Alma

Computer assisted sticker placing.

During my semester in an intro to art class at UIUC, I created the following piece titled “Alma”:

This piece was created entirely out of 90 Firebase stickers I found in one of the computer science buildings around campus. It depicts UIUC’s Alma Mater.

Process

I started with these 90 Firebase stickers I found:

With the help of my friends, I cut them all into two pieces:

I wrote a program which took an input image and determined the best position and rotation to place the stickers to produce a similar image. The algorithm is a simple greedy approach where I start with a blank canvas, try lots of positions and rotations for a sticker, choose the best, and put a sticker there. Then I repeat until all stickers are placed.

We set up a projector and had a program display the position and rotation of the next sticker to place. Usually I’m the one telling the computer what to do, but I guess we switched it around this time :)

Conclusion

Big thank you to my friends who helped make this process fun and not tedious. And thank you for reading! Feel free to check out the scripts I wrote here.