Welcome to ART DAY! Those of use who’ve been with us already know what the deal is, but for those that don’t, every Friday we feature art from around the internet. We’re mostly lovers of representational and abstract art, but you can expect to find anything from sculptures to words here. For those of you who know what the deal is already, thanks for comin’ out.

Seeing that last week we brought you collaborations between man and insect, it’s only fair that we also bring you some collaborations of the human kind, namely, human kind co-operating with human kind to make art.

Collaborative art is a broad topic, especially given that many collaborative art projects (at least on the contemporary level) cross the boundaries of what many people would consider to be art, in the traditional sense.

Many online projects in collaborative art have started, mainly because of the relative facility of sharing ideas and images and words over the internet as it is.

One of my favorite internet collaborations I have seen to date is a project called Glyphiti, a product of which is featured above. Glyphiti basically incorporates a white board that is divided into different squares or glyphs. When you come along to the webpage, you can choose one of these squares at a time to edit. Each square is divided into smaller pixels which can be either left white or turned black. By editing each small glyph, a larger pattern begins to emerge. Some people are especially skilled and can create whole intricate pictures by editing one glyph at a time. That’s basically the paraphrased explanation.

The image you see above is a timelapse capture of all the activity for the month of 07/01. They actually have an archive that includes stream captures of all the months. You can just watch them or you can jump right in and start editing glyphs.

It’s important to stress that I only aim to give you a sample of what’s out there, for the web is basically teeming with collaborative art projects if you keep your eyes open.

a user generated apple!

Another cool project is Art.Othernet.Com which operates on a similar principle as Glyphiti. Similar but different. In this experimental collaborative art project, the user is shown a collection of computer generated images and asked to say which one looks more like [insert subject]. The paintings that survive serve as the genetic material for the next generation of generated pictures. Using the interface the creator has designed, by logging into the page and participating you affect the final outcome.

The topics from the project range from abstract things like "fear" to more concrete things, such as the "apple" pictured above, or the "sunset" below. I think this is a pretty ill idea, but only time will tell what it produces. Log in and try it out!

an [impressionistic] sunset

Keep scrollin’ for more ART DAY!