This year, we're doing an exquisite corpse. The basic idea is that an image related to Rochester will be broken up into tiles. People will download these tiles, without knowing what the overall image is. They will take those tiles and modify them however they like, but with two rules:
- The modified tile should have something to do with Rochester.
- The modified tile should relate back to the original tile.
For example, here is a picture from Rochester. It's "Equilateral Six", a sculpture on State Street:
And here is a tile taken from that picture:
And here is that tile, modified:
Note in this example, I decided to keep the basic colors, but added text (the latitude and longitude for Rochester) and a portion of the "Clock of the Nations" clock face to replace the red-orange pile of leaves.
Now imagine what happens when you have dozens of people each taking tiles from some larger image, each modifying them in their own way. When combined back together, you'll have an interesting approximation of the original image, with each tile being a unique little world others can explore.
Everyone can choose to modify their tile as much as they wish. Text, images, drawings, mucking around with image processing options in your favorite editor. Be silly, be serious, be creative. Prefer physical over digital media? Sketch your tile on paper, color it in with markers, and then scan it.
So what will the original image be? I don't know yet. Suggestions are welcome.
That's the general idea, and over the next week or so, I'll be working out the details and setting up the site to manage all this. My hope is that we'll get a wide variety of tiles ranging from simple manipulations to wild departures.
