If you recall, we partnered with Lexus to celebrate the launch of the CT Hybrid on a project called Fresh Perspectives. Besides including artist challenged, Lexus and Microsoft partnered to deliver videos and stream content through the XBox. Richard Worsfold of Microsoft developed a fun tool to allow viewers and participants to become involved in the instant art project. Paint Your Profile is a fun interactive tool that allows you to create a piece of art using your Facebook profile as the inspiration.
We asked Richard to explain how his Facebook algorithm works.
First, the user’s Facebook profile picture is loaded in the background. Then, the average color of that image is determined, the saturation is boosted and a blend mode is applied to a white, tan or black image chosen at random. A list of the user’s friends is pulled and a fractal typographic treatment is created in which the color of their friends name corresponds with a color value relative to the position of the photo that is hidden from the user. Additional Facebook data is pulled to reveal something interesting about the user that they may not know, such as most/least social friend (based on how much wall activity they have), oldest/youngest friend, average age of friends, or friend with the longest/shortest name…
After the data is pulled, one of a few different styles of brush is pulled and tied to the above data, and uses the user’s profile image to pull color. Once the image is completed, the user has a unique blueprint of a his or her social presence on Facebook.
If you have any privacy concerns, Paint Your Profile doesn’t store any data, with the exception of the artwork image and who made it.
Log in on the Paint Your Profile site and check it out for yourself. There’s also a nifty video on the Fresh Perspectives website so you can see how it works.
Design Milk has partnered with Lexus on Fresh Perspectives, a series that highlights work by six artists from different disciplines. Each artist created two pieces of art based on three themes — Challenge, Empower, and Escape — and each piece was made within 24 hours. Thanks to Lexus, this project not only supports art but also helps support Design Milk’s efforts to promote emerging artists.
