Variation on a theme

The same - but different

The same image displayed in a modified manner can make a world of difference to art and design whether prominent or subtle.

In this obvious example, this cute sheep's head is displayed as a mosaic of tile pieces and also as a plain photographic image.

What will such variation do?

Changing the form even if not the image can produce a surprising array of results.
Try experimenting yourself - take an image, turn it into a silhouette, or perhaps shrink it and use the tiny imagery as the 'dots' to make up a larger image of some sort.
Whatever your ideas, just try them out and see what you get!


A chicken you know, may know or a stranger in your flock?

Another example is this colour image of a chicken.
The image shows the vibrant colour range of the feathers that would enable an owner to recognize it among a flock of other chickens, even if they were of the same breed with similar colouring.

The same image repeated below but using a filter so only grey scale is visible induces anonymity, that is to say the individuality of the chicken becomes so much harder to identify - the characteristic of colour has been reduced to 'colours' from black through to white - various shades of grey.

If this was now placed in among a flock of chickens with similar colouring, picking it out would be considerably harder - it has moved toward becoming anonymous.

Taking this another step further, we can also show the same chicken as a silhouette, an all black image of the original.
The characteristics of colour that originally had helped identify the chicken, which when shades of grey made identification harder has now limited identification down to the shape only.
If it was seen from various angles other than sideways on as in this example, it may not be identifiable at all - even as a chicken.

Finally in this little set piece, we have the white chicken - a negative of the silhouette.

The appearance, albeit the same other than being a switch from black to white, without seeing them side by side, may seem like a completely different bird.

Perception is in the eye of the beholder and interpretation is very much an individual concept.