Like the memory of a CRT

July 24, 2024 11:55 AM

The Sentinel project is completed. The French artist Marine, aka moonovermarine, has recently completed a beautiful series of 14 embroideries inspired by the video game "The Sentinel" (1986), previously mentioned in MetaFilter. This work of over two years looks fantastic, with a luminous atmosphere and a magnificent rendering of pixels. The color palette is faithful to the game's chromatic range of the ZX Spectrum version.
posted by verylazyminer (9 comments total)

As a previous Spectrum 48k user (with speech synthesizer add on) I declare this project gorgeous.
posted by fordiebianco at 11:59 AM on July 24 [1 favorite]

Wow, it really looks amazing. Great work by this artist.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 12:59 PM on July 24

Transcription: counting the number of pixels in width and height and arranging them by hand on the new embroidery grid, drawing each of them in black or white before assigning them a colored thread, then starting the needlepoint by following this precise plan with my eyes for days on end…

I wonder if she has a particular artistic point she is making by choosing not to just dump an image into one of the many tools that show up when you search for 'pixel to needlepoint'.
posted by egypturnash at 1:56 PM on July 24 [1 favorite]

this is exactly the kind of thing I'm on metafilter to find, thank you so much
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 2:41 PM on July 24 [2 favorites]

Based on the title I thought this was going to be about a memory CRT like the Williams Tube.
posted by autopilot at 3:49 AM on July 25 [1 favorite]

I wonder if she has a particular artistic point she is making by choosing not to just dump an image into one of the many tools that show up when you search for 'pixel to needlepoint'.

Maybe it's just that automating the process would strip it of all intentionality. Like someone hand-lettering a sign with brush and paint, being told "why don't you just use software and a keyboard?"
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:58 AM on July 25

I wonder if she has a particular artistic point she is making by choosing not to just dump an image into one of the many tools that show up when you search for 'pixel to needlepoint'.

For this work, you need a pixel perfect rendering of the original image on the embroidery canvas. Using a software solution will cause some pixel interpolation. So I guess she preferred to redraw the image source on her own grid. Quite a hard work for a perfect result!
posted by verylazyminer at 7:23 AM on July 25

Wikipedia has a good description of the game. And here's 11 hours of gameplay. You can play it here on ZX Spectrum (click File, search for Sentinel, pick the one from Firebird) or play the nicer DOS version.

It's interesting, a very early exploration game. I can see why someone would be motivated to translate it to needlepoint.
posted by Nelson at 7:50 AM on July 25

While the ZX Spectrum had a fairly mundane colour input specification (256x192 pixels and 8 colours, plus bright and flash attribute bits, with only two colours per 8x8 pixel block), its simple video output circuitry meant that the screen rendered with "dot crawl": pixels wavered slightly by colour, giving a slightly animated effect even when nothing was moving. Maybe the artist's method was inspired by that?
posted by scruss at 8:54 AM on July 25