A day doing 'art' on the internet
I’m no artist but pixelating with strangers was a neat and fun way of spending my Friday on the world wide web. I’m referring to r/place, a sub-reddit and social experiment that brings together redditors to collaborate on a blank canvas by placing a color-ed square. Confused? Here’s what it looked like on Friday afternoon:
Here are the rules you play with; there are a million possibilites for where you can place your color mark. Once you put down your square, you’re on a 5-minnute time out. It’s fun, it’s chill and definitely intriguing to see what strangers together can come up with … except there are some very clear themes in play here.
I hopped on early Friday morning eastern time when the r/gamestop and r/osu were competing. Star Wars enthusiasts were also determined to leave their mark on this digital art collective.
Up top, Redditors rallied around Ukraine, making a banner flag across the board. Some memes, including Pepe the frog found their spot on there. There was also a nod to Among Us, a multiplayer video game that took off in 2020 and helped us deal with the pandemic.
The canvas was also used for other social messaging, including one to save trafficked women in China:
By evening, the canvas changed! There was the “void” Army attacking flags and art pieces with all black pixels. There was some turf war with flags and by Friday evening, Redditors had painted over the big Ukrainian flag too.
What a day! Oh and, the canvas is live for another two days! Go, make your mark!
Here’s other fun things I read this week.
Aaand, that’s all for now. If the pixel art canvas thing intrigued you, check this timelapse!