How many distinct images can the eye see? Biologists say that in actual fact, you can’t work out the resolution of the eye because so much interpretation happens between the rods and cones in the eyeball and the brain. However, we increasingly assume that we can use our primary sense of vision to experience life via the media of a TV screen, computer monitor, digital camera or laser printer. These media create images from a finite series of pixels, each from a finite colour gamut.
I’d always assumed that there were an infinite number of images to be seen. But then I realised that if we DO assume that we can see every image that’s possible to see via a TV screen or digital photo, then there can’t actually be an infinite number. For instance, the laptop I’m writing this on has a resolution of 1024×768 pixels, and in 24 bit colour mode, each pixel can be any of a possible 16,777,216 colours. This means it can present 786,432 ^ 16,777,216 possible images in total. For those more arithmetically challenged readers, this means 786,432 multiplied by itself almost 17 million times. Being used to conventional decimal numbers as we are, it’s difficult to put this number into any kind of perspective.
But then I thought, actually, in the old days, when everybody walked really stiffly and quickly, and had handlebar moustaches, they hadn’t yet invented colour. They all lived in 8 bit greyscale with 256 shades of grey and they seemed to do ok. So if I forsook colour, and only used 256 greys, then maybe I’d be able to list the digits on my calculator and get a grasp of this number.
So 786,432 ^ 256 = 1.95 x 10 ^ 1509, which is about 2 with 1,509 zeros after it. Which is quite a lot.
But not actually infinite.
I need to invent some language now to cope. If a UK billion is 1 with 12 zeros after it and a US billion is 1 with 9 zeros then let’s call a 1 with 1,500 zeros a Brazilian billion, or a “brazillion”.
So back to the point: it wouldn’t actually be that hard to write a computer program to make a movie of every single one of these distinct images. And if this was then played at the standard 24 frames per second, then it would take me over 2 brazillion years just to watch it – that’s a 2 with 1,500 zeros. Years. Which is quite a long time.
But not actually forever.
And that’s not even including commercial breaks!
But within that movie, I would have seen, amongst the white noise, every single image that is possible to see. From every single angle, in every single light. I would have seen my own birth and death. Both fact and fiction. I would have seen a picture of every possible life decision I did and did not make. Scenarios explored. Regrets reversed. I would have been a prince and a pauper. I would have explored the furthest reaches of the universe and to the minutest atomic depths. And not only my life, but every other human being’s life too. Past, present and future.
But only for 1/24th of a second.
And only in greyscale.
It’s kind of similar to Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel. But instead of a fictitious library, comprising books composed of letters taken from a set alphabet, this collection of images is like a fictitious gallery, comprising images composed of pixels taken from a colour gamut. And it’s much, much huger.
Borges’ library is of course an allegory on this thing we call life. Each of us a borrower, searching the library for books, trying to find meaning, structure, direction in the limited time we have available. Similarly, for the gallery: the movie described above is like passing 24 pictures every second. Remember, this was all taken from watching a conventional laptop in 256 shades of grey, not a cinema screen in glorious technicolour. I have new-found respect for film directors who have taken the time and energy to explore this gallery of Babel, select a bunch of images and put them in a comprehensible order to tell their story in about 90 minutes.
There is, of course, a notional concert hall of Babel too, where concerts are played, of a set length, with a certain orchestra, using notes taken seemingly at random. A bit like iTunes, actually.
Posted by: mario lupia on Jun,09 | 8.09