ILLUSTRATION: David Heasty

By MICHELE LAUFIK
Collegian Staff Writer

During high school Rob Silvers wasn’t allowed in computer class. The reason: he couldn’t type fast enough.

But now, several years later, Silvers heads the rapidly growing computer technology company, Runaway Technology Inc., which spawned from his popular creation, Photomosaics.

Photomosaics are images formed from a series of smaller images. All the images, called tiles, subtly blend together to form a larger picture transcending each individual image.

Examples of this art include the movie poster for The Truman Show, in which Jim Carrey's face was composed of smaller pictures, and several popular magazine covers: Newsweek's cover of Princess Diana, composed of small flowers, and a Sports Illustrated cover featuring Tiger Woods.

While a graduate student at MIT, Silvers developed the software program making all this possible. The program, which uses Silicon Graphics workstations, is not available to the public and likely never will be.

"It is a tool created for myself. It is an extension of my mind," he said.

It wasn't until he was older that Silvers moved into the computer field. "When I was young, I didn't think I'd have a software company but an art studio."

But it was Silvers' life-long interest in photography and his degree in computer science that pieced the final puzzle together.

With the software originally developed as his master's thesis, Silvers always had the intention of turning photomosaics into a prosperous company. And he has. With the increased popularity of photomosaics, the company's monthly growth averages 33 percent.

The inspiration for this successful idea came from Ken Knowlton's work of seashells glued to a wooden board that, from a distance, created a face.

With this concept in mind, Silvers began writing the computer program. Although simple at first, the images produced the correct effect. Using a specific photograph as the reference, the software considers thousands of images for each location of that photograph and picks the best match. It considers many different aspects, such as shape, color, texture and image context. The program has been refined to the extent that skies are made from birds, water from fish and faces from people.

Once the photomosaic is completed, Silvers uses his artistic opinion to determine if any images should be removed because of inappropriate content or if they draw attention to themselves.

But even before the program can perform this process, Silvers must consider several objectives. For example, the photomosaic of Abraham Lincoln created for the Library of Congress emerged after a search through its own photo collection. Because the Library had numerous Civil War photos in its archives, Abraham Lincoln's face was decided upon, Silvers explained.

Before the 1,500 photos could be used, they were all cropped square and, Silvers said, due to age, some needed to be lightened and cracks needed to be painted out to produce clear photographs. Working with five or six different images of Lincoln, Silvers produced 20 to 30 mosaics before deciding on the right one.

Besides the photos' contents, the original decision to create Lincoln's face was not random. Like many of his other projects, Silvers favors forming human faces. For example, the cover of Life's 60th anniversary issue, an offer Silvers received while still a student, features an image of Marilyn Monroe. Silvers had considered other objects, such as Earth, he explained, but Monroe conveyed more emotion.

In addition, a face offers a familiar image the viewer can recognize easily and quickly.

"Human faces are very important to us," Ullas Gargi (graduate-computer science and engineering) explained. "We are designed to realize faces, perhaps in order to recognize others within our species."

For similar reasoning, Silvers has produced several photomosaics featuring people. In addition to Monroe and Lincoln, he has created images of Bill Gates, Madonna, Elvis, Yoda and Darth Vader. Although the two latter figures are not quite human figures, they are recognizable images in the American psyche.

This desire to produce identifiable images became a necessary concern when Silvers was hired to create the movie poster for Jim Carrey's The Truman Show. The movie's executives wanted Carrey's face to be distinguishable even from a close distance, Silvers said.

Although faces dominate Silvers' work, he has designed company logos and ads, such as the MasterCard commercial featuring a credit card version of the dollar bill. In addition, the original images do not have to be photographs, Silvers said. His most recent book uses digitized scenes from Disney movies to create a photomosaic.

Whether a face or a flamingo, the key to viewing photomosaics is distance.

"From far away each individual image looks like a single pixel," Gargi said. "The right distance depends on how much your eye can resolve."

This technique of combining smaller images to create a larger image has existed for hundreds of years and has always defied the misconception of photography's inherent nature.

"Photo compositions have been controversial for 100 years. Photography, by its nature, is a recording medium," said Keith Shapiro, assistant professor of photography. "People believe there to be a truth to it."

But to understand photomosaics, the viewer must realize the things are not always as they seem.

"To begin with, photography is not a truthful medium," Shapiro said. "The viewer has to look with a critical eye. They cannot accept that what is at face-value is the truth."

With photomosaics, Silvers has further blurred this line between truth and fiction, but, in the process, has expanded the scope of computers as artistic tools.

"Computers optimize the expression of art," he said. "They are my creative outlet and a way of expressing myself."
ILLUSTRATION: David Heasty
Photomosaics courtesy of Robert Silvers