URI: 
       [HN Gopher] 1-Bit Hokusai's "The Great Wave" (2023)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       1-Bit Hokusai's "The Great Wave" (2023)
        
       Author : stephen-hill
       Score  : 588 points
       Date   : 2026-04-22 13:46 UTC (4 days ago)
        
  HTML web link (www.hypertalking.com)
  TEXT w3m dump (www.hypertalking.com)
        
       | usrnm wrote:
       | It's insane, how far our industry has come in less than a single
       | human lifetime. I wish I could see what will become of it in a
       | few centuries.
        
         | walrus01 wrote:
         | It's also kind of insane how rapid the capabilities and tech
         | grew in just a short 10-year span in an earlier period. The B&W
         | mid 80s Mac art style of this reminded me of approximately the
         | same era...
         | 
         | For example right now if you had a $3000 desktop PC (sans cost
         | of monitor) that was built in 2016 it would probably still be a
         | fairly capable Linux workstation.
         | 
         | If you went from 1986 --> 1996 the tech jump in equivalent cost
         | would be something like a 12 MHz 286 with EGA video card, a few
         | MB of RAM, a MS-DOS CLI environment to in 1996 being a Pentium
         | 66 MHz+ or AMD equivalent with significantly more RAM, a SVGA
         | video card, tons more I/O, PCI slots, running Windows 95 or an
         | early Linux distro, and just a whole world more capability. The
         | 286 would be quite obsolete and barely useful for anything.
        
           | TacticalCoder wrote:
           | > ... or example right now if you had a $3000 desktop PC
           | (sans cost of monitor) that was built in 2016 it would
           | probably still be a fairly capable Linux workstation.
           | 
           | Oh totally. I've got an actual workstation, with ECC mem,
           | from 2015 and a Xeon with 14 cores / 28 threads (tbh I think
           | that CPU alone was worth more than $2 K back then) and it's
           | still plenty quick. I use that old workstation a server
           | though and my "workstation" is a much more modern AMD 7700X
           | (not the latest or quickest CPU by any mean but it's already
           | quite beasty).
        
       | itsthecourier wrote:
       | somebody explained me that the correct way to appreciate this
       | painting is to invert it on horizontal axis.
       | 
       | the reason is, japanese is read from right to left.
       | 
       | once you invert it you can appreciate it better
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | Doesn't this assume that people (in the west, at least)
         | "perceive" paintings from left to right? That doesn't strike me
         | as particularly true.
        
           | recj wrote:
           | Doesn't strike me as particularly true either.
        
           | ggsp wrote:
           | Look up "spatial agency bias" and "glance curve"
        
           | lioeters wrote:
           | This is taught in graphic design, how people typically scan
           | information from left to right and top to bottom, in cultures
           | where the written language flows in that direction. However,
           | a counter argument could be made that people perceive
           | paintings differently from the way they read written text.
           | There have been studies about how the Japanese perceive
           | images and sounds with the same area of the brain that
           | processes language, in contrast to other cultures where
           | they're processed separately. [citaion needed]
        
           | rafabulsing wrote:
           | I thought I'd be unimpressed by the mirrored version, but I
           | can say that for myself, it really did have a different feel
           | to it.
           | 
           | I've always pictured the boats moving right, sliding down, as
           | if surfing the wave.
           | 
           | The mirrored version makes it clear that, no, they're going
           | _against_ the wave, which makes it that much more of a scary
           | situation!
           | 
           | Now, having noticed that, I see how the position of the
           | rowers in the boat would be enough to deduce that. But still,
           | it goes to show that (at least for me, personally, in this
           | specific case) the mirroring really did bring a more
           | intuitive feel for what the artist was trying to represent.
        
         | andsoitis wrote:
         | Yes. Several references argue for that:
         | 
         | - Art Institute of Chicago
         | (https://www.artic.edu/articles/1139/10-things-to-know-
         | about-...)
         | 
         | - Daily Art Magazine (https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/great-
         | wave-hokusai/#:~:text...)
         | 
         | - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_K
         | anagawa#Re...)
        
