Frontier Nerds: An ITP Blog

Will we ever run out of photographs?

As the web accumulates photos (another 6,037 posted to Flickr in the last minute…), and as projects like Photosynth start to infer intermediate perspectives between these images, one could conceive of collisions — multiple instances the same image, pixel for pixel, from two different authors.

Multi-megapixel full-color pixel images weighing in at dozens of megabytes distance us from what, exactly, these images are at the computationally atomic level of bits. Going back to the same concept on a smaller scale, makes the simplicity of the computational representation of an image clear. Black and white makes this exceedingly basic — an image can be as simple as a grid of 0s and 1s:

Ditch the grid, and you’re left with a big binary number:

100000000000001000000000100010101000001000011100100000100010000001111111000001000001000001001111000001001001000001001111000001001001000001001111000001001111000001000001000001000001000001111111

Convert that to base ten, and you have:

3,138,742,632,065,979,126,417,490,138,422,209,858,437,835,786,299,168,264,319

The picture’s just a number. It’s just one of the possible black and white images that could fit in the 12 x 16 pixel grid. In fact, it’s image number 3,​138,​742,​632,​065,​979,​126,​417,​490,​138,​422,​209,​858,​437,​835,​786,​299,​168,​264,​319 out of 6,​277,​101,​735,​386,​680,​763,​835,​789,​423,​207,​666,​416,​102,​355,​444,​464,​034,​512,​896 possible images.

Every single one of the ~6 octodecillion possible 1 bit 12 x 16 images could be generated computationally. We don’t need a camera, a photographer, or an icon artist — a simple program looping through and rendering each possibility would, eventually, stumble upon that exact spray can. And, eventually, it would run out of images to render, and the creative possibilities of a 12 x 16 pixel 1 bit canvas would be exhausted, or, at least, definitively explored.

These numbers are huge — incomprehensible. For all practical intents and purposes, these numbers are as good as infinity, and yet, they’re finite in every objective sense.

Scaling this idea up to the high-res color images typical of the web, the number gets even more ridiculous. You can find the number of possible distinct images for a given bit depth and resolution with the following formula:

Possible Photos = (2^Bit Depth)^(Width * Height)

This brings up a few questions.

First, this exposes an inherent and often unconsidered flaw of digital mediums — finite resolution means finite potential representations, suggesting a degree of determinism in digital systems.

Second, what might one discover by traversing the range of possible images with an algorithm instead of a computer? Would anything be discovered? Might we see glimpses of the future or past? By definition, these photographs would all have to be present in the set — portraits of every human, past and present, confidential texts, etc.

Third, what does this say about photographic creativity? Is creating a photo an act of genesis and original thought, or is the photographer merely colliding with an inevitable, preexisting combination of bits?

Fourth, exploring data sets like this also brings up the question: What’s the threshold of perception? How many pixels do we need to have before something representational emerges? Of course, deciding on any threshold implies compromise, and the representation of different facets of reality can move this threshold radically. For example, a single black pixel could be said to represent a dark room, and therefore could be said to hold some representational qualities. Representing text on a page or the nuances of a tree, however, would require thousands (maybe millions) of pixels.

A few artists explored this idea in the 90s: Jim Campbell’s The End (1996) John Simon’s Every Icon (1997)

It’s also worth considering that this concept is agnostic to the actual way in which in a particular bit string is interpreted. For any digital object of a particular size, this theory of finite possibilities can be applied and explored.

For example, artist Kyle McDonald explored this idea in sound, generating every possible sequence of the chromatic scale’s 12 notes:

It would be great to pick a point in your day to “fork” — to split time into two distinct paths, and consider / test / explore different outcomes. How, for example, would my day be different if I ordered that Falafel spicy instead of regular? My fantasy device would make answering this question easy.

The closest we’ve come so far to building interfaces to time travel are the version control systems used to manage source for big software projects, and the DVR systems common to cable and satellite boxes. So my device — The Time Fork — attempts to make some of these ideas accessible and intuitive. The device assumes that the basic mechanics of time travel, multiple universes, quantum mechanics, etc. are all sorted out.

To keep things simple (accumulation of features is left to subsequent iterations), let’s assume a few things:

1. You can only maintain a maximum of two time channels simultaneously — e.g. when you fork at, say, 10

   AM, you’re left with the current instance of existence, call it Channel A, and one new one, which also starts at 10
   AM, called Channel B.

2. Time only moves forward in the currently active Channel. If you spend 5 minutes in Channel A, then after 5 minutes of real time, the time code for Channel A would advance 5 minutes, while Channel B would remain stuck in the past.

