“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” – Andy Warhol
15 minutes is a living photomosaic portrait that explores Warhol’s proposition by chronicling “fame” in 15 minute intervals. The portrait is generated autonomously by a continuously running computer program. The program follows various internet sources, including Twitter Trends and Google Trends, as well as news headlines, in order to track the fame of individuals through time. Every quarter hour, it chooses the individual it believes to be most famous at that moment, and initiates a photomosaic portrait of that individual. The portrait is made up of tile images consisting entirely of imagery related to the subject. The mosaic evolves slowly, refined over the fifteen minute period, and the cycle then repeats with the next subject.
The live portrait, as well as snapshots of the portrait taken every 15 minutes since the project’s inception, are viewable online.
Update: As of April 1 2017, the live portrait is no longer operational. The major image search API providers have changed their pricing structures in such a way that it is no longer economically feasible to run the project. Snapshots of all portraits remain available online, although many have decayed significantly due to link rot.