         | recj wrote:
         | Japanese characters are actually written left to right, but
         | sometimes the page order is right to left. Writing that you
         | might find on a website, e-mails, and scientific writing is
         | typically actually written left to right. While these kinds of
         | texts may have pages that are ordered from right to left, the
         | text on the pages is typically written from left to right. It
         | is typically only when text is written vertically (yokogaki)
         | that it is written in columns going from right to left, and in
         | that case, the characters are read top to bottom.
         | 
         | Sources: [1] https://www.lingocommand.com/japanese/writing-
         | systems-explai... [2]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writin...
         | [3] I studied Japanese in college lol
        
           | hnfong wrote:
           | You are right, but it can be argued that during the time the
           | painting was made, vertical writing was the predominant form,
           | and I don't know whether horizontal writing was a thing at
           | the time in Japan...
           | 
           | That said, as I implied in my other reply, the whole idea is
           | a bit silly...
        
             | akihitot wrote:
             | Japanese is currently read and written from left to right.
             | However, until about 80 years ago (before World War II), it
             | was read and written from right to left--though this
             | applied only to horizontal writing. Vertical writing is
             | read from right to left, and this convention continues
             | today; for example, Japanese comics (manga) are still read
             | from right to left.
        
           | Isamu wrote:
           | When written horizontally it is now left to right but earlier
           | you would see horizontal right to left. But vertical was
           | preferred especially in the past.
           | 
           | You can see horizontal train stop signs written right to left
           | in "In This Corner of the World" anime. Today all signage
           | seems to be left to right.
           | 
           | [edit] The history section in Wikipedia explains that this
           | was a postwar script reform.
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system
        
             | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
             | Horizontal right to left is an edge case of vertical
             | writing with one character tall columns.
        
           | kdheiwns wrote:
           | In the time this art was made, top to bottom, right to left
           | was the standard. It's pretty apparent when looking at any
           | document from the Edo era. It's all top to bottom, right to
           | left. Remnants of it are also clear in temples where the
           | signs above doorways are written right to left, not even top
           | to bottom. Plus every Japanese novel and manga today is still
           | written top to bottom right to left.
        
         | hnfong wrote:
         | ... specifically, Japanese is traditionally written top to
         | bottom, _then_ right to left. (In contrast, English is written
         | left to right, then top to bottom.)
         | 
         | So, armed with that knowledge, are you going to rotate it as
         | well?
        
           | filoleg wrote:
           | If you are talking about page order or panel order (in
           | something like manga), those go right to left. More
           | specifically, manga panels follow the usual western comic
           | book panel order, except with left and right flipped.
           | 
           | However, when it comes to the actual text (regardless of the
           | medium), it is always written either top to bottom or left to
           | right. There is no right to left text writing in japanese.
           | This isn't arabic, where text is indeed written right to
           | left.
        
             | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
             | When written top to bottom, the columns are read from right
             | to left. This is the most common format for printed text,
             | especially in Hokusai's time.
             | 
             | Also, when text was horizontal, it was frequently written
             | right to left until the mid-1940s.[1]
             | 
             | [1] https://www.mutantfrog.com/2009/08/08/the-history-of-
             | japanes...
        
           | itsthecourier wrote:
           | it must be done, bro, for you, anything
        
         | srean wrote:
         | You mean like this
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa_-...
         | 
         | His "Big Wave" has that right left position
         | 
         | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Th...
         | 
         | Love the birds in this one, especially the way it mirrors the
         | wave crest fingers. Hokusai seems to have lunch ved these
         | birds. They figure in his caged Bird pieces.
        
