One pixel at a time...

October 8, 2005 7:48 PM

Pixel Fest - "Here's the game: can a group of random people, each contributing a teensy weensy bit, make a coherent piece of art/design/garbage purely through the influence of the work itself?" A time-lapse video of the project so far can be seen here (heavy load time)
posted by hypersloth (20 comments total)

According to the site:
Date Created - 11 Nov 2005
Date last modified - 12 Nov 2005

Can anyone explain?
posted by mystyk at 7:57 PM on October 8, 2005

It's still active; I added to it today.. I'm just waiting for the double-post flag. :)
posted by hypersloth at 8:07 PM on October 8, 2005

Ah, the age-old human impulse to spell "POOP" whenever given the opportunity. I also like someone's attempts to introduce that growing black cancer in the bottom left.
posted by Krrrlson at 8:33 PM on October 8, 2005

It may or may not be worth noting that the current state of the image appears to be the sort of two-dimensional 'tree and sun-with-rays' scene so beloved of crayon-wielding elementary school students everywhere. If it had a red house that consisted of a square and an isosceles triangle with two four-paned windows and a door it'd be perfect.

I wonder: if you ask a group of adults (separately) to simply 'draw a picture' how many of them would render a scene just like that?
posted by jedicus at 8:43 PM on October 8, 2005

mystyk, that seems to mean the last time he modified the code for the project. For instance, VersusColor seems to have been a building block for this one.

Wikishop. Interesting. The first vandalism was predictable -- bad word! my site name in lights! and I'm mainly surprised that they got away with it as wholly as they did. There was what looked like a mountain-reflected-in-lake thing developing that may not survive, and somebody was able to get a sun in place to complement the tree that must have been a group project. Then ... some claque rolled in with a concerted effort at blacking things out in the lower left.

And it's a year and still not exactly looking close to finished.
posted by dhartung at 8:57 PM on October 8, 2005

Answer: no.
posted by bobloblaw at 9:01 PM on October 8, 2005

It probably works out that way (sun plus tree) simply BECAUSE it is an image that a lot of people have in their head when they get the "draw a picture" command.
Any original ideas are futile, because the other people won't realize or recognize if you're trying to make a picture of a guy washing his car or a map of the world or the moon attacking a small puppy wearing plaid shorts and they will soon turn your one artistic pixel into a tree or the sun.

I was feeling very collaborative and uncreative today and added a yellow pixel to one of the sun's rays.
posted by easternblot at 9:01 PM on October 8, 2005

dhartung, I think mystyk was trying to point out that november of 2005 hasn't happened yet.

I don't have the time or bandwidth to check this out just now, does anyone feel generous enough to describe it to me in more detail?
posted by shmegegge at 9:20 PM on October 8, 2005

never mind
posted by shmegegge at 9:30 PM on October 8, 2005

im fighting to turn that sun into a puppy wearing plaid shorts.
posted by rawfishy at 10:02 PM on October 8, 2005

Metafilter:changing the world one damn pixel at a time.
posted by rawfishy at 10:06 PM on October 8, 2005

the animation is way cooler than the picture as it lets you see the battle over what the image will be...without the animation the project would have lacked a lot of depth...that being said i do sort of like the borg like cube that attempted but failed to blight out the picture. sort of like the forces of darkness were repelled by the power of the light pixel.
posted by stilgar at 10:22 PM on October 8, 2005

It's sad how many people want to f*** with the sun. Weird egotism.
posted by spacewaitress at 11:07 PM on October 8, 2005

I tried helping out what seems to be the beginnings of a cloud. Go cloud!
posted by TwelveTwo at 11:42 PM on October 8, 2005

I've started putting pink pixels into the sun. Going to turn it into a giant nipple in the sky.

On Preview: I almost feel bad posting this after spacewaitresses comment. But not that bad. The sun's a nice bright, round target, it's yearning to be fucked with.
posted by Jawn at 11:58 PM on October 8, 2005

Actualy, I was thinking about doing something like this. The flash animation murdered my browser though, fucking flash. Seriously, why did microsoft have to kill java? WHY?!
posted by delmoi at 12:16 AM on October 9, 2005

I work for a developer of MMORPGs. Someone came to us with a proposal to do this back in the days when people payed dollars per hour to get online. The laughter didn't stop until he left the building.
posted by Foosnark at 11:56 AM on October 9, 2005

i think the landscape on the far side of the lake should be brown instead of red ... at least that's what i did with my pixel
posted by pyramid termite at 12:02 PM on October 9, 2005

I have joined the Defenders of the Sun! One yellow pixel added.
posted by Justinian at 3:53 PM on October 9, 2005

Die, sun, die! I put a blue pixel in there. I'm going to Trotsky out the sun!
posted by antifuse at 1:36 AM on October 10, 2005