For anyone that wants to kill some time browsing the final canvas, you can view it at [0].<p>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.<p>Logos, flags, sayings, memes, beautiful patterns, pop culture references, memorials, jokes, and a ton more.<p>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])<p>It's a really amazing creation!<p>[0] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/place?webview=true" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/place?webview=true</a><p>[1] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/N6HlFOe.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/N6HlFOe.png</a><p>[2] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/lH1bNvO.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/lH1bNvO.png</a><p>[3] <a href="http://i.imgur.com/4ywu6zJ.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/4ywu6zJ.png</a>
The best visualization of this is the heatmaps.<p>Take a look at it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tT0F6ZPG-I" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tT0F6ZPG-I</a>
Yeah, less collaborative art, and more a competition between bots.<p>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.
"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.<p><a href="http://kevan.org/smaller.cgi" rel="nofollow">http://kevan.org/smaller.cgi</a><p><a href="http://typophile.howardesign.com/" rel="nofollow">http://typophile.howardesign.com/</a>
Pretty good article, but it starts with an odd inaccuracy: "It gave its users, who are all anonymous..."<p>Reddit users have names. Pseudonyms, often, but that's quite different from being anonymous, like on 4chan.<p>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.