           | lioeters wrote:
           | That "Big Wave" variation with birds flying over the waves is
           | strikingly beautiful. So dynamic and raw compared to the
           | famous one. And how poetic the shapes of birds rhyme with the
           | shape of waves. I'm gonna have to set aside some time to
           | appreciate Hokusai's works again. Lovely.
        
             | sph wrote:
             | The wave/birds juxtaposition is very Escher-like
        
               | srean wrote:
               | Indeed.
               | 
               | Check this out
               | 
               | https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1899550/1/11/
               | 
               | I don't know whether Escher was familiar with Hokusai's
               | work but they shared a common interest in tilings and
               | tesselations. Damned if I can find those Hokusai sketches
               | on the web now.
        
               | lioeters wrote:
               | Wow that is kind of mind-blowing. Looking through other
               | pages, Hokusai is showing each "rule" (Fa ) and its
               | application (tessalation) that produces the pattern. It
               | makes me wonder about what kind of cultural exchange was
               | happening between Japan and Europe at the time.
        
               | srean wrote:
               | Escher would be generations younger. However, I am
               | curious about whether Hokusai encountered any Islamic
               | art. Tesselations and symmetry play a big role in that
               | one. I submitted ed this link as a separate HN post.
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47902993
        
               | chickensong wrote:
               | This is Shingata komon-cho Xin Xing Xiao Wen Zhang  (Book
               | of New Patterns) from 1824, held by the British Museum: h
               | ttps://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1973-072
               | 3-...
        
             | srean wrote:
             | The wave is almost like a live character in this one. Like
             | an angry god caught in a moment of fury.
        
         | wonnage wrote:
         | This is like saying westerners need to read mirrored manga to
         | truly appreciate the artist's intent. You can just start
         | reading from the right...
        
           | rafabulsing wrote:
           | I do think that there's some loss in translated manga,
           | actually!
           | 
           | When the mangaka is creating the layout, they're
           | conceptualizing the flow not only of the panels, but also of
           | the text inside panels, to be RTL.
           | 
           | Translating the text into a LTR language without mirroring
           | the image, makes it so that your eyes have to zig zag around
           | a bit more, going RTL panel wise, but LTR text box wise.
           | 
           | Compared to the problems that mirroring the art brings, I
           | still think that's best compromise of the options, but
           | doesn't mean it's not an actual impact on the experience,
           | even if a subtle one.
           | 
           | I have wondered before, though, about how had might it be to
           | learn to read mirrored, RLT english. Might be a bit of a
           | challenge at first, but would enable you to read translated
           | manga RTL with no compromises (other than the inherent
           | lossiness of language translation in general).
        
             | wonnage wrote:
             | I think there's already enough lost in translation that the
             | text direction is the least of your worries haha
        
               | rafabulsing wrote:
               | For sure it's a very minor impact, all things considered,
               | but an impact nonetheless.
        
       | the_af wrote:
       | I love pixel art and specifically monochrome pixel art like this.
       | 
       | It's a pity this blog was so short lived, I can only see 7
       | entries and only 2 Hokusai prints. Oh well, my own blogs usually
       | don't fare much better.
        
       | KaiserPro wrote:
       | I _really_ like the layout and style of the site. I never had a
       | mac growing up so its not a nostalgia thing, I just appreciate
       | the compactness with contrast
       | 
       | The art is also very good. Its hard to get that level of "colour"
       | with limited resolution
        
         | walrus01 wrote:
         | The portrait mode black and white layout of this is similar to
         | the high resolution black and white displays which were in use
         | with some more expensive Mac based "desktop publishing" setups
         | in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
         | 
         | This was before anyone could reasonably afford a 20" full color
         | monitor, and it also would have been too expensive or I/O
         | intensive on the video expansion card to be capable of driving
         | a 1280x1024+ monitor at 256 colors or better. I think also
         | something related to being a crisper image with early 1990s
         | tech level of CRT monitor re: dot pitch if the image was
         | entirely black and white?
         | 
         | For instance:
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/retrocomputing/comments/1oim0m6/hol...
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/707q70...
        
