Ariel’s Portrait
Sai Sriskandarajah, Matt Chmiel, Teresa Porter and I created the Human Empowered, Pixel Optimized Camera Rendering Asynchronous Process for the Physical Computing without Computers course at ITP. This project recreates the digital camera rendering process, but instead of using microprocessors, human beings are enlisted to encode, digitize and render the image.
Matt Encodes
The first step in the process was to divide the image into individual pixels. We discussed and experimented with several possibilities, including dead reckoning, a latticework direct imaging grid and windowpane method. Finally we settled on using a medium-format camera’s focusing screen, with a grid drawn on it so that it would be easy to distinguish where each pixel was, and comfortably read off values. Next we experimented with pixel size and bit depth. A 8 x 8 grid produced too low resolution for an image to be interesting. We then attempted a 16 x 16 grid which too longer to read off, but created a reasonably recognizable portrait image.
Filled imaging grid
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