When Pixels Collide

For anyone that wants to kill some time browsing the final canvas, you can view it at [0].<p>There&#x27;s a LOT of space there, and it&#x27;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&#x27;s a really amazing creation!<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;place?webview=true" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;place?webview=true</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;N6HlFOe.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;N6HlFOe.png</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;lH1bNvO.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;lH1bNvO.png</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;4ywu6zJ.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;4ywu6zJ.png</a>

The best visualization of this is the heatmaps.<p>Take a look at it: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1tT0F6ZPG-I" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;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.

&quot;The Smaller Picture&quot; 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, &quot;Typophile&quot;, to collaboratively create a bitmap font.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kevan.org&#x2F;smaller.cgi" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kevan.org&#x2F;smaller.cgi</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;typophile.howardesign.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;typophile.howardesign.com&#x2F;</a>

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

Pretty good article, but it starts with an odd inaccuracy: &quot;It gave its users, who are all anonymous...&quot;<p>Reddit users have names. Pseudonyms, often, but that&#x27;s quite different from being anonymous, like on 4chan.<p>In particular, on &#x2F;r&#x2F;place, you could see the name of the user who placed each pixel, and this was relevant in diplomacy and conflicts between factions.

Previous discussion about &#x2F;r&#x2F;place:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14033216" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14033216</a>

Is the dataset published anywhere?

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