           | wpm wrote:
           | The "dot pitch" is a measure distance between two "reds" of
           | the dots in the shadow mask or the width between two reds on
           | an aperture grille (which is really only horizontal dot
           | pitch). Since black and white monitors don't have either,
           | they can get much much sharper because that layer just
           | doesn't exist. It's limited only by the focus of the beam and
           | bandwidth/ frequency of the signal.
           | 
           | (As my layman understanding goes that is)
           | 
           | Monochrome CRTs are delicious to look at. A feast for the
           | eyes. I love them. Compact Macs are often the cheapest way to
           | get them, especially for their wonderful paper white
           | phosphor, though I'm a sucker for amber phosphor.
        
             | walrus01 wrote:
             | That is indeed something I had forgotten, having not had to
             | think about CRTs in detail for a long time... Here's
             | something from 2001 when CRTs were still in common use also
             | with details on the differences between shadow mask vs.
             | aperture grill CRTs.
             | 
             | https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/a-thg-
             | primer,393-3.html
        
           | vardump wrote:
           | Crispiness has a lot to do with DAC quality. That's why
           | Matrox display adapters were so popular in the nineties.
           | Crispy, high quality DAC.
        
       | joe_mamba wrote:
       | FYI, Hokusai also drew Hentai.
        
         | tecleandor wrote:
         | Sorry for the "actually", but Hentai didn't exist yet as a
         | genre. It was "shunga", that is, erotic "ukiyo-e", a popular
         | style at that time.
         | 
         | Popular shunga works by Hokusai are "Two lovers" or the wrongly
         | translated "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" (the original
         | Japanese title is "female diver and octopus")
        
           | joe_mamba wrote:
           | Please NO need to apologize, I don't mind being corrected by
           | men of culture when I'm wrong.
        
         | sph wrote:
         | So? Go play the morality police elsewhere.
        
           | joe_mamba wrote:
           | Excuse me but can you read? Where did you see me bringing up
           | anything critical of morality in my statement about the
           | author's work? Go play reddit moderator somewhere else
           | please.
        
             | sph wrote:
             | What does your "for your information" bring to the table,
             | other than sidetracking the discussion? What are we
             | supposed to do with it?
        
               | joe_mamba wrote:
               | _> What does your "for your information" bring to the
               | table, other than sidetracking the discussion?_
               | 
               | Adding extra curiosity context, that other readers might
               | not be aware of, is not "sidetracking the discussion",
               | but simply contributing to the conversation while
               | respecting the HN rules of "be curious".
               | 
               | Now tell me what does your unwarranted criticism and
               | personal insults bring to this discussion other than
               | being an obnoxious PITA and breaking HN rules?
               | 
               | Did your parents teach you, that you can criticize
               | someone without insults?
               | 
               |  _> What are we supposed to do with it?_
               | 
               | Same thing you do with any other curiosity info you read
               | on HN.
        
       | redsocksfan45 wrote:
       | Very nice work. I've always loved the aesthetic of hand crafted
       | monochrome pixel art.
        
       | srean wrote:
       | Previously discussed here
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283
       | 
       | 72 comments
        
       | SomeHacker44 wrote:
       | Curious about the "no derivatives" license. Surely anything
       | derivative would be of the original now public domain art and not
       | this. I do not see how this could as a practical matter be
       | enforced. IANAL though.
        
         | jszymborski wrote:
         | Well not if I take this 1 bit image and add my logo or remove
         | his...
        
         | teraflop wrote:
         | Public domain isn't "viral" like copyleft.
         | 
         | If I take something in the public domain and make a derivative
         | work, the original remains in the public domain, and I retain
         | ownership of whatever additions or modifications I created. So
         | I can attach whatever conditions I want to the copying of those
         | additions.
         | 
         | For instance, Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" was protected by
         | copyright when it was released, even though it was based on a
         | centuries-old fairy tale that was in the public domain.
        
