Over the weekend, the website Reddit extended this challenge to its millions of users: “There is an empty canvas. You may place a tile upon it, but you must wait to place another. Individually you can create something. Together you can create something more.”

The site of the challenge was an enormous blank interactive canvas. Every five minutes, a user could click on an individual pixel and change that pixel’s color. Sounds simple, right? Not quite. Because individual users were limited to one pixel every five minutes, anyone wishing to leave their mark on the canvas couldn't make it far on their own. Coordination and collaboration between like-minded users would be necessary.

"In order to make any lasting impact on the canvas, you had to work together with your own group as well as any surrounding projects," Harrison Phippen, a University of Utah student who participated in the event, told the Deseret News by email.

Using the site’s subreddits (forums) as bases of operations, various groups started working together to create increasingly intricate images. Citizens drew the flag of their respective countries. Fans of video games or cartoons drew pixelated versions of their favorite characters. Some users tried covering the whole canvas in blue.

"Everybody wanted to build something to represent their community and there was extremely limited space," said Phippen.

However, it didn’t take long for one group’s project to start infringing on the project of another group.

The experiment was no longer a simple art project; it was war.

Different areas of the canvas became territories and battlefields, and changing a pixel’s color was a declaration of war against fellow users. As so often in life, bigger was better - or at least, wielded more power. Larger user communities overwhelmed smaller, and inevitably, alliances and treaties formed between neighboring groups who were more interested in maintaining their ground than expansion.

Here in Utah, a group of University of Utah students worked together to represent the U. on the giant canvas, coordinating their efforts on the school's subreddit, “/uofu.”

“Maintaining the 'U' and expanding where space permits will (hopefully) keep neighbors satisfied. If we expanded into larger neighbors like StarCraft or Necrodancer, our emblem would certainly be destroyed,” wrote Reddit user makeitHD.

Phippen said he was surprised by how friendly most of his interactions were with nieghboring groups, given the confrontational nature that most territorial disputes would create.

"Everybody I spoke to in that process (were) really willing to compromise and work something out, which was the most surprising and rewarding part of it all for me," he said.

Ultimately, the University's logo was destroyed by an invading Israeli flag. An ambassador from the Israeli subreddit contacted the school's subreddit to offer their help in rebuilding the U. logo “just to the southwest of where it was before.”

But unfortunately, Reddit ended the experimental art project before the logo could be reconstructed. At this point, other representatives from the Israeli flag crew came to the University of Utah's subreddit to apologize for being unable to salvage the logo.

“You guys put up a great logo, and it's too bad we didn't get a chance to rebuild,” wrote Reddit user optional_wax.

One user, Kilo8, offered this consolation, “I'd rather a nation of 8 million people take the space than a college of ~32,000.”

Now that the experiment has ended, the final image stands as a visual time capsule of the internet today. While the drum and feather logo may not have survived, the U. students who fought for its place will at least have a story to tell their grandchildren about their role in the great internet image war of 2017.

Email: jadams@deseretnews.com