h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not sure if it has been done before or with something other than towels:

An annual event for Towel Day on a tarmac car park (I'm sure the owners would paint over the lines for the occasion).

A large group in a rectangle or ellipse each with a multicoloured towel, each representing a pixel. A card showing each what their towel has to show, in a sequence. A drone high up video recording the resulting images.

Splitting an image into pixels and listing and printing, plenty of people (including myself) could do that. Let the PC do the work.

The towel, I reckon circular. Split into thirds, and a second towel, black, for covering the required areas up to the full towel. The three areas of course would be red, green, blue. All covered = black. All uncovered, the drone camera would pick up white.

I can imagine that covering any more than 0%/33%/66%/100% of each colour, would be tricky. The sequence card as pictures would be quick to use though.

It would be another use for towels and a chance to highlight important matters. Also, a whole new area of thought for towel use, if circular.

A long time ago, there was an active thread for alternative uses for towels.

I don't recall anyone suggesting using them for 8 bit graphics.

Even with one person per four towels, a lot of people. But if filmed by drone, no hurry and one person could do a lot of towels for each picture.

Why restrict the colours? Why use round towels?

You could get people to photograph in advance the towel they mean to bring and email it and its dimensions to the organiser, who would then create a design using those givens, analyse it into pixels and email back each person's cartesian co-ordinates. What could go wrong?

Yes and each towel was divided into 4 squares of colour, and the back, so there were primary, secondary, black and white options for each. But it would mean square towels were ideal.

Monochrome towels for simplicity. If you told me to bring a towel quarter red quarter black, quarter yellow, quarter white, I'd stay at home.

OK, it wasn't the best of ideas. For a 320x240 image it would need that many people, photos, emails etc. or 320 people for example, and 240 photos and so on.

When Towel Day is the most important day of the year, unanimously.