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Projects like this are so fascinating to me. I saw an art piece once that consisted of a TV that rotated through all possible pixel combinations. Think about th

Projects like this are so fascinating to me. I saw an art piece once that consisted of a TV that rotated through all possible pixel combinations. Think about that for a second: at some point in time, it will display any possible image anyone could ever make or dream of (in that given format). Any person's face, any movie-frame, any written sentence, etc. So fascinating, the vastness of it all.

awhitty 11y ago
Is it possible to know when in time its pixel values would form certain images?
tbirdz 11y ago
Most likely most of those images are just random noise, and nothing intelligible. It would take longer than the heat death of the universe for that TV to display all possible images. Let's examine an extreme underestimate to demonstrate this. Say the TV is monochrome with an 8x8 resolution, and it can change it's image every millisecond (1000 fps). It would then take 2^(8*8)/1000/3600/24/365 = 584,942,417 years for that TV to generate all possible 8x8 monochromatic images. Then when you consider that the TV is likely running at something more like 640x480 resolution with 24-bit color at 60 fps, you can see that it will take an astronomically larger amount of time for the actual TV to display all possible images. The time would be larger still if the TV were running at 1920x1080 resolution (or 4k!). Further more, a large majority of the sample space is just unintelligible noise, and the vast minority of the space is actual recognizable images. So likely, the art project will just be displaying noise until the end of the human race. I don't think this takes anything away from the artistic merit of the work, it just changes the message a little. We humans are capable of creating a machine that can display every image, but we will never be able to see them all. It is an interesting contrast between the creation of a generator and the execution of it. I don't think this is what the artist initially intended with their work, but it is interesting to ponder nonetheless.
blt 11y ago
Possibly "Every Icon" by John Simon Jr., 1997 http://www.radicalart.info/AlgorithmicArt/grid/every/EveryIcon/index.html http://www.radicalart.info/AlgorithmicArt/grid/every/EveryIc...
wordlibrarian 11y ago
I am glad you liked it! There's already some image search engines, as posted above, including this one: https://babelia.libraryofbabel.info/ https://babelia.libraryofbabel.info/

awhitty 11y ago

Is it possible to know when in time its pixel values would form certain images?

tbirdz 11y ago

Most likely most of those images are just random noise, and nothing intelligible. It would take longer than the heat death of the universe for that TV to display all possible images. Let's examine an extreme underestimate to demonstrate this. Say the TV is monochrome with an 8x8 resolution, and it can change it's image every millisecond (1000 fps). It would then take 2^(8*8)/1000/3600/24/365 = 584,942,417 years for that TV to generate all possible 8x8 monochromatic images. Then when you consider that the TV is likely running at something more like 640x480 resolution with 24-bit color at 60 fps, you can see that it will take an astronomically larger amount of time for the actual TV to display all possible images. The time would be larger still if the TV were running at 1920x1080 resolution (or 4k!). Further more, a large majority of the sample space is just unintelligible noise, and the vast minority of the space is actual recognizable images. So likely, the art project will just be displaying noise until the end of the human race. I don't think this takes anything away from the artistic merit of the work, it just changes the message a little. We humans are capable of creating a machine that can display every image, but we will never be able to see them all. It is an interesting contrast between the creation of a generator and the execution of it. I don't think this is what the artist initially intended with their work, but it is interesting to ponder nonetheless.

blt 11y ago

Possibly "Every Icon" by John Simon Jr., 1997 http://www.radicalart.info/AlgorithmicArt/grid/every/EveryIcon/index.html http://www.radicalart.info/AlgorithmicArt/grid/every/EveryIc...

wordlibrarian 11y ago

I am glad you liked it! There's already some image search engines, as posted above, including this one: https://babelia.libraryofbabel.info/ https://babelia.libraryofbabel.info/