Randy Ludacer (BoxVox.net) has been documenting packages that utilize the Droste effect for years – including the recursive effect’s namesake, Droste Cocoa.
He’s been able to find a wealth of examples so far, and I hope that his collection of Droste effect packages continues to grow.
On a related note, I recently played around with LogMeIn, a free service used to remotely control other computers over the internet, and used it to log into the computer that I was currently on to instantly achieve an infinite recursion of computer screens.
I use the term infinite, however, the recursions are anything but. By my count, the image recurs about twenty-one times before running headlong into the limitations of my computer’s graphics processing unit and the resolution of my screen. You can see the point at which the image degenerates into a single colored pixel. I find this “singularity” interesting, because it echoes the limitations faced, not only by our scientific instruments, but also our own central nervous systems, in apprehending the full scope of reality.
A mathematician can prove on paper that the Droste Cocoa image is a nested fractal that recurs infinitely, but our universe has limits to contend with. Even if the artist handed off the paining to a smaller artist (say, an elf?) to paint the smaller cocoa powder box within the cocoa powder box, and that elf handed it off to an even tinier being, and so on – the artist who is the size of a single molecule would face the limitation of having only a handful of particles with which to work. The final image in the series would simply be a solitary atom.
I think that the degeneration of images also echoes the degeneration of concepts from their archetypal form to the rough sketches that manifest as objects, people, smells, and sounds in our experience. Could this fleeting and hard-to-define concept be part of what keeps people coming back to old-school video games full of heavily pixelated images? The charm and joy of these games certainly does seem to be more than nostalgia, as even younger people who grew up after Atari and Nintendo find themselves fascinated by the blocky avatars and bleeping sine waves of the reductionist worlds of early gaming. Perhaps it all helps to mold some semblance of form to these murky concepts deep within our minds – just beyond the reach of language.
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Well, there’s a clear solution to that problem: Elves.
Hey Justin,
Thanks for the Droste effect shout out. I like how you’ve achieved pixel singularity–and how many iterations it apparently took you to get there. In the printed world of Droste effect packaging, it seems like this degeneration happens all too quickly, usually after just one or two iterations.)
-Randy