“Proto-Agonist” Alice M. Chung (2017)
"Proto-Agonist" was a piece which stood out to me, where these anime and Japanese RPG sprites were generated and created from DCGANs (Deep Convolutional Generative Networks) and utilized an RPG generative process that characterizes the 2D sprites. I was amazed by the way our brains are able to distinguish the faces, hair, and body from pixels, where there doesn't need to be a lot of information in images for us to recognize sprites. I really enjoyed the transition of pixel color, that allows us to see so many permutations and iterations of 2D characters from color changes in the pixels. I find it interesting how individually, the sprites may appear simple in their pixelated form and color, but when looking at the generation of these seemingly-simple collection of pixels, there's many more layers of depth that go into creating endless images of pixels that read to us as distinct characters and sprites.