       | cubefox wrote:
       | More 1-bit pixel art:
       | 
       | > MacPaint Art From The Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today -
       | https://blog.decryption.net.au/posts/macpaint.html
       | 
       | Previously discussed here:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44540402
       | 
       | This masterpiece by an unknown artist might be the best work of
       | hi-res pixel art I have ever seen:
       | https://blog.decryption.net.au/images/macpaint/lesson3d.png
        
         | dietrichepp wrote:
         | I also run some accounts on BlueSky and Twitter that focus on
         | 1-bit art:
         | 
         | https://bsky.app/profile/1bitdreams.bsky.social
         | 
         | https://x.com/1BitDreams
         | 
         | I see maybe 10 or 15 new pieces of 1-bit art posted on those
         | platforms each week. A couple recent ones:
         | 
         | https://bsky.app/profile/ncesium.bsky.social/post/3miwkrqev5...
         | 
         | https://bsky.app/profile/oddbones.bsky.social/post/3mi7pedpn...
        
         | grvbck wrote:
         | > This masterpiece by an unknown artist
         | 
         | Not unknown. It is signed "G. Clement", for Gerald Clement. The
         | title is "Lesson 3d" because it actually is the third lesson in
         | a tutorial for MacGrid, a software developed by Clement that
         | teached people how to draw in MacPaint.
         | 
         | https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macgrid
        
           | cubefox wrote:
           | Wow, nice find, thanks!
           | 
           | Here is the next picture, "Lesson 3 E. Morning Light":
           | 
           | https://ibb.co/8DkdrG9q
        
       | srean wrote:
       | I am having a surprisingly hard time finding Hokusai's exercises
       | on tesselations.
       | 
       | Has search become really this bad !
       | 
       | Anyway wanted to show his sketch of a bird behind chicken wire
       | fence/cage. Similar birds here
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47901702
        
         | abetusk wrote:
         | The best I could find were these:
         | 
         | https://archive.org/details/hokusaiimayoyhi00kats/page/5/mod...
         | 
         | https://archive.org/details/imayoykushikisev1kats/page/19/mo...
         | 
         | Are you sure you're remembering right?
         | 
         | Here's archive's list of Hokusai books:
         | 
         | https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Katsushika%2C+...
        
           | srean wrote:
           | Thanks for the links. There are one or two in common with
           | what I had in mind. I suppose those weren't his 'published'
           | works but personal studies in geometry and tiling.
        
         | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
         | The dead web makes things hard to find:
         | 
         | https://www.rawpixel.com/image/7660768/image-art-vintage-pub...
        
           | srean wrote:
           | Oh nice. I had not seen this before but it fits the
           | description very well -- birds and tiling patterns.
           | 
           | The art work that I had in my had a swallow or a sparrow
           | swooping down, looked at through chicken wire grid.
        
       | usermac wrote:
       | Having seen this image since inception, I never noticed Mt. Fuji
       | in the background.
        
         | IncreasePosts wrote:
         | Its gotta be in there - that print (and 35 others believe it or
         | not) are from hokusai's collection: Thirty-six Views of Mount
         | Fuji
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | Up until today I thought it was a tsunami painting
        
         | dvh wrote:
         | I didn't notice the boats
        
           | vharuck wrote:
           | A lot of Ukiyo-e wood prints have small details that mean a
           | lot to locals. I enjoy learning about them on the NHK's
           | English channel.
           | 
           | In this case, the boats are fast (each has a bunch of
           | crewmen) and were used to catch valuable fish. And the boats
           | on the right have two people not at work (barely discernable
           | in TFA's recreation). Those people were on break, getting
           | ready to replace tired oarsmen. That way, the boat could be
           | moving at all times.
        
       | etothet wrote:
       | I love this. In a world that is increasingly driven by AI, to me
       | this highlights how important and mandatory human creation is in
       | art.
        
