Paint My Pixels from Jon Baas

I receive a fair number of emails from bloggers who want me to link to something, and the majority of them ends up dying in my inbox. I received an email tonight from a blogger on the Jiblog & BBA blogrolls who has an interesting idea, so I'm actually going to pass this one along. I'll let Jon explain it as he did to me in the email:

"Paint My Pixels", is a creative art experiment that attempts to answer the following question, "Can thousands of artists all over the world work together to create a single painting, using only small blocks of colored pixels?"

For $1, anyone can choose a 100-pixel block and have it colored with one of 140 colors from a predetermined color palette. This block can also be "signed" and have a link to the website of the buyer's choice. But unlike the now stagnant idea of pixel advertising (currently sweeping the internet), the final result of all 5400 color blocks will be something more than just a random clash of tiny little ads. Buyers will have the chance to directly influence the direction of an actual work of art that will be painted on canvas (by me) and auctioned off at the end of the project.

Jon is an artist, so this could end up being an interesting project. He's also offering to share the wealth, if you will, with a couple of contests. If you are interested in reading more on his project, the details can be found here.