On April 1st, Reddit tried a simple experiment: give the world of Redditors a blank canvas, and let them place pixels, one by one, with a waiting period. This meant no one person could take over the entire canvas, and that people had time to plan their next pixels. Armed with these simple tools, a unique collaborative mural was created.
This is a good article running down just what happened.
And here's an animation showing the evolution of the Place canvas:
Many elements of this are fascinating, at least to me. There were clearly participants who had specific images they wanted to create (and collaborated to do so), while others were out to claim territory (such as the Blue Corner), while still others just wanted to destroy what others had created (you can see bursts of this all over the canvas from time to time).
One of the most interesting things noted by the author of the article linked above:
It's fascinating to consider what kinds of images were created. Many of them aren't surprising: numerous elements of nerd culture, like video game and comic book and cartoon characters. Famous works of art like the Mona Lisa are represented. National flags, I suppose, are an easy thing to rally people around creating. Some elements are downright goofy, like the Windows taskbar and the attempted "Unregistered Hypercam" banner in the upper right (a pretty obscure reference to the realities of early online video chat). And, of course, plenty were just ads for individual subreddits--if people can agree on nothing else, they can at least agree to attract others to their online playground.
What I find most interesting, though, is how readily this format enabled both wide scale collaboration and competition. Better-organized groups were able to take on larger projects, but competition between them meant that nobody could take over the entire canvas--there were simply too many factions at work. It's also not clear how much direct communication there was between participants in each individual project. It's entirely possible that, once enough of an image had been completed for others to realize what was being created, they anonymously and independently worked toward its fruition.
Perhaps somewhat less inspiring is how derivative the final product turned out to be. This combination of images is unique, but few of the images themselves are novel--they are rampantly referential. Given more time, Place might have given rise to more original works. I'm sure it's easier for people to agree to recreate a well-known image or character than to decide on something new.
Just wanted to share this because I thought it was pretty interesting and unique. (Though it does remind me of the Million Dollar Homepage, where 1000x1000 pixels worth of ads were sold from 2005-2009.)
This is a good article running down just what happened.
And here's an animation showing the evolution of the Place canvas:
Many elements of this are fascinating, at least to me. There were clearly participants who had specific images they wanted to create (and collaborated to do so), while others were out to claim territory (such as the Blue Corner), while still others just wanted to destroy what others had created (you can see bursts of this all over the canvas from time to time).
One of the most interesting things noted by the author of the article linked above:
It's fascinating to consider what kinds of images were created. Many of them aren't surprising: numerous elements of nerd culture, like video game and comic book and cartoon characters. Famous works of art like the Mona Lisa are represented. National flags, I suppose, are an easy thing to rally people around creating. Some elements are downright goofy, like the Windows taskbar and the attempted "Unregistered Hypercam" banner in the upper right (a pretty obscure reference to the realities of early online video chat). And, of course, plenty were just ads for individual subreddits--if people can agree on nothing else, they can at least agree to attract others to their online playground.
What I find most interesting, though, is how readily this format enabled both wide scale collaboration and competition. Better-organized groups were able to take on larger projects, but competition between them meant that nobody could take over the entire canvas--there were simply too many factions at work. It's also not clear how much direct communication there was between participants in each individual project. It's entirely possible that, once enough of an image had been completed for others to realize what was being created, they anonymously and independently worked toward its fruition.
Perhaps somewhat less inspiring is how derivative the final product turned out to be. This combination of images is unique, but few of the images themselves are novel--they are rampantly referential. Given more time, Place might have given rise to more original works. I'm sure it's easier for people to agree to recreate a well-known image or character than to decide on something new.
Just wanted to share this because I thought it was pretty interesting and unique. (Though it does remind me of the Million Dollar Homepage, where 1000x1000 pixels worth of ads were sold from 2005-2009.)