       | TacticalCoder wrote:
       | By default for me site's font renders using severe sub-pixel
       | anti-aliasing so it looks all colorful instead of good old Mac
       | black and white. And it's very noticeable.
       | 
       | Dig the wave though, upvoted.
       | 
       | EDIT: and I think there's actually an issue... Somehow there are
       | kinda vertical "bands" where the sub-pixel anti-aliasing shifts.
       | Like I've got a few characters looking too green (on the entire
       | vertical), then a band of pixels looking too red. Very strange.
       | Firefox / Linux but others sites don't do that. First time I see
       | those "bands" with a font using sub-pixel AA.
       | 
       | 2nd EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283 In that
       | thread from 2023 on the same site, people are noticing the same
       | weird rainbow/banding fx so it's not just my setup ; )
        
         | Brybry wrote:
         | Thanks for this. I was really confused while looking at the CSS
         | and not seeing anything that could cause the rainbow effect I
         | was looking at.
        
         | pezezin wrote:
         | I also noticed the weird rainbow pattern, I am relieved to know
         | my monitor is not broken.
        
       | convenwis wrote:
       | I know this guy is doing this on actual Mac hardware but curious
       | if there is a point of view on the best older Mac emulator out
       | there? Ideally I'd like to run this on a current Apple Silicon
       | Mac. It is hard to understand what is the best approach (which I
       | realize might be because this is somewhere between legally grey
       | and not legal). I don't want a browser based option.
        
         | jervant wrote:
         | Snow
        
         | spicyjpeg wrote:
         | I would recommend trying out Snow (https://snowemu.com/), a
         | somewhat recently released 68000 Macintosh emulator that is
         | cross-platform and focuses on low-level accuracy, unlike prior
         | efforts which traditionally preferred HLE approaches and
         | suffered from compatibility issues as a result.
         | 
         | As with any other emulator, you will have to obtain system ROM
         | dumps and disk images of the software you want to run. There is
         | no clear precedent on the legality of acquiring said files
         | through any means, however it's generally believed that you
         | _should_ be in the clear if you dump them yourself from a Mac
         | you own and an original physical copy of the software. Of
         | course, doing so is non-trivial and requires at the very least
         | a working Mac and a way to get files in and out of it (e.g. a
         | SCSI drive emulator that uses an SD card for storage), so it 's
         | understandable why virtually everyone resorts to the gray area
         | approach of downloading ROMs instead.
        
           | duskwuff wrote:
           | Snow is great for what it is, but it's limited (for now) to a
           | small set of early Macintosh systems, up through part of the
           | Macintosh II series. Basilisk II and SheepShaver are still
           | the best option available for later Macintosh systems.
        
         | quag wrote:
         | I've spent many hours using Basilisk II.
        
       | greg_dc wrote:
       | Man, this is the sort of stuff that makes me glad for Hacker
       | News. Someone doing a hyper niche, high effort artistic project
       | for no reward other than it's something they want to do. In a
       | time where I have to second guess absolutely everything in case
       | it's just AI slop there's something so wonderfully human about
       | this sort of endeavour.
       | 
       | I would never have known it existed and, in some tiny way, my
       | life is better now that I do.
        
       | noisy_boy wrote:
       | Hokusai's work is amazing prima facie. But then when you download
       | the archive.org pdf files (see links in comment from @abetusk)
       | and start to zoom in, the mastery of the strokes just blows your
       | mind. The skill is ridiculous. The stylization, the capturing of
       | the essence of a bird turning its neck by basically the minimum
       | possible strokes while maintaining the feel of dynamism and
       | suspended motion, it is just too much. Nothing makes me more
       | emotional and romantically sentimental of beautiful japan from an
       | era, which in my logical head, I know had lots of hardships and
       | difficult life. He still manages to put that aside by the sheer
       | power of the infusion of tranquillity in his paintings. It makes
       | me long for a time and place which I would never see and probably
       | was a lot harsher than I can see through the mind of his
       | brushstrokes.
       | 
       | Hokusai has long been my favourite artist but I still keep
       | finding more nuances in his work. He lived an 88-year long life
       | dedicated to art. What an unbelievable genius master of a bygone
       | era.
        
