Before the advent of digital photography, I was already toying with pixels (picture elements). It started with a newspaper illustration. Back in the early 1970s, digitization was largely limited to printing and black-and-white TV.
As a teenager, I saw how dots could create a picture (listen as Richard Feyman explains). The dots merge in your eye if they are small enough. Depending on the size of the dots and the distance between them, gradiant of greys will result. The finer the resolution, the greater the realism.
I ruled lines across a photograph to create a grid. Then I reproduce the image using an array of blanks, full stops, colons, slashes, zeroes, hashtags, and the @ sign on the family typewriter. Each symbol carried a different amount of ink.
Later in the 1980s, I purchased one of the first computerized photo-editing workstations available. The idea is that I would scan and digitize photographs to produce crosspoint tapestry kits with which one could stitch photographic quality needlepoint tapestries. It was a business which worked, but unfortunately I was not a businessman.
As well as producing one-off patterns I also created kits of famous individuals (Sergeant Pepper's Pick of People's Patterns). They were small, just 50 stitches by 70, and used a range of 16 shades of sepia wool. Three-thousand fivehundred stitches resulted in remarkabky recognizable images.
It was incredible that this worked. Anyone at all would 'fit' into my frame. I could create anyone in the world with just a few shades of wool and a bit of canvas. If I wanted to, I'd e able to reproduce all of the people who ever lived and ever would live with only 3500 pixels in monochrome! Moreover, I could capture them at every age, and with every facial expression, wearing every type of accessory, and sporting every kind of hairstyle! How the heck was that possible (and where would that realization lead me)?
Let's do the maths (or as the Americans say, 'math').
In the first position of the grid, you have a choice of 16 shades to stitch. For the second position, there are also 16. So that's 16 times 16, or 256. By extension, the total number of permutation of a 50 by 70 stitch pattern is 16 to the power of 3500.
Now, sixteen to the power of 3500 is not 16 multiplied by 3500. It's a really huge number. that most calculators cannot handle.
So imagine my full set of possible tapestries. Most of the images would appear to be nothing at all. They'd just consist of noise, nonsense, a snowy screen. Only an infinitesimally small fraction of images would resemble anything at all. Nevertheless, that small fraction would include every Tom, Dick, and Harry - and every other name - from any angle, at any distance, with any combination of earrings, tattoos, piercings, and facial expressions.
Crazy!
Now, collect those images and house them in some gigantic gallery floating up in space (because there wouldn't be room enough on Earth). Would the stars be far enough apart, I wonder?
Having housed them all - a good day's work - let's depart from what I'll christen the 'Douglas Adams Gallery at the Centre of the Galaxy. As we speed away in our spaceship, it appears to diminish in size until it's merely a dot. No matter how large something it, it will appear infinitesimal at a great enough distance.
As well as producing one-off patterns I also created kits of famous individuals (Sergeant Pepper's Pick of People's Patterns). They were small, just 50 stitches by 70, and used a range of 16 shades of sepia wool. Three-thousand fivehundred stitches resulted in remarkabky recognizable images.
It was incredible that this worked. Anyone at all would 'fit' into my frame. I could create anyone in the world with just a few shades of wool and a bit of canvas. If I wanted to, I'd e able to reproduce all of the people who ever lived and ever would live with only 3500 pixels in monochrome! Moreover, I could capture them at every age, and with every facial expression, wearing every type of accessory, and sporting every kind of hairstyle! How the heck was that possible (and where would that realization lead me)?
Let's do the maths (or as the Americans say, 'math').
In the first position of the grid, you have a choice of 16 shades to stitch. For the second position, there are also 16. So that's 16 times 16, or 256. By extension, the total number of permutation of a 50 by 70 stitch pattern is 16 to the power of 3500.
Now, sixteen to the power of 3500 is not 16 multiplied by 3500. It's a really huge number. that most calculators cannot handle.
So imagine my full set of possible tapestries. Most of the images would appear to be nothing at all. They'd just consist of noise, nonsense, a snowy screen. Only an infinitesimally small fraction of images would resemble anything at all. Nevertheless, that small fraction would include every Tom, Dick, and Harry - and every other name - from any angle, at any distance, with any combination of earrings, tattoos, piercings, and facial expressions.
Crazy!
Now, collect those images and house them in some gigantic gallery floating up in space (because there wouldn't be room enough on Earth). Would the stars be far enough apart, I wonder?
Having housed them all - a good day's work - let's depart from what I'll christen the 'Douglas Adams Gallery at the Centre of the Galaxy. As we speed away in our spaceship, it appears to diminish in size until it's merely a dot. No matter how large something it, it will appear infinitesimal at a great enough distance.
Hold onto that image. We'll return to it before long.