Deterministic Pixels
darrennewton.com
darrennewton.com
Not usable the way identicons are, but the shapes are pleasing.
On the artist's webpage there's following note in the footer:
"Note: Contrary to some errors made in certain press articles, McCollum's Shapes are not "generated" in a computer with an invented or scripted "program." Every shape is laboriously created by the artist using Adobe Illustrator — a common, everyday graphics program — by drawing little parts, cutting and pasting the parts into bigger parts, then cutting and pasting those parts into even bigger parts, and so on, and keeping track according to a written protocol, to insure against repetitions. The first exhibition of the project, in 2006, took around two years to complete."
Anyway, thanks for a very interesting link.
EDIT: More info on the tedious labor involved: http://allanmccollum.net/amcnet2/album/shapes/shapesworkshee...
Secret had an interesting take on this. They had a limited set of simple icons, like boats or rockets, and then dynamically colored them. They were easy enough to recognize so patterns became more apparent.
If Racket is winning it may be because its ties to acadamia provide a stable working group who can work on it as part of their day job and a constant stream of grad students who implement their work in it.