What else do people draw on gradient.horse?

(rybakov.com)

149 points | by spython 5 days ago

15 comments

  • pelagicAustral 4 hours ago

        > the obvious desire for transgressive expression by drawing dicks and slurs
    
    this truly is fascinating, that the common denominator of any anonymous, open space for creative expression seems to always be large amounts of doodled dicks... Are there any studies on this?
    • spython 7 minutes ago
      I'm writing a second part of this post right now - about the differences in how separate online communities are drawing horses. There are clear differences in richness of detail, drawing mastery, but also in the amount of dicks drawn. My suspicion that people with more drawing experience draw less dicks simply because they already have drawn all the dicks previously. While people with an untrained drawing muscle perhaps fall back to these easy and familiar shapes. Drawing a horse is hard.
      • mproud 4 minutes ago
        People draw horses because they want to draw horses.

        People draw dicks because they feel it’s funnier, it’s a form of rebellion, and/or it’s way easier than almost anything else. And because they can without repercussion.

    • mihaic 1 hour ago
      I have a feeling that being transgressive is universal, but the form of expression is cultural, with independent convergence to some common patterns.

      For instance, in Romania I've noticed that the slang term for penis is written far more frequently than a crude drawing of it. I've also seen probably more drawn breasts than dicks as well.

    • dnpls 3 hours ago
      I've seen it mentioned somewhere this is known as TTD - Time To Dick - as the amount of time elapsed between releasing a drawing tool in the open and someone using it to draw a dick.
      • pelagicAustral 2 hours ago
        corollary: the mean TTD is inversely proportional to the amount of anonymity granted by the medium
    • bryanrasmussen 3 hours ago
      not exactly, but there are quotes and aphorisms

      https://medium.com/luminasticity/90-crap-48e4c79419a9

      "In every time and environment that humans found they could make art by drawing on some surface there has always been one fellow in the community who found he could let people know what a big dick he had by making a rendering available for everybody else in his distribution channel

      This base level of dick drawings to other artistic forms represent the minimal level of crap in all aesthetic production."

    • markovs_gun 1 hour ago
      I love that dicks are a feature of graffiti even going to ancient times. Pompeii's walls are covered with dicks.
  • ykl 11 hours ago
    One of the horses on a ball is very recognizably a James Baxter[1]!

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baxter_the_Horse

  • anotheryou 5 hours ago
    Show us the penis collection, we know it exists! (also amazing already anyways :)
  • swah 11 hours ago
    Found the blurrred 67 so funny when I was expecting penises
  • gus_massa 4 days ago
    My Pegasus and my Space Invader weren't selected :(

    Anyway, I remember a very good Godzilla and a moonwalking Michael Jackson. I think the post need an additional row for weird.

    • spython 3 days ago
      Oooh, there are just so many horses - more than 600 000 - that it's a tiny chance to actually see your drawings! And there are around 50 000 drawings marked as non-horses - all kind of weirdness - that could be an exhibition on its own..

      Thank you for drawing, a typical drawing is seen more than a hundred times, so your pegasus and space invader were seen and appreciated : )

      • gus_massa 3 days ago
        Nice game. I draw like 10 "horses". The first didn't move the legs because I didn't understand the idea, then I started to add moving things, and then weird things like the space invader. Anyway, mines were not as good as other examples I saw.
      • zaik 12 hours ago
        Is clicking and double clicking some kind of voting system?
        • spython 12 hours ago
          Yes, on the original gradient.horse it was an early experiment in hidden moderation - and it did help hide quite a few of the less kind drawings. Now, as the moderation model trained on the larger corpus works quite well, it's just for fun.
  • quuxplusone 12 hours ago
    One of your snails is clearly a chambered nautilus instead. :)
  • postsantum 5 hours ago
    What about pelicans?
  • deanc 5 hours ago
    This would fit right into any modern art gallery. Seems that these interactive generative art projects are in most museums nowadays.
  • bitwize 11 hours ago
    "Oh god, what have you done. You have drawn your horse incorrectly. Look what your careless hands have wrought. Select the pistol, and then, select your horse."

    https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/05/26/the-unhorse

  • earth-tattoo 11 hours ago
    No dicks?
    • spython 11 hours ago
      So many dicks! Roughly 4 percent of all drawings are dicks. With over 600 000 drawings that means.. Twenty five thousand dicks. I thought about including them, but as with all the other transgressive drawings, the only person who enjoys looking at them is the one who drew them.
  • shevy-java 5 hours ago
    A pe** ... erm ... nevermind. I was just reminded of the fancy art I see when visiting university-campus toilets ...
    • xyzal 2 hours ago
      No need to hide "penis" behind asterisks. It is proper -- even medical -- terminology, in contast to "c*ck", "d*ng" or "schl*ng".
      • markovs_gun 36 minutes ago
        I feel like you can say cock, dong, and schlong on here too. It's a website for adults, it's not Tik Tok where you have to censor everything in these asinine ways.
  • rawling 5 hours ago
    ... does one of the pictures jump occasionally?
  • devonsolomon 5 hours ago
    Given that this is the internet, I highly suspect the author has left out a category.
    • deelly 5 hours ago
      Third sentence on the page:

      > The image model I trained to filter out vandalism works very well, but it also hides a lot of ingenious drawings. You could see them if you’d activate the SHOW NON-HORSES setting, but most people do not.

    • ta8903 5 hours ago
      Yep. There is a very distinct lack of horsegirls.