3. Forking overwrites and the other time channel. For example, if you fork Channel B at 10

   AM,

To keep these issues and the irritating paradoxes of time travel as subtle as possible, my design is built around the most familiar of time-management objects: the wrist watch.

The setup is as follows: It looks like a relatively generic wrist watch, but there’s an extra set of hands on the face. The hands are color coded to represent which of the two possible time channels they represent.

Then there are two buttons, “Fork” and “Switch”.

“Switch” toggles the wearer between the two parallel universes. For example, if it’s 10

“Fork” overwrites the inactive channel with a new version of the present. For example, if you’re at 10

Instead of a push-button, switch might be better served with a rocker or toggle switch, so that it would be immediately evident which of the two channels you’re currently existing in.

This week’s lab came together without incident. The LED’s change in brightness was far from linear, though. The full range of adjustability was probably covered in the first quarter-turn of the potentiometer. Mapping the value sent to Pin 9 (via pulse width modulation) could fix this, but I wonder if it’s a flaw in the circuit or just a property of the LED.

Also, seeing the code for the PicBasic on Tom’s page about analog makes me appreciate how much boilerplate Arduino spares us.

Here’s the video:

Also, an aside: Any reason to favor the byzantine 6-hookup breadboard power configuration (left) over cleaner 4-hookup approach (right)?

Update: Just a style thing. When you’re using a voltage regulator, using six is more convenient.

Some thoughts on Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word The full text is available online to NYU students.

The immediate temptation after reading the first four chapters of Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy is to reconsider and recast his claims in the context of the web.

There are many ways in which communication on the internet resembles a continuation of the arc of high literacy Ong outlines: Blogs perpetuate the written diary’s solipsism. Email and SMS nudge away holdouts of secondary orality like phone calls and voice mail. The trend towards concision — the 140 character obsession, for example — has dispatched with the “formulary baggage” and “copia” associated with orality.

These newfound parallels to (and efficiencies over) pre-web literacy are inevitable enough. But even as our dependence on the written word intensifies, the web also seems to shift the spirit and style of communication back towards Ong’s definitions of orality. Yes, the bulk of our interface with the web consists of lines and lines of text, and yes, it’s missing so many of the existential elements that characterize a physical conversation — nevertheless, the tone of the web is often better aligned with traditions of orality than literacy. As such, the web disrupts Ong’s narrative of orality’s decline and literacy’s ascent.

Flickr, YouTube, and similar platforms offer obvious counterpoints to the web’s textual fixation — but the comment text annotating the imagery on these sites, and the general state of discourse on the web, offers more evidence of a return (relapse?) to orality.

Ong describes the essential challenges of writing: “To make yourself clear without gesture, without facial expression, without intonation, without a real hearer, you have to foresee circumspectly all possible meanings a statement may have for any possible reader in any possible situation, and you have to make your language work so as to come clear all by itself, with no existential context.” he writes. “The need for this exquisite circumspection makes writing the agonizing work it commonly is.”

The web’s glut of emoticons and long strings of emphatic punctuation don’t really solve these challenges — instead, they sidestep writing’s agony by adding some orality to the text. And since every post is predicated on the anticipation of a response, a kind of meter finds its way into the communication — more Iliad and less Finnegan’s Wake.

In chapter 3, Ong lays out a list of characteristics of oral culture … it’s interesting to see how many of these are aligned with the current state of communication on the web. Here are a few that stand out:

Aggregative rather than analytic — a sense of truth emerges on the web through aggregation of common opinion, forming pockets of (local) consensus.

Redundant or ‘copious’ — The need to keep text short may reduce redundancy on the individual level, but part of the aggregation process mentioned above depends on (even assumes) overlap and repetition across individual opinions.

Agonistically toned — The web is rich soil for polemics, hyperbolic insults, and has ample supply of the “your mom” jokes Ong cites as oral tradition.

Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced — Online communication seems to straddle these categories. Distance abounds, as does empathy and participation.

Homeostatic — “Sloughing off memories which no longer have present relevance.” In some senses, the web has an incredible memory — information sticks to it readily, and tends to endure. In direct comparison to oral traditions, the web hardly tends toward homeostasis. Yet, if the web’s currency is attention, then mere existence of information is not the whole story: it’s important to consider where the mice and eyes are pointed, and these tend to move quickly from one focal point to the next. (From meme to meme…)

Doorways, automobiles, and rooftops seem to accumulate sensors. Many were out of order — presence seems more important than functionality in some cases.

A slideshow is available on Flickr.