![An Online Artwork Drawn By You And 999,999 Others [Slideshow]](/multisite_files/codesign/imagecache/960/article_feature/Epic-Exquisite-Lede-A.jpeg "An Online Artwork Drawn By You And 999,999 Others [Slideshow]")
An Online Artwork Drawn By You And 999,999 Others [Slideshow]
Xavier Barrade’s interactive web drawing reads like a window onto the soul of the Internet -- and it’s not what you’d expect.
On the Internet, anyone can be an artist. In Xavier Barrade's hands, everyone is.
Barrade, a British artist studying in Paris, has masterminded an interactive, online drawing that's got virtual space for as many as a million (a million!) contributors. Developed with Wake Up Web Solutions, Epic Exquisite Corpse is designed to let anyone, whether a sketchpad virtuoso or a hack who can barely rough out a stick figure, unleash his inner Picasso. Just go to the site, click "draw," then start sketching away in the blank square. The only instruction is that you start your drawing by following the lines in the neighboring squares.
Epic Exquisite Corpse isn't the world's first interactive drawing. But it might be the biggest, if not one of the biggest, based on how many people can participate. So far, folks have filled in 1,639 squares. You might assume that the web, birthplace of 4Chan, would usher an artistic free-for-all down aggressively adolescent halls, places overstuffed with blood, tits, and balls. And yeah, there's some of that. But there are also hearts! Unicorns! Portraits! (Tons of portraits.) A square that says "MJ Lives On"! Another that says "Dieu Est Une Femme" (God Is a Woman)! If the drawing tells us anything, it's that the Internet has the sweet, angsty soul of a 12-year-old girl.
[Hat tip to Computerlove]
