Is it just me or is data compression becoming a hot topic? Just the other day, Richard wrote an article about this topic called The Importance Of Internet Real-Time Compression. Today I would like to take a look at data compression again, but from a different perspective. What about compressing data for the sake of art? Have you ever thought about that before? Yeah, me neither.

According to Flowing Data, “The concept is simple. Take every frame in a movie and compress it into a sliver, and put them next to each other. Voila. Movie barcode.” I never thought about movies in terms of colors before. Apparently there is a color palette used by each movie created. You can even tell by looking at these barcodes when certain scenes of the movie begin and end. Apparently this concept is nothing new.

Jason Salavon is commonly credited with being one of the first people to make this type of compressed digital artwork. On Salavon, you can see how he digitized MTV’s 10 greatest music videos of all time including Thriller, Vogue and Sweet Child of Mine. I chose a few of my favorite movies from Movie Barcode to show you below. If you would like to see what your favorite movies look like in this compressed barcode format, just zip over to Movie Barcode where you’ll find an entire library of movies.

The Social Network



Inception



The Matrix



The Silence of the Lambs



Speed Racer



Slumdog Millionaire



Predator



Astro Boy

