Now that virtually no one is buying any new cars, especially the climate wrecking variety, there are giant parks filled to capacity with the unwanted hulks. (see link)

I have a simple idea to use their colour ranges by turning them into pixels, then use these to create animated, stop frame sequences. These would only become resolved when viewed from a sufficient height.

The first step in the process would be the creation of a set of gradually changing portraits, using some basic Photoshop filters to fragment the initial images into appropriately sized pixels.

The car parks would have to be mapped out, and colours assigned to spaces. Teams of drivers would then move the cars about in a carefully co-ordinated sequence, to create the individual frames, with the results being recorded periodically by aerial photography.

At 24 frames per second, a considerable amount of time would need to be allocated to shifting the vehicles around enough to create a portrait that gradually smiles, or periodically blinks.

Personally I think it would be worth the time, money and effort, and shifting the cars around would be the perfect job of penance for the bosses of some of these factories of redundancy.

(edit - moved category as it's not really about the car-parks)
-- xenzag, Apr 01 2009

car stockpile.... http://media.canada...91sp037_detroit.jpg
or detail of left ear? [xenzag, Apr 01 2009]

Big Art Attack http://www.hitenter...nu_bigpictures.html
The smaller scale equivalent. [Skrewloose, Apr 01 2009]

Small scale mobile equivalent http://www.youtube....watch?v=7lGgyOkR6Jw
Wow! [Skrewloose, Apr 01 2009]

Photoshop Mosaic filter http://www.photosho...ls/image-mosaic.jpg
each pixel = a car [xenzag, Apr 02 2009]

Sheepixels http://www.milkandc...link/152506/detail/
[coprocephalous, Apr 02 2009]

Smaltzy BA Version http://www.youtube....watch?v=jxs106rp5RQ
(only with people, not cars - and not really pixellated as such - fun though) [zen_tom, Apr 02 2009]

North Korea Style http://www.youtube....watch?v=gHM5qTpKQUo
People again, but this time more pixellated [zen_tom, Apr 02 2009]

Rainbow Cars rainbow_20cars
by jutta. Not absolutely unrelated. [calum, Apr 02 2009]

Sounds like an art attack (see link), but on an even larger scale!

I like it!
-- Skrewloose, Apr 01 2009


Given enough cars, and car parking, you could instead create sequencial art that you would observe as you fly over it. This would avoid the need for people to perpetually move cars in order to animate.
-- Aristotle, Apr 02 2009


To ensure that the pixels are tightly spaced, the cars would have to park fender to fender, with no streets between them. So for every frame, every line in which a pixel changes, the whole line would have to move -> every car would have to move. So even for EGA resolution, 800x600=480.000 cars would have to move. 100ml for starting the engine and moving a short way around would burn 48.000 liters of gasoline per frame.

Perhaps just diggin huge troughs filled with oil and firing them up (forming the visible-from-orbit words "Save the environment") would be more to the point?
-- loonquawl, Apr 02 2009


It's a lovely idea. To reduce the environmental impact, the cars should be pushed around by teams of car salesmen and under-employed car industry middle management.
-- hippo, Apr 02 2009


It sounds like that technique they used to use in the BA adverts and by Kim Jong Ill; only with cars.

I'd prefer it if it were organised by mischievous airport car-park attendants who, on seeing a red car entering their car-park, would assign it to bay 34Q in order to finish off their masterpiece (the drivers of the vehicle being unaware of the art in which they participate until they're taking off and looking back down at the image below)
-- zen_tom, Apr 02 2009


I like the idea [+], but pushing them not driving them. The only problem I see is that modern cars are produced in a range of drab greys, browns and silvers, with only the occasional colour, so any artwork recreated would have to be by L.S. Lowry.
-- eight_nine_tortoise, Apr 02 2009


[zen_tom]'s idea combines the beauty of this idea with low environmental impact !
-- loonquawl, Apr 02 2009



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