Here’s another non-rigorous one! I was inspired by a post showing off a sort of string art: run black string along a series of pins on a white background, and build an image that way. Here’s a couple examples, using 100 pins arranged in a circle:
The first image picks its path with the darkest average over its length. The second picks based on the darkest total. These used nearly the same total length of digital string.
But I’m not sure that’s the best solution. What if the pins are distributed differently? Would the mean/total versions differ? Here are similar examples, but with 100 pins in a grid.
Different! What about if we distribute 100 pins using k-means clustering on the image?
Also very different! If the mean is used, it stays away from light areas, but that means that the image isn’t entirely covered in lines.