I have been at the stage where I was ready to put in my hand as the artist and try and establish some order to my research and thinking. I can now create my own images and deconstruct from those through accidental process, rather than using Elena’s work as my starting point.
I discovered an interesting new app that lets me identify each individual pixel’s colour and quantity, which means I can properly disassemble an image, know its make up and reuse those blocks to create something completely new and different without affecting the DNA of the source.
But this got me questioning; what in fact is a pixel? I guess prior to this point I’d just compared it to some similar units. I’ve blogged them previously… but I suspect I jumped in way to quickly. Pixels aren’t simple at all… devilish little creatures, if they exist…
Do they exist? Because you see I discovered something I still can’t fully explain…
I found on Wikipedia whilst researching colour vision an image that has now become the focus of my work (image 1). Wikipedia describes it as follows:- this image (when viewed in full size, 1000 pixels wide) contains 1 million pixels, each of a different colour…
But when I opened this image in my pixel viewer app on the iPad and counted the top left hand box’s pixels across, there were only 61! So I rechecked on the second box… 61! For the information to be correct on Wikipedia each box should have had 100 pixels…
So what was going on?
I tried again on my new retina display iPad. This time only 45 pixels across??
What was going on?
The dictionary defines a pixel as: – the smallest element with controllable colour and brightness in a video display, or in computer graphics.
Was my predicament down to screen resolution? If so, logic suggests that with the right resolution, pixels would cease to exist. Doesn’t it? Using my new app I was able to view the image the way it was supposed to be seen… I was able to increase the pixel count and view each one of the million pixels individually…
My partner’s father had come to stay with us… another scientist… and whilst discussing this work he pointed out that other animals had different colour spectrums to ours and that they saw colours differently to ourselves. Of course, in my distant past I’d been taught this… I remembered the essence of what he was telling me… but…
“Though the raw information is important in that it provides a basis for any further brain processing, once a picture is formed it moves on to the rest of the brain and is compiled with all the other sensory information that an animal has taken in. The end product is a perceived view of the surrounding world, otherwise known as an umvelt”.
A perceived view? Are pixels perceived views dependent on screen resolution? That would change things… the invisible/non existent made visible. That would allow me to play with their structure and shape wouldn’t it?
My comparison became the snowflake. A single ice crystal… each completely different… fingerprints. That would allow me to design my own pixels… make them appear…
I started creating sketches, running the Wikipedia image through some of my randomizer apps, then altering them deliberately. New apps came up that allowed me to start numbering individual pixels; further research into the colours different groups of animals see migrated into the work, altering compositions. Now I had the blocks numbered I was able to deliberately choose their positions and then repaint in yet another app.
Spectrum pixels were born…
