Metagramme Blends Your Recent Instagrams Into One Weird Photo

Instagram’s now got more than 300 million users worldwide, and they’re uploading some 70 million photos and videos each day. Trying to imagine what even a fraction of that looks like will make your head explode, Metagramme makes it a little easier.

Instagram's now got more than 300 million users worldwide, and they're uploading some 70 million photos and videos each day. Trying to imagine what even a fraction of that looks like will make your head explode, Metagramme makes it a little easier.

The website takes 36 or 64 of your most recent Instagram photos and combines them into a single image. The result is a colorful, crazy digital amalgam that is part photography and part abstract art. Metagramme can pull from hashtags too, just in case you ever wondered what a blend of 50 photos of a #shark looks like.

“Really what we’re doing [by creating an average] is data visualization, but instead of using data visualization to improve business analytics, we’re using it to make something beautiful,” says Jared Stanley, Metagramme's co-founder and CEO.

@WIRED

.

Metagramme images look nothing like the originals. The averaging them into a composite image yields a blurry effect, and the final result looks more like a painting than a photograph.

The site works well with colors, shapes, and faces, creating unexpected and fascinating combinations. But it also can help visualize complex words. It can be difficult, for example, to represent emotions like “love” or “sadness,” but Metagramme plays with these ideas by creating an average of how one user, or multiples users, represents them over time.

Stanley says Metagramme eventually will be able to search by time and location, allowing users to create a fusion of Times Square or the Eiffel Tower on a particular day or hour. The website might also be used to track current events. With things like, say, the Ferguson protests being organized and documented via social media, Metagramme could track how hashtags like #police change over time as the public’s feelings ebb and flow.

Copyright and privacy are obvious concerns because users can create photos of other people's feeds. Any time you create a Metagramme with a hashtag, you're appropriating other people's work. For these reasons the site chose to start with Instagram, which has a privacy setting for those who don't want their photos to be public. It's also why Metagramme isn't selling prints and there's always a link to the source photos.

"We've considered all of these concerns," Stanley says.

As it continues to evolve, the possibilities will be endless. Aside from seeing what our pets and favorite Insta food photos look like, one could even make a visual average of all their Metagrammes. But perhaps we've gone too far.