The Smaller Picture

  XX  X X X  X XXX X
X XX XX XX XX XX XX 
  X  X   XXXXX    XX
  XX X  XXXX XXXX XX
 XX X XX  XXXXXX XXX
XXX X X   X  X XXXXX
  X  X  XXXXXX XXX  
 XXXX   X     XX  XX
XXXX XX   XXX X X X 
  XXX XXX X XXX XX X
XXX XX   X X      X 
 XX  XXX  X X XX XXX
X XX    XXX   XX XXX
 X  XX XX  X XX X   
X   X XXX  XXXX  X  
XX XXXXX  X XX X  X 
 X XX X X XX  XXX XX
 XX XX X XXXXXX   XX
XX  X X X  XX  XX XX
    XXX X XXXX    X 
The collective consciousness was attempting to create a spiral.

<< This is frame 8701. >>

New pictures being created :
bird sword cat human head sofa castle apple

Previous pictures :
Great Britain face star bucket flag banana map of the world umbrella question mark telephone circle stick person letter arrow anything bee car wineglass cup landscape word heart fish lamp monster television computer tree goat spider boat chair flower house anything

Created by Kevan Davis in July 2002, based on Kevin Kelly's account of hive-mind audience emergence.
Each picture starts from a randomised grid. There have been 8702 flips to this one, so far.
See also: the official Typophile Font spinoff and Tom Rankin's filtering of it.

Other people have built much better emergent art projects
since this went live in 2002, most notably Swarm Sketch, Pixelfest and TheBroth.