The hive-mind Seurat
A year ago a wrote a piece for Slate called "Art Mobs", in which I wondered whether it would be possible for a smart mob to create a work of visual art. I noted the example at Typophile, where a web designer allowed people to vote on individual pixels as they attempted to design a font or draw a picture of a goat. (The Typophile project appears to be dead now, unfortunately.)
Typophile offered only a relatively small grid, and the only possible pixel colors were black and white. So I was intrigued to see a new project called Pixelfest -- which offers the same collaborative concept, except with a way bigger grid and pixels in a dizzying array of colors.
The emerging picture appears to be a sunny landscape with a tree! That's the sun excerpted above; click here to see the whole thing. It's quite mesmerizing: A democratized version of pointillist style.
(Thanks to Slashdot for this one!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at November 29, 2005 03:21 PM
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Is it just me, or aren't these projects really BAD? I mean, take a look at the picture now, it's just awful. The sunny landscape and the trees are now just blobs of random color, and what's left of the trees makes are the kind of trees a 2-year-old would draw. The attempt to make fonts was equally terrible: the letters were barely discernible, and random pixels filled empty space, as if random drops of ink were splattered on a page.
Mesmerizing, maybe -- but is it art, or is it dreck? Some people have a very liberal definition of 'art,' which basically permits anything to be considered art... but if we are a little more discerning, isn't this just... bad???
Posted by: Dave Sandoval at November 29, 2005 5:39 PM
Ahahahaha!
Believe me, I am deeply opposed to the taken-to-its-logical-absurdity relativism of art criticism; in many cases when I look at modern installation art today, I think that y'know, a kid indeed coulda done that. When it comes to visual art, I remain a steadfast fan of oil painting -- not matter what the style of painting -- mainly because that medium requires a level of basic skill that many other media don't, and part of what I enjoy in art is the skilfulness of the creator. In this case, the creator isn't skilful at all; as you point out, the picture is rather daft.
But in this case, the art is in the concept, and the concept is incredibly cool. I think the sheer banality of the image is part of its charm; it's suggestion that the democratic processes of voting probably can't produce an iconoclastic or visionary artwork. Indeed, it reminds me of those dudes who polled thousands of Americans to find out what they thought were the visual components and style of a good piece of art -- and then created a painting that matched the precise average specs. As I recall, it was, too, a studiously bland image -- a field, a cow, a mountain, some guy standing around, basic American pastoral. Yet it was incredibly weird and thought-provoking because of the process by which it was created.
(Sorry, I can't find a link to that project. Anyone have one out there?)
Posted by: Clive at November 29, 2005 6:00 PM
I remember reading about that survey project. They also produce what the consensus said was "bad art". I remember it was this really drag, highly textured triangle. Worse than the pastoral, I think.
Posted by: Taybin at November 29, 2005 7:28 PM
Heh. Yeah, that sounds pretty stanktacular.
Posted by: Clive at December 1, 2005 6:59 PM
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Is it just me, or aren't these projects really BAD? I mean, take a look at the picture now, it's just awful. The sunny landscape and the trees are now just blobs of random color, and what's left of the trees makes are the kind of trees a 2-year-old would draw. The attempt to make fonts was equally terrible: the letters were barely discernible, and random pixels filled empty space, as if random drops of ink were splattered on a page.
Mesmerizing, maybe -- but is it art, or is it dreck? Some people have a very liberal definition of 'art,' which basically permits anything to be considered art... but if we are a little more discerning, isn't this just... bad???
Posted by: Dave Sandoval![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 29, 2005 5:39 PM
Ahahahaha!
Believe me, I am deeply opposed to the taken-to-its-logical-absurdity relativism of art criticism; in many cases when I look at modern installation art today, I think that y'know, a kid indeed coulda done that. When it comes to visual art, I remain a steadfast fan of oil painting -- not matter what the style of painting -- mainly because that medium requires a level of basic skill that many other media don't, and part of what I enjoy in art is the skilfulness of the creator. In this case, the creator isn't skilful at all; as you point out, the picture is rather daft.
But in this case, the art is in the concept, and the concept is incredibly cool. I think the sheer banality of the image is part of its charm; it's suggestion that the democratic processes of voting probably can't produce an iconoclastic or visionary artwork. Indeed, it reminds me of those dudes who polled thousands of Americans to find out what they thought were the visual components and style of a good piece of art -- and then created a painting that matched the precise average specs. As I recall, it was, too, a studiously bland image -- a field, a cow, a mountain, some guy standing around, basic American pastoral. Yet it was incredibly weird and thought-provoking because of the process by which it was created.
(Sorry, I can't find a link to that project. Anyone have one out there?)
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 29, 2005 6:00 PM
I remember reading about that survey project. They also produce what the consensus said was "bad art". I remember it was this really drag, highly textured triangle. Worse than the pastoral, I think.
Posted by: Taybin![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 29, 2005 7:28 PM
Heh. Yeah, that sounds pretty stanktacular.
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 1, 2005 6:59 PM