The Color of Palo Alto

Samuel Yates’s art project:

The artist will begin his search for “The Color of Palo Alto” by photographing every parcel of land in Palo Alto with a digital camera, five days per week, Monday thru Friday. He will alternate between 68 and 69 photos per day. The photographs will be taken alphabetically from the “A” streets through the “Z” streets from January 3 to December 30, 2005.

Together with artist Eli Schleifer, who wrote a software program for the project that finds the average pixel color of each digital photograph, Yates will find the average color of each neighborhood, street, and parcel in Palo Alto.

In a democratic manner, each parcel in the city will contribute one “vote” of color toward the final color of Palo Alto.

The average color of all 17,860 photographs will then become a paint color, to be referred to as “The Color of Palo Alto.” There will also be average colors for each neighborhood, street, and parcel in the city.

More here.  [Thanks to Alia Raza for sending me this.]