Image Mosaic

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In the field of photographic imaging, a photographic mosaic (also known under the term Photomosaic or ImageMosaic) is a picture (usually a photograph) that has been divided into (usually equal sized) rectangular sections, each of which is replaced with another photograph of appropriate average color. When viewed at low magnifications, the individual pixels appear as the primary image, while close examination reveals that the image is in fact made up of many hundreds or thousands of smaller images. They are a computer created type of montage.

Originally, the term photomosaic referred to compound photographs created by stitching together a series of adjacent pictures of a scene. Space scientists have been assembling mosaics of this kind since at least as early as the Soviet Union space satellite missions to the moon in the late 1950s.

History

Related to the manually created 9th century art of Micrography which utilises letters & symbols to create larger images. Leon Harmon of Bell Labs created images from symbols and letters in 1973 which led to the popularity of ASCII art in the 1970s and 1980s.

1993 Joseph Francis, working for R/Greenberg Associates in Manhattan, is believed to be the inventor of the modern day computer generated colour image versions. His 'Live from Bell Labs' poster created in 1993 used computer themed tile photographs to create a mosaic of a face. He went on to create a mosaic for Animation Magazine in 1993 which was repeated in Wired Magazine (November 1994 p. 106). Francis has said, on his "History of Photo Mosaics" webpage, that his interest in developing these techniques further was in part stimulated by the work of artist Chuck Close.

1994 Dave McKean creates an image for DC Comics, a mosaic of a face made from photos of faces. Although this is believed to be created manually using photoshop.

1994 Adam Finkelstein and Sandy Farrier, creates mosaic of JFK from parts of Marilyn Monroe pictures. The result was displayed in the Xerox PARC Algorithmic Art Show in 1994.

1994 Benetton: AIDS - Faces mosaic. Over one thousand young peoples' portraits from all over the word computer-processed spell out the word AIDS.

1995 The Gioconda Sapiens, a face with ten thousand faces, was presented to the public in April 1995 (Spain, Domus museum). This was the the first large photographic mosaic, using photographs of 10,062 people from 110 countries to make the Mona Lisa.

1995 Adam Finkelstein (published mosaic in Mossy Bits), creates mosaic of the oil painting American Gothic from images collected from the web in early 1995.

1995 Robert Silvers creates a Photomosaic, and goes on to trademark the term Photomosaic and patent creation of Photomosaics in 1997.

2003Doubletake Images creates the world's largest photographic mosaic -- over 10,000 square feet. The live event took place at Disneyland and was created by thousands of castmembers holding up photographs of themselves.

2004Roy Feinson creates a series of 38 giant mosaic murals to celebrate Disneyland's 50th Anniversary in which 250,000 guest submitted photographs were used. The project included the first tri-level mosaic, comprising an image of Steamboat Willie made up by photographs of Disney castmembers, which themselves were mosaics made up of guest photographs.

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