Ten Thousand Cents is a innovative 2008 project from the talented Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima. For the project, they used Amazon's Mechanical Turk system to get 10,000 anonymous participants from over 50 countries to draw one small section of a $100 bill without knowing what they were drawing. They paid each artist one cent, for a total cost of $100. Using custom software written in Processing, the process was recorded from start to finish and combined together to create a fantastic application of a large community of users all working on one small part of a larger solution.The animations are viewable online as a whole or individually, creating a unique rendition of a $100 bill. I particularly love looking at the different drawings to find the ways in which people draw, and to see the few "easter egg"-like drawings that have nothing to do with what they are meant to become.
Printed versions of the final images are available for $100 each (naturally) and all proceeds from the sales of each piece are donated to OLPC.
I just recently posted a presentation by Aaron, which you can see here.
Leave a comment