Pixel Art: Cultural artifact of technological age

From the late 80s pixel based graphics formed an integral part of popular culture, and surprisingly up until today it still echoes in media and digital arts.

The era of mass popularisation of pixel graphics came in 1980’s when the technology was quick adopted by the video game industry. Early video games consoles featured a slow image processing capacity and worked within a very small screen resolution. For example The Atari 2600 had a screen resolution of 192x160 pixels and The Nintendo Entertainment System - 256x240. In comparison, today’s HD television features a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. For such technical constrains, early video games could not be visually complex and featured limited 8bit colour palette, which posed a real challenge for game developers to produce minimalist yet representational and visually appealing graphics in the early video games. There is a classic story of Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of The Legends of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. video games, who had to gave Mario big nose and a moustache to get around the lack of facial details of the character.

In the modern era of fast computers and High Definition screens, the role of pixel as technological device significantly diminished, yet the use of old pixel graphics as tool of artistic expression in the course of past decade escalated enormously. Today pixel art can be easily found both in and beyond computer screen. 8-bit images present in modern advertising, street graffiti art, music album and magazine covers, digital and print artwork, tattoos and so on. This raises a curious question: how such an old and limited technology enjoys a tremendous degree of popularity in the modern “hi-tech” world.

I think we can partially find an answer if look back into the history of arts. For, in it’s nature, pixel graphics is in many ways similar to various traditional art forms, such as embroidery (cross-stitch), mosaic, stained glass, beadwork, and many others types of art where image is constructed out of multiple small coloured elements. Even in the last century’s expressionistic paintings could be discovered the essence of pixel art.

Paul Klee - Southern (Tunisian) Gardens – 1919

Syosa, a pixel artist from Japan, explains in the interview: “When I pixel, I do not only use my artistic sensibilities. I have to beat my brain to develop the most efficient palette, due to colour and size restrictions. I find pixel art is very similar to Japanese Haiku. I've worked with 2 to 5 colour palette challenges, size restricted challenges and downsizing challenges in Japanese pixel art forums. Pixel art looks best when there’s no wasted colour.”

http://www.pixeljoint.com/2009/10/03/2938/Pixel_Artist_-_Syosa.htm

Pixel artist Jason Rory, in 2007 designed an 8-bit video game “Passage” featuring 2 characters, only 8 pixels tall each. In the documentary short called “Pixel” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mqAZ06dwKU) he explains that the beauty of pixel graphics is that it is representational and abstract at the same time, it’s expressive power lies in its ambiguity and simplicity. Also, nowadays many people find 8-bit graphics a creative answer to the modern 3D graphic industry with it’s strive for complexity and photorealism.

Most importantly, it is undeniable that the golden age of console games left a significant cultural imprint on the society and peoples past. As childhood experience generally plays an important part in any artists work, many graphic designers tend to nostalgically return to that retro image of 80s to recapture the spirit of “good old times.”