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A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing - trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it changes and evolves - kinks, trembling motions and errors are exaggerated through the process.
A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals was first created as a tool to be used in conjunction with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk - an online labor market. Mechanical Turk workers were paid 2 cents to trace a line.

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  • Kyle McDonald plus 1 year ago
    really beautiful. i love the minimal presentation.

    i had a similar idea a few years ago, but for sound -- i wanted to see what happened if people recursively traced sound waves, how the audio would be distorted over time.
  • Matthew Brown (Matty Brown) plus 1 year ago
    do it. Sounds awesome. :)
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  • Victor Diaz 1 year ago
    really interesting :)
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  • Golan Levin 1 year ago
    Excellent
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  • david_bowman 1 year ago
    OMG, It' s Jesus, like on pancakes!
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  • Katy Martin 1 year ago
    It's like Chinese whispers with a pencil. Beautiful.
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  • Dennis G. 1 year ago
    Using the Mechanical Turk to create art: Genius. Thanks for this!
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  • Vicky Wak 1 year ago
    ace
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  • Carsten G. 1 year ago
    Can this be repeated with a circle? I wonder if a closed form ("Gestalt") would vary as much as a line. I guess not.
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  • Jay Bflag 1 year ago
    Gestalt !
    :-O
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  • JP P 1 year ago
    I gotta say that the first copier really set things crooked from the start. I would've given him one retry. At the speed he drew the line it seems he didn't really try.
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  • Tim McCaughey 1 year ago
    That first guy to trace sucked big time.
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  • Tinapple 1 year ago
    Nice
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  • Daniel Murtha 11 months ago
    It's a great, simple idea, but that second person drew so badly it kind of ruined the effort, made the rest seem artificial, which is a shame.
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  • Casey O'Hara 11 months ago
    I was this as my screensaver.
  • Neil Sanders 5 months ago
    I am this as my screensaver.
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00:01:41
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  • Uploaded Thu January 20, 2011
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