Vis-a-Vis: Paint by Pixels

Graphis, May/Jun 2002 by Coupland, Ken

Basking in the glow of the computer screen, designers and their audiences have grown accustomed to interacting with a back-lit, fractalized virtual "space" whose threshold of visibility is defined by a grid of tiny but notquite-Invisible colored squares. As the smallest divisible unit of the onscreen image, the pixel forms the irreducible module from which this ubiquitous yet strangely confined environment of information is constructed. The computer has inevitably imposed its own peculiar aesthetic on our consciousness, an aesthetic that has come to assume a homey familiarity for the majority of users. With all its restrictions and technical hindrances, this new canvas-developed, it's worth keeping in mind, without any idea of its eventual function-represents a visual language that readily lends itself to stylization. The creative cyber-elite who today rely on the Web as a medium of expression have in turn opted for modes of representation that frankly acknowledge the limitations of the tools at their disposal.

That the pixel is Indivisible by default makes it the basic building block for the computer interface. Recognizing the pixel as the armature of online design becomes a minimalist exercise in suggesting the most with the least. That impish illustrators are inclined to screw with convention makes it inevitable that any visual vocabulary based on the pixel will ultimately be undermined. The site for Pixelhugger, for example, features a dwarfish mascot with the familiar Lego-like appearance of any desktop Icon. But the mascot's upside-down head subverts the cozy universality of conventional icon imagery. The pixel becomes a symbol for deconstruction in Typographic's disintegrating letterforms that proliferate across a predetermined grid. At the Hi-res site, we only see the head and shoulders of the tiny spectator that gazes up at us, but that's enough to establish our bird'seye point of view.

The Illustrators at Pixelhugger join an emerging generation of digital designers who exhibit an ambivalent fascination with robotic characters that are both endearingly klutzy and unnervingly impersonal. The ironic undercurrent detectable in the retro feel of their rendering style, with its references to early computer games, displays a self-conscious infantilism that trades on metaphors of childhood and a calculated naivete that masks the devilish complexity of the tools that are used to produce it. Renderings of readily identifiable objects and individuals by Fake I.D.'s Yvan Martinez take a different tack, substituting a faux-representational style for the highly stylized depictions we have come to expect. Swapping links, artists worldwide have created a labyrinth of cross-references guaranteeing that the very latest images are scrutinized far and wide. At "hubs"-- sites operated by graphics enthusiasts that consist primarily of links to other sites-predominately younger designers who share a fascination with emotive characters, game play and virtual worlds that are orthogonally based show a healthy contempt for traditionally naturalistic illustration styles.

The popular Flash plug-in that allows designers to fluidly introduce elements of animation online has given birth to a wealth of pixel-based cartoon actors. Reala, a Swedish animation and recording studio, posts mini-- segments that grapple with the contradictions of the computer grid by aping low-budget disaster movies. Elsewhere, a motley cast of characters that were once known as "avatars"-stand-ins for human participants-pop up In on-line chat "worlds" like Habba Hotel, a subscription-based service that poses as a meeting-- ground for the younger demographic. These Munchkin-- like doubles for real-world players navigate In an environment that blithely ignores the conventions of Western-style multi-point perspective, opting instead for an orthogonally constructed world that renders size uncorrected for distance, via a tradition grounded in Eastern presentation modes.

Manipulating the minuscule scale of the pixel, designers have cheerfully embraced the computer's troubling potential for eyestrain and repetitive stress injury with excruciatingly detailed interfaces that flaunt their high-- resolution construction. At an ongoing feature at the Kaliber 10000 site, Craig Robinson's Lilliputian cartoons depict everyday activities rendered at the threshold of intelligibility.

Some Illustrators simply reference the pixel module, adopting it as a "look" that acknowledges its status as the Interface's lingua franca Favoring flat 2-D surfaces and uncorrected perspective, these designers make the most of the limitations of online display. QuickHoney's Nina Rausch renders an impassive, deadpan account of her daily life in a series of panels that borrow from the banality of computer rendering to suggest the vague unease we feel In the presence of the computer screen. In Rausch's passionless world, we regard a universe drained of significance by its very signifiers.

Ken Coupland reviews Richard Avedon's Made in France (pg. 136). "It was a joy to revisit this period of Avedon's work," he says, "but what particularly impressed me was how digital printing technology allows us to get close to the originals." Coupland is a