Way back when we were grad students, we had this little site where we posted our work—and various works-in-progress—just for fun. When Prinda and I came back to Thailand and started teaching, the amount of administrative duties and teaching loads got so overwhelming that we had to let it go. It’s been years since I promised Prinda I’d rebuild our site, and now that my excuses are running thin, here we are. On this new platform, I’ve lost some control over the code and design. But honestly, between hand-coding something that never gets updated and giving up a bit of control so we can actually post things, there’s really no contest.

So, for our first post, we’re starting with the visual stuff. The “Attack” and “Decay” parts of the site name will have to wait a few more weeks. For now, here’s one of Prinda’s more recent works. This series actually began because I kept teasing her about being a “maximalist” at heart—and if you’ve ever seen her old ceramic sculptures, you’d absolutely agree. They have nothing in common with the images you see here.

Prinda kept insisting she could be a minimalist too. “One black pixel can be a cat, from the right distance,” she said. I told her I’d even give her two pixels, and she replied, “Good—then the cat can have a white face!” In the end, the cat had nine pixels, and it does look more cat-like with the extras. But I think we proved the point: you really don’t need that many pixels to be creative.

It’s pretty clear that in works like these, technique and creativity are entirely different creatures. Technically speaking, anyone can make this type of pixel art—one with very low pixel count. (Prinda loses interest quickly once pixel art approaches “real” images.) The tricky (and fun) part is the abstraction, turning so little into something expressive.

Fun fact: I originally saved the GIFs at just 31×14 pixels, thinking they’d scale up to full width on the page anyway. Alas, the browser’s (or maybe WordPress’s) resizing algorithm isn’t up to the challenge with images that small. Otherwise, you’d be looking at glorious 31×14 pixel masterpieces blown up 40 times their size right now!