Above: Video documentation of The Portrait of Sofia Imber
Above: Gif Animated of The Portrait of Sofia Imber in its original 32x32 pixels size
The “Portrait of Sofia Imber” – a Venezuelan philanthropist – is shaped like a classic 32 x 32 pixel desktop icon. You can drag it around the screen but it’s not a normal icon. Each pixel forming Sofia’s face (eyes, mouth and face’s outline) isn’t a normal and static color but a dynamic pixel-image.
Each pixel is an image taken from an online Google image searching process. The portrait keeps querying Google choosing randomly among 5 pre-programmed queries. Each image is then resized to 1×1 pixel and imported into the portrait. Each image (pixel-image), being resized, takes a specific color depending on the color percentages of the original photo (a photo filled by a lot of red can become a red pixel).
The portrait automatically reloads every 15 seconds displaying new face expressions due to the colors obtained resizing the found images. For instance the presence of many white pixels (due to the resizing of an image with a great percentage of white in it) can give the feeling of missing pixels, ruining the original look of the portrait.
This gives the portrait a kind of new expressionist value. The “pixel-images” forming the Sofia’s face are browsable. You can click on them exploring their content.
Behind this work lies my interest around the concept of “sign” and “mark”. It is part of a series of works for which I tried to develop a tool (query fill) to draw lines and make patterns, using images, audio files and videos instead of classic static colors.
“The Portrait of Sofia Imber” is a NewNewPortrait
To read more about Pixel-images and Query-fill please check out these other projects:
Altarboy-Oriana
4 Untitled Portraits
Altarboy-Cyrille
SkyMan