         | harveynick wrote:
         | You probably already know about this video series, in just in
         | case you don't: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK-
         | Wicsj5rAasS2g7e-Z9eFUd...
         | 
         | One of the most joyful things I've seen on YouTube.
        
         | _kulang wrote:
         | Perhaps you are unaware, but the great wave is a wood block
         | print. That's not to say that the strokes aren't amazing, but
         | they didn't need to be created in one pass
        
           | eru wrote:
           | And as far as I am aware, there are many prints. This was
           | sold as an early mass market item. It was very popular.
           | 
           | I'm not sure if he had multiple print runs from fresh
           | carvings, or whether he only carved it once?
        
       | saadn92 wrote:
       | This is what keeps me coming back to HN. Someone spent years
       | recreating woodcut prints pixel by pixel on a quadra 700 using
       | aldus superpaint at 512x342. I feel like the constraint is what
       | caused it to be. The 1-bit forces you to solve every gradient and
       | texture with pure composition, which means you can't cheat with
       | color or resolution. I forgot who said it, but constraints breed
       | creativity.
        
         | afc wrote:
         | You're probably thinking of Walter Gropius, the founder of the
         | Bauhaus school.
        
       | srean wrote:
       | I have been moaning about this n the comments below about not
       | being able to find Hokusai's study on tesselations and patterns.
       | Finally found it.
       | 
       | https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1899550/1/11/
       | 
       | Have submitted as a post
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47902993
        
       | msephton wrote:
       | Impressions of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa Shen Nai Chuan Chong
       | Lang Li  are currently on view at a record 7 places around the
       | world. https://greatwavetoday.com
       | 
       | Each one of the remaining originals is subtly different due to
       | the woodblock printing process, and must be stored for the
       | majority of the time due to being susceptible to fading in light.
        
       | francoi8 wrote:
       | For those wanting to explore automatically converting art pieces
       | to 1-bit you can use 8Bit Photo Lab on iOS or Android. Select the
       | black and white palette and choose resolution and dithering type.
       | 
       | Play Store:
       | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ilixa.ebp&...
       | 
       | App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/8bit-photo-
       | lab/id6759910005
        
         | reaperducer wrote:
         | On macOS, there's a great piece of freeware called Retro Dither
         | that does the job well: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/retro-
         | dither-b-w-is-beautiful/...
         | 
         | /Not the author, just a satisfied user.
        
           | nielsbot wrote:
           | One more for iOS: BitCam
           | 
           | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bitcam/id1114990619
        
         | mark-r wrote:
         | Automatic conversion to 1-bit has been available since the
         | 1980's. The trick is to do it artfully.
        
       | taffydavid wrote:
       | I never heard of 1bit art until quite recently and I'm loving it
        
       | poly2it wrote:
       | > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
       | NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
       | 
       | It would truly be a shame if somebody appropriated this unicum of
       | a piece.
        
       | neomantra wrote:
       | Just yesterday I was looking for a free-as-in-freedom image to
       | embed in my repo, and this gem popped up again!
       | 
       | I'm adding a BubbleTea Picture widget to ntcharts. So the example
       | is a (retro art of (retro art redone on retro tech)) done on (a
       | redo of retro tech) ...
       | 
       | I've added it, but it's still on a feature branch :
       | 
       | https://github.com/NimbleMarkets/ntcharts/tree/picture/examp...
        
       | glidefarrow wrote:
       | I love this. Once I finish the 165x200 cross stitch I'm currently
       | working on, I'd love to translate this to cross stitch.
        
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       (page generated 2026-04-26 15:01 UTC)