Displaced Pixels are pixel artworks extracted from Place (2022), a collaborative project and social experiment hosted on the social networking site Reddit. Each artwork has been carefully restored and framed, saving them from digital oblivion and dataset obscurity.
The most collaborative project in the history of art, Place (2022) was simultaneously an act of creation and destruction. Over
the course of four days, 160 million pixels were placed by more than 10 million unique users in a sleepless and petty battle
to alter, grief, and defend individual artworks – before the entire canvas was returned to its original blank state.
Among The Starry Night (2,104 pixels) depicts Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night with an Among Us! character impersonating the moon. The artist himself is shown to the side of his famous canvas, suspiciously pointing at the unwelcome imposter.
Pensexual (605 pixels) depicts a classic black fountain pen overlaid on the Pansexual Pride Flag.
Impossible Border (3,910 pixels) depicts the border of an Indian Flag artwork and a Danish Flag artwork. Though the two nations’ geographic borders lie some 6,000 kilometres apart, here an Indian Elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) and a Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) have formed an unlikely friendship.
The Creation of Pizza (1,562 pixels) depicts Michelangelo’s fresco painting The Creation of Adam (Italian: Creazione di Adamo), one of the most-replicated religious paintings of all time, with a slice of Margherita pizza dangling from Adam’s hand.
Loky Ronin (2,775 pixels) depicts Loky, the pet cat of popular Turkish streamer Videoyun. Loky is captured in the Nihonga (Japanese: 日本画) style of portrait, a traditional style originating in the Meiji period that emphasised the use of mineral-based pigments to paint on scrolls and screens, often portraying subjects of landscapes, birds and flowers, beautiful women, and scenes from Japanese history.
The All Night Watch (18,360 pixels) depicts Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch (Dutch: De Nachtwacht), one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings. It was a masterpiece of both pixel art and sleepless perseverance in the face of several co-ordinated attacks and griefs.
Towers of Hell (1,372 pixels) depicts three notoriously complex climbing towers from Roblox platform Juke’s Towers of Hell: the Tower of Hecc, the Tower of Screen Punching, and the Tower of Impossible Expectations.
Wet Prayer (693 pixels) depicts a 1,000-tier Twitch emote from streamer WetForJesus: two hands pressed together and stained from the fingertips with crimson.
The Birth of Rule 34 (625 pixels) depicts Super Smash Bros character Red Robin. Originally rendered fully-clothed, the character was soon undressed by counter-artists invoking Rule 34 (an Internet maxim that which asserts “If it exists, there is porn of it. If there isn't, there soon will be.”). The character’s final pose is reminiscent of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.
Yandhi Buzz (1,518 pixels) depicts the cover of Yandhi, an un-released Kanye album. Befitting an album that was all buzz no content, the artwork has been compromised by ‘Bonnie Bees’, a popular symbol of YouTuber (and beekeeper) GCP Grey.
21st Century Social Man (576 pixels) depicts the iconic artwork of King Crimson's debut album, In The Court of the Crimson King. The screaming face (commonly referred to as ‘Schizoid Man' in reference to the group’s signature song) was painted by Barry Godber.
Le Fils de Pomme (400 pixels) depicts René Magritte’s The Son of Man (French: Le fils de l’homme) with the distinctive apple obscuring his face.
Hawaii Partiii (624 pixels) depicts the album cover of genre-defiing Hawaii: Part II by Miracle Musical (Japanese: ミラクルミュージカル), an album released on December 12th, 2012 at 12:12 AM, when the world was supposed to end.
Portrait of the Father (2,726 pixels) depicts a Dark Souls helm, Mask of the Father, in a gilded frame. The helm forms part of the much-maligned and memed ‘Giant Dad’ build.
Late Majority (1,167 pixels) depicts the protest slogan FUCK NFTS! held aloft by a sloth, capturing the anti-NFT sentiment of the Reddit community (and perhaps the late majority in Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory).
ROFLMAO (4,725 pixels) depicts the transitory stage of a battle between US redditors and Chinese netizens as a bloody-eyed Winnie-the-Pooh was forcibly merged with a Zhang Zhenshi’s classic portrait of Chairman Mao.