The Kimo (the top image) theater in downtown Albuquerque is decorated with tile mosiacs, forming what would now be considered a pixilated motif. In recent years artists such as Chuck Close have gone back to the idea of enlarging the color regions of an image, hardening the transition between shades. Many street artists, video game enthusiasts, and architects have relied on the same break down of imagery.
Early Greek mosiacs in the palace of Knossos show this simplistic approach to conveying an image. It is a pre-impressionist example of looking at something with your mind and not just your eyes. To dissect these representations of form until they can only be read as a series of colored squares is a huge step towards modern art in galleries and the streets as well.
In more recent years a street artist has been digitizing mosaic art and referencing early video games and the characters associated with them. He goes by the name "Space Invader" (the bottom picture) which is a play on words of course, as he invades peoples space with his street art, and his principal design is based on an Atari game of the same name.
The most facinating aspect of these representations is the reasons behind them, for some it is a choice. For the Greeks, they chose to pixilate the Dolphins of Knossos, for "Space Invader" he chose this as well. For Chuck Close and the early Atari games it is more based on limitations. Atari was limited by the most advanced bit rate availible to video game programmers at the time. Chuck Close was suddenly paralyzed as an adult and can no longer paint phot realistic imagages, so he opted for a compromise, he chose to use his mind to discover the blocks of colors that make up a face.
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