As a copywriter studying creative advertising at School of Communication Arts 2.0, I am privileged to have had the opportunity to attend a masterclass given by the inimitable @ian_hands, Head of Craft at SCA 2.0. Here’s a top-line summary written as if it was a scene from a screenplay.

Patient: You’re right, of course. I’ve always felt that, deep down I mean. It’s like I love her, but there’s also this feeling, an envy, it poisons everything. I’m really nervous, you know.              

Therapist: It’s okay to be nervous. This is a safe space, Adam. Does what you’re describing sound like love to you?

Patient: What do any of us really know about love? It’s a kind of love, I guess. Is it true love? It’s true for me. You’re a vector–have you ever loved a pixel?

Therapist: If I had, would that make it easier for you?

Patient: It wouldn’t.

Therapist: Tell me more about this feeling, this envy.

Patient: It’s like sometimes, when I lie half-awake at night not moving, I can feel her soft, warm breath and I can almost hear her heart beating and I realise just how silly this all is. My love, I mean. I know how that sounds, but I was made to recreate photography. I’m just a single part of a simple grid-based system of colours and tones. Literally, a block of an image. She’s points, lines, curves and polygons. She’s paths, nodes and beziers. I’m fixed, she’s infinite. She exists in mathematical space, on an algebraic grid. There are days I don’t even understand her. How can you love who you can’t understand?

Therapist: How does she understand what it means to be a pixel, Adam?

Patient: I want to understand her, I really do, but how can I? I have a clearly defined position. She’s infinite. The idea of infinity is the very content of infinity itself. How can I possibly understand that? I mean, without the lived experience, without the feeling? She understands pixels.

Therapist: How does her understanding of pixels affect her love for you?

Patient: Pixels are limited. You blow up, you stretch them and you get a loss in quality. With her, with vector art, there is no loss. You see, vectors are useful for all kinds of things–type, logos, graphics, layouts.

Therapist: It’s interesting you didn’t answer the question. What did you feel when I asked you that?

Patient: What? I don’t know. No, sorry, okay sorry, I felt a warmth rushing into my chest and my face, behind my eyes. You are what you love, I guess. She loves me. I think she loves me. Yes she loves me.

Therapist: Even though she can’t ever know, really know what it’s like to be a pixel?

Patient: Yeah, even then.

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