Exploration of post-internet photography
Open the following p5.js program on your phone, and take a photo walk of at least 30 minutes. It is a little camera app which takes photos and then does pixel sorting, arranging each vertical column so that the total brightest pixels are at the top, and darkest at the bottom. It’s a kind of a photo filter, familiar from smartphones, Instagram etc.
https://editor.p5js.org/mace/sketches/ualvv5LlX
The app does not save photos anywhere on the cloud or on your phone/computer. If you want to save a photo, you can grab a screenshot. Screenshots themselves are interesting digital objects, and play special role in digital culture.
What is an image on a computer?
The program has a number of sort functions defined at the bottom, from line 103 onwards. One of them, sort_by_brightness is activated at line 90. Try the other ones. The functions can be copy-pasted, renamed and changed. Some of them given functions use the three channels, e.g. on blueness of the pixels, for sorting.
Explore image manipulation
- Prepare for Show&Tell
- Try to modify the pixel sorting photo app.
Ideas for modifying the pixel sorting photo app
- Sort by redness instead of blueness.
- Change the lighting conditions of photography (use p5.js! ;)).
- Change the threshold values.
- Condition
Image.set() on y_index on line 93.
- Change the UI.
