This mesmerising, morphing video experiment by József Fejes is more than a beautiful art project. It’s a visual boundary-pusher, dedicating one pixel to every colour your computer is capable of displaying. And it’s beautiful.
Fejes took on the project as part of a StackExchange challenge to “make images where each pixel is a unique colour (no colour is used twice and no colour is missing)”. The original challenge was keyed to the capability of a 15-bit RGB system, meaning 32,768 individual colours.
But Fejes didn’t stop there. As the video progresses, we see the full colour spectrum possible with an 18-bit system (around 260,000 pixels) and finally a 24-bit system (with a full 16,777,216 colours).
Now, to be completely accurate, Fejes notes that the YouTube video doesn’t show every single colour displayed in the original visualisation; cropping and compressing both take a toll, and the peculiarities of your actual screen may further hamper the display. Still, it’s pretty amazing to watch and enjoy, even if you’re not getting the full flavour of 16.8 million colours. Though if you’re curious, you can view the full uncompressed 4096×4096 image right here. [József Fejes via New Scientist]