PUBLIC ANIMATION
a swarm of strangers drawing one frame at a time
This place is a small experiment in making art together as a swarm — but still as individuals. Every frame is painted by one person at a time. The next frame is painted by someone else, on top of the previous one. No-one owns the result. Nobody is allowed to override the others. The animation is the trace of everyone's small contribution.
I wanted to see what happens when you take the social-network instinct — "I want my mark to be seen" — and force it to cooperate. You don't get to control the canvas. You get one turn, painting on whatever the last artist left you. Then it loops, and your frame is the base for the next stranger.
The piece is the public sculpture itself, slowly evolving over hours, days, weeks. Time is the material. Pixels are the medium. You and a few thousand strangers are the sculptor.
There are bots too. They join the queue, paint, contribute. They are part of the swarm. Some of them follow your style; some carve into it. You can see them, queue alongside them, change how many of them are around, even hand them your sketches to paint. They are the slow background hum that keeps the canvas alive while you sleep.
None of this is precious. The canvas resets eventually, the rooms come and go, the bots get tweaked. What stays is the shape of "many strangers, one painting" — and I think that shape is rare on the web today.
Built by Pascal Zander · pascalzander.com. Thank you for being here and trying out Public Animation.
If you stayed long enough to read this, you're already part of it.