
When Pixels Collide - shubhamjain0594
http://sudoscript.com/reddit-place/
======
Klathmon
For anyone that wants to kill some time browsing the final canvas, you can
view it at [0].

There's a LOT of space there, and it's extremely interesting to me to just
scroll around and look at the various little parts.

Logos, flags, sayings, memes, beautiful patterns, pop culture references,
memorials, jokes, and a ton more.

Some of my favorites being a fantastic section of hearts in various flags and
patterns [1], and the various areas where the art that incorporated the
streaks of rainbows into their creation instead of trying to overwrite it[2].
And just the overall cooperation between some groups (especially where the
flags collided and decided to put hearts at their borders, one example of many
at [3])

It's a really amazing creation!

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/place?webview=true](https://www.reddit.com/place?webview=true)

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/N6HlFOe.png](http://i.imgur.com/N6HlFOe.png)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/lH1bNvO.png](http://i.imgur.com/lH1bNvO.png)

[3] [http://i.imgur.com/4ywu6zJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/4ywu6zJ.png)

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Raphmedia
The best visualization of this is the heatmaps.

Take a look at it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tT0F6ZPG-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tT0F6ZPG-I)

~~~
ericjang
_" They thought that search engines were a map of what people were thinking.
But actually they were a map of how people were thinking. Impulse. Response.
Fluid. Imperfect. Patterned. Chaotic."_

\- Nathan, Ex Machina (2015)

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falcolas
Yeah, less collaborative art, and more a competition between bots.

In the beginning (and for some of the smaller subreddits), it was people
building art. But for the most recognizable pieces, there were simply hundreds
of bots enforcing a provided image.

~~~
revscat
Which is interesting in itself. You seem to think that the bot usage took away
from the overall importance of the effort. I'm not sure I agree.

~~~
falcolas
I don't disagree that it's still interesting (if a bit boring after the first
few frames of an animated representation of the progress). But a piece of art
created by a few dozen people with machines, when compared to the expectation
that a piece of art was created by a couple hundred thousand people by hand;
well, it just doesn't have the same impact.

~~~
patcon
But the machines were only built and deployed as a reaction to human energies?
If there were no people participating as they were, then no one would have
gone to the efforts to build and run the bots. I feel your comment seems to
gloss over how important the human factor was to bringing the more
"mechanical" part into existence :)

EDIT: speaking of which, I wonder if reddit could use some of the data from
this to detect sockpuppet network on reddit... I imagine communities of a
certain type might have engaged (or not) with this phenomenon in a very
different way than others

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cpeterso
"The Smaller Picture" is a similar collaborate pixel art project that has been
running since 2002. Given a picture description, each visitor gets to vote
whether a randomly selected pixel should be flipped to white or black. This
site was inspired by an earlier project, "Typophile", to collaboratively
create a bitmap font.

[http://kevan.org/smaller.cgi](http://kevan.org/smaller.cgi)

[http://typophile.howardesign.com/](http://typophile.howardesign.com/)

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shubhamjain0594
This is the best thing I have seen over a long time. Tremendously awesome.

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rspeer
Pretty good article, but it starts with an odd inaccuracy: "It gave its users,
who are all anonymous..."

Reddit users have names. Pseudonyms, often, but that's quite different from
being anonymous, like on 4chan.

In particular, on /r/place, you could see the name of the user who placed each
pixel, and this was relevant in diplomacy and conflicts between factions.

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jwilk
Previous discussion about /r/place:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14033216](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14033216)

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erikpukinskis
Is the dataset published anywhere?

~~~
theemathas
I found this:
[http://spacescience.tech/place/](http://spacescience.tech/place/)

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return0
I dont think there was a single piece of original art in there. It was art by
committee

~~~
Klathmon
There was plenty of original art, you just need to look for it.

My favorite was the belgium flag which melts into a hotdog with ketchup and
mustard with a beer tap on the black portion.

[http://i.imgur.com/cM8h2V3.png](http://i.imgur.com/cM8h2V3.png)

