Grosaic
A collaborative photo mosaic
Self-initiated
I've always liked finding ways to get people involved in creative projects. Especially people who wouldn't normally consider themselves creative. In my experience those are often the people who surprise you the most. Give someone outside the creative industries a brief and a bit of latitude and there's a good chance they'll come back with something that nobody in the room would have thought of.
Grosaic came from wanting to create something that worked like that. A collaborative photo mosaic, where a source image is broken up into a grid of squares and each square is claimed by someone who then goes out and photographs something to fill it. The brief for each square comes from the square itself: a fragment of the original image, with its own colours, shapes, and lines. Part abstract, part instruction.
That's the interesting bit. You're not just being told to find a single flat colour. You claim your square and you get this small, pixelated patch of the original image. Maybe it's mostly deep orange with a dark edge running through it. Maybe it's got a bit of sky blue in one corner. You have to interpret it, go out into the world, and come back with a photo that feels like it belongs there. That gap between the brief and the response is where the creativity lives.
The source image is kept hidden. You can see the grid filling up as people return with their shots, and you can see the fragments each square was drawn from, but what the whole thing adds up to stays a secret until the last square is submitted. Some contributions will be a precise match. Some will be a generous interpretation. That looseness is part of it. It's what makes the finished mosaic feel like something people made together rather than something a machine assembled.
No account needed to participate. You claim a square with a name and email, and a token stored in your browser proves ownership when you come back to upload. Claims expire after 24 hours, so nothing sits locked indefinitely if someone drops off.