. Because emoji characters are treated as pictographs, they are encoded in Unicode based primarily on their general appearance, not on an intended semantic. In fact, when used as emoji, many of these characters acquire multiple meanings based on their appearance; for example, an emoji character for “bank” which includes the letters “BK” has taken on in Japan the secondary meaning “bakkureru” (a slang term for evading one’s responsibilities). The meaning of each emoji may vary depending on language, culture, and context. For the curious, Emojipedia is a good source of information about the current meanings of various emoji.

Q: Does the Unicode character name define the meaning of an emoji character?

A: The character name is a unique identifier, but may not encompass all the possible meanings of an emoji character, and in some cases may even be misleading. There are annotations in the Unicode Charts and in the Emoji Charts that help to define the intended meanings and usage.

🔚 (end with leftwards arrow above)🔛 (On with exclamation mark with left right arrow above) 🔜 (Soon with rightwards arrow above) are all part of the original DOCOMO set, but I don't think there's any actual guidance as to what they're supposed to mean.

I take 🔚   to mean get/go to the end, but that's just my opinion, man. The notes in Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs suggest previous page for 🔙 BACK WITH LEFTWARDS ARROW ABOVE and top of page for 🔝 TOP WITH UPWARDS ARROW ABOVE, which might imply certain things about 🔚, but do what you feel.

My guess is that the arrow pointing to the left is related to right-to-left ordering differences in Japanese culture- note that the Android version of this character actually pointed to the right until Android 6.0.
posted by zamboni at 9:13 AM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ah! The venerable, iconic 69 emoji.

nice
posted by griphus at 9:15 AM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

We are moving full circle back towards hieroglyphics.

Hieroglyphic Esperanto?
posted by clawsoon at 9:17 AM on October 28, 2016

I don't think Japanese is mostly logographic. They have a phonetic language but got their writing from the logographic Chinese, and so adapted it to their phonetic language by coming up with an alphabet (Hiragana). Written sentences combine the alphabet with the more logographic Chinese Kanji characters. Here's a sign that shows a lot: even the Kanji characters have little alphabet characters above them explaining how to pronounce them.
posted by eye of newt at 9:20 AM on October 28, 2016

NYT article on this says 🔜 (and presumably also 🔛,🔙, and 🔚) are due to sponsorship by Pia, a ticket seller.
posted by PMdixon at 9:31 AM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

jedicus: "There's only one cat. The other one is a dog."

😿
posted by exogenous at 9:51 AM on October 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Modern written Chinese is morphophonemic, not logographic.
posted by inconstant at 10:39 AM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

From the press release:

"This acquisition was the work of many people both at MoMA and at NTT DOCOMO... And I commend and send thanks to NTT DOCOMO’s large team, who exhibited tremendous patience, flexibility, and an adventurous spirit well in keeping with their company’s great heritage."

Wait... how much work could have possibly been needed to exhibit a collection of 176 emoji's? Like, I think MOMA highlighting this history is absolutely an interesting curatorial project... but really how did this require a team of dozens? Honest question, I know nothing about curating a modern art museum.
posted by midmarch snowman at 10:49 AM on October 28, 2016

Interesting question. I have nothing to do with MOMA or this project, but acquiring anything is a big process, and when you think about it, a lot of art today is media-based or digital and still requires a big team, so this is no different. As with 3D objects, moving the work itself around is the least of the tasks to be done. Things like this usually begin with a curatorial proposal, followed by group meetings at successively higher levels, then meetings with the owner(s), then formalizing an acquisition agreement (which is legally complex and requires a lot of review), then collections care plans (in this case, how will they be stored, in what format, with what backup, how will they be migrated to future storage platforms, etc), documentation, rights/use and intellectual property agreements, registration, and storage. There are also all the ancillary activities for a big acquisition - like, the fact that we're reading this now means there was marketing and PR support, educational and curatorial programming, exhibition materials, photography and file rendering, etc. Museum work is deceptively simple seeming but organizationally complex.
posted by Miko at 11:10 AM on October 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

Some of the choices seem really odd. Why would you need an icon for two exclamation marks?
posted by tavella at 11:20 AM on October 28, 2016

I think they were still mainly using kaomoji for facial expressions as they could get a lot more detail in than in a 12x12 emoji.


yeah, emojis can do a lot, but sometimes lack the nuance of something like this:

t(>,<t)



which is how I feel probably 80% of the time.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:12 PM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

some of these are pretty vague. i wonder if you could generate a set of vague icons that look like they all mean something, but don't actually mean anything, and then let people use / interpret them? maybe that would give a more efficient covering of the space of possible emoji?

not sure that is clear. where i am coming from is: i started looking at these, and wondered how the designer decided what to make emoji of. and how those choices must have had a whole pile of explicit (were they thinking about particular conversations people have with phones?) and implicit (created within culture X) biases. seems like those biases are going to restrict / influence how people use these. so what would happen if you could somehow generate "tabula rasa" emoji whose meaning was supplied by the needs of users...
posted by andrewcooke at 4:34 PM on October 28, 2016

Yeah, not to go on too much of a tangent, but the vast majority of Chinese characters were developed by having one component to indicate category of meaning, and one component to indicate what the word sounded like in ancient Chinese (to steal Zompist's example for "what if English worked this way," imagine the word "king" were written with the component for "person" on the left, and "ring" on the right, to indicate that it rhymes with that word).

Japanese writing started by using Chinese as-is (think: renaissance-era writers writing in Latin or Ancient Greek) but started to just use the characters for their sounds, and eventually developed shorthand forms for syllabaries by either just writing them really fast and cursivey (hiragana) or by just writing the first/main component (katakana).
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:28 PM on October 28, 2016

Interestingly (as per this 2013 article), Docomo wasn’t able to get a copyright on its emoji designs, “they’re only 12 blocks by 12 blocks,” the company was told". Which might explain some of the complexity of acquiring them, and also why they're considerable as an artistic artifact.
posted by progosk at 1:25 AM on October 29, 2016

The NYT article links this mail to the Unicode Technical Committee with "titles" for these 176 signs - a starting point for (re-)deciphering them.
posted by progosk at 1:54 AM on October 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

The rebus principle is relevant here.

Imagine using a transport emoji to indicate distance, and a smiling emoji to indicate a word that rhymes with "smile" combining to signify the word "mile."

So far, there's really no widespread, conventionalized rules for what emojis signify. People "read" emojis by interpreting them rather than by connecting them to words in spoken language. Some of the simpler and more common ones have fairly consistent interpretations, but we're still a long way from emojis being a writing system or a language. A smiley face doesn't mean the word "smile," it means amusement or happiness. And when it comes to expressing something more complex than a single emoji can convey, we don't have much consensus.

I think the "heart" symbol is the closest thing we have to a logographic emoji, probably--when people read "I <3 you" as "I love you."
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:30 AM on October 29, 2016