Emoticon Nowadays, it's nearly impossible to open an email, dip into a blog post, or receive an instant message without coming face-to-face with a "combination of text characters that symbolize emotion" otherwise known as the emoticon. But wander through this gallery of keystrokes translated back into human expression, and you may never see a colon and parenthesis mix the same way again. New Jersey multimedia artist (and Jim Carrey look-alike) danwade has juxtaposed common emoticons with color photographs, animated GIFs, and Flash demos of himself acting them out. We took in his rubber-faced emoting of anger (greater than sign + semicolon + dash + parenthesis), shock (equal sign + dash + capital "O"), or the heretofore unknown emotion of "pig" (colon + at sign + parenthesis). And then we tried not to squeal when someone pulled a colon + dash + asterisk on us. (in Visual Arts)
