Canberra, Australia is a city of few highlights, but one genuinely cool thing it does have going for it is the Australian War Memorial. A place that now houses in its collection surely one of this century’s greatest works of art.
The image up top is a painting by Aussie artist Baden Pailthorpe, called Colour study (Top Gun). And while it looks like a gradient splosh of paint, it’s actually the entire 1986 Tom Cruise movie crammed onto a single canvas.
How’d he do it? He broke the movie down into frames, then collapsed those frames “into a single image, averaged according to the colour value of each frame”.
Once you know that, you can see it. Or…see the bits where they’re flying in the desert and the bits where they’re flying over the ocean.
His website describes the result as “a condensed visual essence of the entire film. A reference to the true nature of moving images as illusory series of stills, this image is everything that Top Gun is not; slow, meditative, deeply rich and quietly intense.”
Um, excuse me, there is no scene more “deeply rich” or “quietly intense” in all of cinema than this.
Top Gun [Baden Pailthorpe, via Canberra Times]
Comments
14 responses to “The Entire Film Top Gun, Squashed Into A Single Painting”
YEAH! CANBERRA! \o/
“Canberra, Australia is a city with few highlights…”
That made me chuckle.
I can support this. Source: I was there Saturday.
Not surprised it’s basically teal and orange…….
http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.sg/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html
I guess i can finally say Ive seen the whole of top gun now…
Is there anything more hilarious than Tom Cruise playing volleyball? Did they have to erect a kids net?
Soooo homoerotic that movie. Then again all of Joel Schumachers films were. The Lost Boys… why does Corey Haim have a stripping Rob lowe poster… why is there a hot chic yet noone touches her… those wacky Schumacher movies.
Isn’t Top Gun by Tony Scott?
On topic; we need Batman And Robin compressed into a single painting.
haha oh canberra.
remember going there for a school trip from WA, was severely underwhelmed at how bland and boring Canberra was, I remember the tour guide telling us the the buildings and architecture were all art inspired ect… We laughed
Canberra
– Flat
– Dull
– Grey
– Cold
– Small
I would like to point out several awesome aspects of Canberra:
– Roundabots
– Questacon
– Charnwood
– ACTION Drivers
– Merging Lanes
– Skywhale
– Civic Nightlife
– Cleanest Strippers this side of Tijuana
– Polite Locals
Welcome to Canberra
Population: 10,000 Roundabouts
Because we all know that visiting a city for a school trip/weekend lets you appreciate it. CANBERRA PRIDE REPRESENT YO
Looks more like a blurred, out of focus photo of someone’s arse..
How does this make it into a war museum? Amazed it stayed out of the bin!
Well pretty much every action film these days will be Teal and Orange.
It takes me 16 minutes round trip to drive to work in Canberra.
That’s a whole bunch more time for me to spend with my family…or play video games.