Place: Every Pixel Matters

r/place was an online experiment that took place on the social news and discussion website Reddit in April 2021. The experiment involved a canvas of 1000x1000 pixels that was initially blank, but users were invited to "place" a tile of their choice on the canvas every five minutes. This led to the creation of a collaborative art project, with users working together (and sometimes competing) to create images and patterns on the canvas.

One interesting aspect of r/place was the way it sparked rivalries and competition between different groups of users. For example, there were fierce battles on the canvas between users representing different countries, such as France and Spain, as well as between users representing different streaming platforms, such as Twitch.tv and YouTube.

At the end of the r/place experiment, everything on the canvas was wiped off the board, leaving it blank once again. This sudden erasure of all the images and patterns that had been created by users could be seen as a metaphor for the Buddhist concept of non-attachment.

In Buddhist philosophy, non-attachment is the idea that attachment to material possessions or worldly things leads to suffering. Instead of getting attached to these things, Buddhists aim to cultivate a state of mind that is free from attachment.One way that Buddhists demonstrate non-attachment is through the practice of creating sand mandalas. These intricate works of art are created using colored sand, and they can take days or even weeks to complete. Once the mandala is finished, it is often destroyed, either by sweeping it away or by pouring the sand into a nearby body of water.In this way, the destruction of the sand mandala is a symbolic act of non-attachment, reminding practitioners not to get attached to material things. In a similar way, the wiping of the canvas at the end of the r/place experiment could be seen as a reminder that the images and patterns created by users were temporary and not worth getting attached to.

Overall, r/place was an interesting experiment that demonstrated the power of online communities to collaborate and create something unique.

A total of 1.8 million users participated in the experiment, making it one of the largest collaborative art projects in history.