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Web-based Collaborative Artwork
An anonymous reader sent in tiles.ice.org, which is doing a series of collaborative artworks where each artist creates a square in a larger mosaic. The main mosaic right now is being done blind, that is, none of the artists get to see what has been created in the adjacent squares... Neat stuff, a very nice example of something that couldn't be done in the pre-Net era.
"Neat stuff"
Agreed...
"a very nice example of something that couldn't be done in the pre-Net era"
Er, no... Maybe it makes it a bit easier, a bit more accessible, but... I think some people take the Net a bit too seriously...
A similar idea is 'Photoshop Tennis' where the participants email back and forth a Photoshop file, adding new layers each time. The game ends when one person gives up or decides that any new additions will just make it worse. It's an experiment rather than a competition.
Info and examples -here-
One of the major obstacles from more of this sort of thing going on is a lack of readily accessible free media sure there are a few oasis of public domain media and even fewer still examples of GPLed media. The fact remains though that there is no central repository for free media that artists can use to build on one another's works.
My interest is mostly in media that can be used for free games but any media that can be shared amongst the artistic community is great in my eyes. At any rate here are some free media resources that I've found and their associated licenses. I hope this list helps other artists and people looking for free media to use for one purpose or another:
Pixel Place - Lots of public domain images mainly intended for web site use (but you could find other uses if you're a creative thinker)
Ender Design - Public domain images mostly for web sites once again. High quality and very usable for UI graphics. The 'design sets' aren't public domain so be sure and read the license. I highly recommend this site.
The Texture Library - Public domain mostly photorealistic textures intended to be used for games (OpenGL). Very nice!
The Golgotha Project - High quality public domain music, textures and meshes! Perhaps the largest cache of freely available media in one place.
Free Game Arts - High quality media (mostly 3d meshes [MDLs] and textures) with various free licenses. The license which each model/texture is covered by is clearly stated before the d/l so be sure to read!
GNUArt - A site in french with GPLed media (mostly music).
GNUsic - A site that features a CD written by artists who have GPLed their work.
Linkware Graphics - License is called 'Linkware' which translates to free for non commercial use and no modifications allowed. Mostly music related images here. Again mainly for web sites but could be used for other purposes.
Public Domain Images - Small amount of public domain images
I am currently gathering sites with free media and sucking down their contents in preparation for WorldForge's free media repository.
Perhaps all the /.ers know of free media resources which I failed to mention here? The free media repository will have media with all sorts of licenses so don't think we're after just one type of 'free' media. Perhaps others who know of good caches with free media could share them with us here? Thanks!
-Jason
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
Fo example, I propose starting the "quilt" at one corner and creating a potentially infinite quilt of diagonal shape, ordered in the following fashion, starting with tile 1, then tile 2, etc. (similar to the proof that the rational numbers are countable :)
1 2 6 7 15 16 . . .
3 5 8 14 17
4 9 13 18
10 12 19
11 20
21 23
22
The result would then be a quilt that _progresses_ across the middle as each tile has something in common with its neighbors. New ideas/designs would be more likely to appear on the edges where each new tile has fewer neighbors, whereas the bulk of similarity and progression would fall across the top-left to bottom-right diagonal.
I like your idea. Your patern would be fairly interesting, and may even have artistic merit, depending on if the artists took it seriously.
It may also be interesting to show only a thin portion of the neighbors (scaled for my 5x9 Font):
WW.........EE
WW.........EE
WW.........EE
WW.........EE
WW.........EE
There could be a requirement that your portion blend the edges together. Even the non-artistic may be able to contribute something interesting, and a program may even be able to contribute, or add "interesting" portions when the neighbors become boring. It may make for interesting wallpaper.
Also, you could use simple space filling fractals, such as the http://ecademy.agnesscott.edu/~lriddle/ifs/carpet/ carpet.htm> Sierpinski Carpet to assign new nodes, since there are infinite subdivisions to a fractal.
One final idea is to take a space filling fractal, and create the n+1 mosiac from the n mosiac. For instance, start with an image of Tux, divide it in 9, then have 9 artists create a new image, based on the edges of the other images. If the first image was divided like this:
111111111222222222333333333
111111111222222222333333333
111111111222222222333333333
111111111222222222333333333
111111111222222222333333333
444444444555555555666666666
444444444555555555666666666
444444444555555555666666666
444444444555555555666666666
444444444555555555666666666
777777777888888888999999999
777777777888888888999999999
777777777888888888999999999
777777777888888888999999999
777777777888888888999999999
, then artist #1 would get a seed that looks like this:
97777777778
3.........2
3.........2
3.........2
3.........2
3.........2
64444444445
, where I've wrapped around the edges so that the artist gets 4 sides. In other words, the artist replaces his tile, without knowing what the other artist will replace their tiles with.
Once the first iteration is done, the image would be divided 9x9=81 times, and farmed out to 81 artists. This keeps going as long as you want. It would be interesting to see what Tux (or whatever seed image you used) would look like after a few iterations.
Damn - I have real work to do, but I now want to go create a program to do something like this. I also have a suspicion it will devolve into the JPEG encryption algorithm...