What the Sites Are Drawing IV

Why squinting helps

If you squinted at the close-up, you were doing on purpose what stepping back does by itself: throwing away fine detail. The letters and logos change from one tile to the next, which is fine detail; the brightness that draws the leaf changes slowly across many tiles, which is coarse. Blur the view and only the coarse part survives.

Painters have used the same trick for centuries, half-closing their eyes to judge the light and dark of a scene without being distracted by its detail. Here the detail is a directory of real websites, and the light and dark is a leaf.