John Simon, JR.

John Simon, JR. is a native of Louisiana, and as a programmer, he has collaborated on the development of such high-profile Web-art projects as Jenny Holzer's Please Change Beliefs, and Kolmar and Melamid's notorious The Most Wanted Paintings. John Simon's own work, Every Icon, is an algorithmic composition that will take billions of years to display every icon configuration in a 32 x 32 grid. This work goes way beyond the scale of human existence. Every Icon progresses by counting. Starting with an image where every grid element is white, the software displays combinations of black and white elements, proceeding toward an image where every element is black. In contrast to presenting a single image as an intentional sign, Every Icon presents all possibilities.