Friday, December 9, 2005

SwarmSketch

This image represents “World’s Ugliest Dog”...

Peter Edmunds’ SwarmSketch grabs a few randomly selected popular search queries and bases a week-long collaborative sketching project on this query... week after week. The actual canvas is a Flash which shows the lines everyone drew. You can draw a small line of your own, but you will not be able to create a whole picture (let alone a whole meaningful object) out of it. To not let the canvas become too messy if everyone draws on it, everyone also gets the change to vote on the popularity of particular lines.

Sarah Boxer of the New York Times says: “Apparently, the collective consciousness is quite literal-minded. Almost all of the drawings begin with something figurative in the middle. And no matter how much scribbling and erasing there is along the way, the central figure usually remains.”

The site is very well implemented down to many details. For example, you can playback a movie of how a past sketch was created. While the canvas is adding line after line, a clock to the left shows the time and a box below it the country of the individual artist.

[Via Gary Price of Search Engine Watch.]

Somewhat related to SwarmSketch are PixelGroup and SketchPlanet.

SwarmSketch by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (1)

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