“We are now all aswim in an ocean of pixels,” says American computer scientist Alvy Ray Smith. “I carry billions of them on my person, and I suspect you do too.” Indeed, we have all been exposed to all kinds of digital imagery made up of pixels, from scrolling through social media platforms on our smartphones to the animated films we know and love. And this was sparked by the 'Great Digital Convergence' of 2000, whereby a single new digital medium replaced nearly all analogue media such as oil on canvas and ink on paper.
‘A Biography of the Pixel’ (MIT Press, £32, ISBN 9780262542456), written by Smith himself, points to that significant millennial event by celebrating ‘Digital Light’ – the vast realm that includes any pictures for any purpose, made from pixels.
Smith is the ideal person to write a book on this very subject. He co-founded the now Disney-owned Pixar and Altamira Software and was the first director of computer graphics at Lucasfilm...