The Smaller Picture

                    
                 X  
 X X               X
X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X X XXX            X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXX X           X X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X                  X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X X  X         X   X
XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX
X                  X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X                  X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
                    
                    
                   ?
                    
The collective consciousness was attempting to create a flag.

This picture is now closed.

You can browse the history of this picture, or view it as an animation.

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

Previous pictures :
Great Britain face star bucket banana map of the world umbrella question mark telephone circle spiral 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 15443 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.