Saturday, October 08, 2005


Another one that made me think, sometimes surprising things. The principle of the experiment is "can a bunch of random people, by changing one pixel at a time on a canvas, create something?" Pixels can be overwritten. Is it art, garbage, or just an online experience?

You decide by watching the animation, from the blank canvas to the current piece: Watch that first, then go read and try it: Add your pixel here. (Don't go there before watching the animation, though.) Here's some text and discussion.

Here's some of my thought process as I watched it:

  • Blank canvases are more conducive to text than pixel art. Watch the words appear and get hijacked. Someone should create a "change one letter at a time" game now, if it hasn't been done already. Would Scrabble just evolve? I think it would.
  • Is that a tree? Is this one person under many anonymous entries, or multiple people?
  • Can good design really happen without a guiding principle or vision? Don't we need organized vision here, if we want a "good" (coherent? attractive? interesting?) end result? There's a reason websites need information architects and wikis are so disorganized and become hard to travel as they evolve....
  • Can people who aren't communicating make something anyone really likes at the end of the day? They need a spec and some discussion. If none of them are good at thinking in pixels and planning out the layout and process, it will still be bad "art" although it might look more organized.
  • A pixel is too small a unit of design and communication. What if they had vector art, objects on the page.
  • What are those black things that keep appearing? Is there an attempt at meaning here, or just chaos (modern art)?
  • Why did the text stop appearing? Is it easier to imagine it on a blank canvas, and the filled colors make people lean towards visual art instead?
  • Wow, is this thing ugly at the end of the day. But I'm glad the sun came back.

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