Minimalist websites and their pseuodopractical application


While on the plane to Boston, I got a little frustrated that I cant program my iPhone directly. No simple, scriptable terminal or anything. Since Im not of the skill or inclination to quickly write a python interpreter or processing development environment as an app for the phone, I went a different route. I decided to use the icons on the home screen as a low-resolution display matrix.

When adding a page to your homescreen, the iPhone creates an icon for the page by rendering the whole thing down to a square format. I took advantage of this to create half-filled dots on the screen.

Naturally, I had to write something with the pixels I was making. It being party time and all, I decided to encourage celebratory behavior with my downsampled display. Keeping with the spirit of lo-res, here is a video of the display in action, converted into an animated gif.


In the end, I rather like the simple visual weight of the 50/50 webpages: 01v 01h 10v and 10h . They are flexible minimalist works; they scale to fit any size real-estate. Use them to create your own iPhone cum lite-brite or just enjoy your monitors ability to crank out pretty, high-contrast black and white pixels.

Originally posted at http://things.sansumbrella.com/2008/12/minimalist-websites-and-their-pseuodopractical-application/

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