Postscript, invented by Adobe, is a programming language intially used for controlling printers. The main idea was to write a computer program that tells a printer what to print, and making this program independent from operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. Postscript, then, evolved to a general programming language to describe layouted material. There is a derived form of Postscript, called Encapsulated Postscript (EPS), which is used as to embed small pieces of Postscript images to other applications. Postscript works by describing how an image is composed. To print a circle, a Postscript program would contain the directive >draw a circle with line width X at position Y with radius Z<. If the circle should be filled, a second directive >fill the circle< would be added. But Postscript is a full-fledged programming language. That means that it includes more than just drawing directives. It can, for example, be used to create images that look differently each time you load or print them. Creating such images is what we reference to as >postscripting<.
When Bots Attack
The famous Wired magazine features in its September 2007 issue a global cyberwar scenario. Wired commissioned Catalogtree to create an infographic for the corresponding article >When Bots Attack<, and Systemantics supported Catalogtree with the creation of the graphic. A so-called distributed denial of services (DDoS) attack is performed by thousands of home or corporal computers which are infected with a special type of computer virus. When the DDoS attack should take place, the infected systems are used by the attacker -- without their knowledge -- to send millions of requests per second to a single computer network somewhere else in the world, effectively blocking the attacked systems. The infographic is naturally complex: it shows a world map with lines from the attacking country to each of the infected computers, and then from each computer to the attacked systems. There is a total of 285 attack lines in the graphic. Systemantics automatically created a Postscript file will all the lines from a database of the attack, thereby saving much work and allowing for several scenarios to be tested. (September 2007)
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Concept & design: Catalogtree / Commissioned by: Catalogtree
Monadnock Logo
The Monadnock Logo was designed by Catalogtree as a self-modifying shape. That means that on every print and display operation, a new variant of the logo is constructed by taking the intersection of a random number of letters from M, O, N, A, D, C, and K. This results in 120 slightly different variations of the logo which were altogether presented on a poster created by catalogtree. The logo itself was developed by systemantics as both a PostScript file and a collection of the 120 versions as bitmap images which are currently used on Monadnock's website. (March 2007)
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Concept & design: Catalogtree / Commissioned by: Catalogtree