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The average Playmate

One of the complaints about Playboy centerfolds is that they’re oddly homogenous — the same big hair, the same inflated breasts, the same frozen Joker-like smile, over and over again. Does this really represent the average American woman?

Now the artist Jason Salavon has produced a set of images that riff wittily on the culture of the centerfold. Salavon’s known for taking “found” images and using algorithms to manipulate them in interesting ways. For his installation entitled “Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades,” he took all the centerfolds for each 10-year period and smooshed them together — producing a single image that is the statistical average of the lot. That picture above? It’s “the 80s.” But you knew that, heh.

On his site, Salavon also notes that he’s become interested in “abstract board games,” and intends to post a few when they’re developed. I love love love the idea of artists creating games as a vehicle for their work.


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I'm Clive Thompson, the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better (Penguin Press). You can order the book now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, Indiebound, or through your local bookstore! I'm also a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. Email is here or ping me via the antiquated form of AOL IM (pomeranian99).

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Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson