I used to borrow the books which had "to be disposed if not lent in the next 3 months" slip in them. Never regretted reading them. The best one included a very odd short story by Flann OBrien about a carpenter who walls himself inside the oak panelling of a build he is working on, and a woman convinced Sago farming will cure Ireland's famine.
This feels like I am violating something that is sacred.
The last time I felt the same was when I accidentally found a Japanese Youtube channel that had tons of clips of konbini storefronts, a few seconds long each, most of them with zero views.
Just professionally, I'm curious whether they derive has_not_been_viewed_much by some nightly cron process, by an insert trigger on a `user_image_viewed` table, or by some monstrous full table join that HN is currently obliterating.
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Ogre
There used to be a site called Forgotify that would only play songs from Spotify that had zero listens. So each song played, of course, removed that song from the set that could ever be played by Forgotify. Doesn't look like it's around any more, sadly.
Really moving piece. Great idea on the part of the API devs!
MaxwellM
Tangentially related. I built a little app to help me find art for my home art frame (Meural) -- it searches through the Cleveland Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Museum of Modern Art APIs.
This is awesome. It's interesting to me how it messes with my incentives. At first I was just pulling the lever on the slot machine, then I went back and clicked on the pieces I really liked (to mark them as "viewed" for the Art Institute and show some love), but finally realized that I was systematically working to remove my favorites from the pool of images people would see.
In the end I just clicked on the "refresh" button a few more times.
natosaichek
I remember reading a post by soneone who really liked imusic, i think, and the filter options it used to have.
They had a playlist that was "all songs with four or five stars that i haven't listened to in 4 years or more" or something like that. This person apparently had a massive music collection, so there were always a few nostalgic hits to listen to.
Arainach
How can we reconcile "viewed fewer than 200 times since 2010" with the absurd number of crawlers overloading the entire internet from every AI company out there?
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Klathmon
How many of these images are there? I cycled through a few and ended up hitting at least one duplicate [1] that I do actually enjoy (but I can't find the name of it now that I refreshed the page, I know it had the verrazzano narrows bridge in the title)
Is there a chance a site like this could ruin their metric by inflating all the views for these lowest viewed items? Or do these not count?
My first art work was a drawing of a bunch of couches flying. I loved it. I came back here to comment about it without noticing I’d lose track of it. I tried searching in the collection but I couldn’t find it, so if anyone finds a sketch of a bunch of couches, I’d appreciate a link.
Somehow this made this experience even more wonderful.
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rho4
I just wish the variable was called "has_been_viewed_much".
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rockmeamedee
Reminds me of the "mathematical proof that there is no least interesting number".
Because if there was a "least interesting number", that would make it interesting: it would have this unique property of being "the least interesting".
Here each candidate for "least interesting art" loses that property in much the same way, becoming interesting by being not_viewed_much.
c-hendricks
Kudos to whoever put this in the response, honestly what a fun idea.
it keeps saying "failed to load" for me. through the magic of the developer console, i can see that the api calls are working but the actual image requests are not. it seems that this is a case of an overzealous cloudflare turnstile setup since if i open the image links in a new tab and pass a challenge i can view them.
show comments
hi_hi
The irony is, that by drawing attention to these, especially on HN, they are likely to have the view numbers artificially increased, to a point where they no longer has_not_been_viewed_much
Awesome user interface here: navigate away from the page and come back, and you will never see the thing you were looking at before.
Is this person trying to get hired at Google?
kazinator
That cheesy Renaissance marble table not only hasn't been viewed much, but all the views were from a White House IP address 2017-2021 and 2025 to present.
luciana1u
my most-viewed project has 47 stars and 3 of them are my own alt accounts. the one with 0 stars is genuinely better.
esperent
Does viewing them via this blog add to the view count?
jofzar
Cool project, it's actually a shame if it gets popular enough then it won't return anything
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Boss0565
Wow, some of these are super cool
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shooshx
UI gore
vlan121
The ai training data flag
thakoppno
there’s probably some decent arguments on how to implement this.
functionmouse
I wish I could click the picture to pop out scale to full 1x
ChrisArchitect
Reminded me of least viewed pages on wikipedia collections or neglected articles...
See:
In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia (2022)
The first one I got was a palm tree growing out of an orange woman's anus... so, I can see why some of this isn't very popular.
wranglerjeans
deleted
tupacshakur
deleted
deepsun
But why? Seems like there's way more art than people need, just as there's way more music than people need. As a consequence, most artists aren't earning much (just as it's always been). Why would author welcomes us to artificially inflate click counts? For example, e-commerce stores don't like artificial reviews.
I used to borrow the books which had "to be disposed if not lent in the next 3 months" slip in them. Never regretted reading them. The best one included a very odd short story by Flann OBrien about a carpenter who walls himself inside the oak panelling of a build he is working on, and a woman convinced Sago farming will cure Ireland's famine.
I thought this was lovely, and was surprised by the date: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/196937/summer-moon-at-miyajim...
I like the first one I got: Honorable Mr. Cat - https://www.artic.edu/artworks/79175/honorable-mr-cat
This feels like I am violating something that is sacred.
The last time I felt the same was when I accidentally found a Japanese Youtube channel that had tons of clips of konbini storefronts, a few seconds long each, most of them with zero views.
https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/7a8a1d7e-c773-d11b-24f6-08c8f63...
Just professionally, I'm curious whether they derive has_not_been_viewed_much by some nightly cron process, by an insert trigger on a `user_image_viewed` table, or by some monstrous full table join that HN is currently obliterating.
There used to be a site called Forgotify that would only play songs from Spotify that had zero listens. So each song played, of course, removed that song from the set that could ever be played by Forgotify. Doesn't look like it's around any more, sadly.
This was my favourite of the ones I saw:
https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/813984c9-f0a6-c340-5e89-f1c00af...
Really moving piece. Great idea on the part of the API devs!
Tangentially related. I built a little app to help me find art for my home art frame (Meural) -- it searches through the Cleveland Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Museum of Modern Art APIs.
You can try it here https://artfindr.mohitbhasin.com/
This is awesome. It's interesting to me how it messes with my incentives. At first I was just pulling the lever on the slot machine, then I went back and clicked on the pieces I really liked (to mark them as "viewed" for the Art Institute and show some love), but finally realized that I was systematically working to remove my favorites from the pool of images people would see.
In the end I just clicked on the "refresh" button a few more times.
I remember reading a post by soneone who really liked imusic, i think, and the filter options it used to have.
They had a playlist that was "all songs with four or five stars that i haven't listened to in 4 years or more" or something like that. This person apparently had a massive music collection, so there were always a few nostalgic hits to listen to.
How can we reconcile "viewed fewer than 200 times since 2010" with the absurd number of crawlers overloading the entire internet from every AI company out there?
How many of these images are there? I cycled through a few and ended up hitting at least one duplicate [1] that I do actually enjoy (but I can't find the name of it now that I refreshed the page, I know it had the verrazzano narrows bridge in the title)
Is there a chance a site like this could ruin their metric by inflating all the views for these lowest viewed items? Or do these not count?
[1] https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/67395c18-c83c-865f-b0db-4736574...
I enjoyed this one. Their other work was quite somber and then this title threw me for a loop https://www.artic.edu/artworks/151439/uranus-8
My first art work was a drawing of a bunch of couches flying. I loved it. I came back here to comment about it without noticing I’d lose track of it. I tried searching in the collection but I couldn’t find it, so if anyone finds a sketch of a bunch of couches, I’d appreciate a link.
Somehow this made this experience even more wonderful.
I just wish the variable was called "has_been_viewed_much".
Reminds me of the "mathematical proof that there is no least interesting number". Because if there was a "least interesting number", that would make it interesting: it would have this unique property of being "the least interesting".
Here each candidate for "least interesting art" loses that property in much the same way, becoming interesting by being not_viewed_much.
Kudos to whoever put this in the response, honestly what a fun idea.
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/31232/large-leaf-verdure-with...
I live there! Crazy...
They will have to increase that number now!
it keeps saying "failed to load" for me. through the magic of the developer console, i can see that the api calls are working but the actual image requests are not. it seems that this is a case of an overzealous cloudflare turnstile setup since if i open the image links in a new tab and pass a challenge i can view them.
The irony is, that by drawing attention to these, especially on HN, they are likely to have the view numbers artificially increased, to a point where they no longer has_not_been_viewed_much
A new field is required…
I got a bunch of great ones and then I got this: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/91654/blackware-spouted-vesse...
I think I have an interest in Peruvian blackware now!! I mean... Look at this guy: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6911/stirrup-spout-vessel-in-...
Awesome user interface here: navigate away from the page and come back, and you will never see the thing you were looking at before.
Is this person trying to get hired at Google?
That cheesy Renaissance marble table not only hasn't been viewed much, but all the views were from a White House IP address 2017-2021 and 2025 to present.
my most-viewed project has 47 stars and 3 of them are my own alt accounts. the one with 0 stars is genuinely better.
Does viewing them via this blog add to the view count?
Cool project, it's actually a shame if it gets popular enough then it won't return anything
Wow, some of these are super cool
UI gore
The ai training data flag
there’s probably some decent arguments on how to implement this.
I wish I could click the picture to pop out scale to full 1x
Reminded me of least viewed pages on wikipedia collections or neglected articles...
See:
In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia (2022)
https://colinmorris.github.io/blog/unpopular-wiki-articles
(Some discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31524943, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37955600)
did it get hug of death?
The first one I got was a palm tree growing out of an orange woman's anus... so, I can see why some of this isn't very popular.
deleted
deleted
But why? Seems like there's way more art than people need, just as there's way more music than people need. As a consequence, most artists aren't earning much (just as it's always been). Why would author welcomes us to artificially inflate click counts? For example, e-commerce stores don't like artificial reviews.
Pedant here. No, it does not "beg the question". It raises the question. These are not the same thing. See, for instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question