pixel this

I love when two completely divergent signals from the universe converge and make a connection in front of my very own eyes. The topic of the day is: Pixelation. Within in 48 hours (albiet several days ago at this point. I'm a confessed latent blogger), I discovered both Anti-Advertising Agency's culture jamming project, Pixelator, and Montage-a-Google, courtesy blog.FABRICA.

Now I open up the forum to you, dear reader: convergence or not? What, if any, is the connection between the two? Why are completely separate minds thinking alike?

Spoiler Alert: Read on only if you want to know the author's opinion. Since quantifications such as "digital," "megapixel" and "resolution" have crept into our laymen's vocabulary, and since virtually every camera is now a camera phone, artists and thinking creative sorts have been toying with the aesthetic qualities of pixelation. Grainy, blurry, early video game-esque, and generally distasteful, blow-up that low-res image to the point that the original form is flattened and obscured, and what you get is pleasing, patterned squares, seemingly random, but with an inherent connection to the next. A la geometric, modernist art of the early-mid twentieth century. (I might do some research and throw in a couple of links, but I'm essentially referring to the movement that, given a protractor, a ruler, and some shades of paint, the intial response is "I could do that!")