smartphones and open, collaborative image making
TRANSCRIPT
Smartphones and open, collaborative image making Art + Design Symposium Dunedin School of Art, 16-17 October 2015 Dr Mark McGuire Design, Dept. of Applied Sciences, University of Otago email: [email protected]
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mark_mcguire
Blog: http://markmcguire.net/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/mark_mcguire/
https://instagram.com/mark_mcguire/
Collaboration (Shared goals)
Models of Open Art/Design Practices
Cooperation (Shared Interest)
Crowdsourcing (Gathering)
Dissemination (Spreading)
> The production of film cameras essentially ended in 2006.
> Sales of DSLR cameras declining since 2010.
> Digital cameras are not connected and lack the apps that enable sharing.
> Apple, Samsung and other top smart phone makers are “not just trying to edge out stand-alone cameras; they’re trying to destroy them and own their space”. (Arthur, 13 April, 2015) http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/13/cameras-slrs-dslr-overtaken-by-smartphones-charles-arthur
The Best Camera Is The One That's With You: iPhone Photography by Chase Jarvis (2009)
“Inherently, we all know that an image isn’t measured by its resolution, dynamic range, or anything technical. It’s measured by the simple—sometimes profound, other times absurd or humorous or whimsical—effect that it can have on us.”
The iPhone has “given us the opportunity […] to capture moments and share them with our friends, families, loved ones, or the world at the press of a button. It’s the moment. The little snippet of life unfolding in front of your lens.”
> Smart phones were able to capture images as good as the best $2,000 DSLR cameras from about six years earlier.
> Faster processing could ameliorate the limitations of the smart phone cameras resulting from their small lens and image sensor.
> Sales of phones with cameras 13 x sales of dedicated cameras.
> More money is likely to be invested in improving the technology of increasingly popular smart phones than cameras.
(Dean Holland, 2 Jan., 2014) http://connect.dpreview.com/post/5533410947/smartphones-versus-dslr-versus-film Accessed 1 Oct. 2015
Technical, social and economic developments in the Internet age have enabled an “aesthetic movement of collaborism” and a democratisation of design.
— Gerritzen and Lovink Everyone is a Designer in the Age of Social Media (2010), p. 24
“[L]ike literacy after the printing press, design is becoming too important to leave to a cloistered few. For design to become more relevant in a world like this, we must find ways of expanding design practice to amateurs and to communal practice.”
— Clay Shirky Gerritzen and Lovink, Everyone is a Designer in the Age of Social Media (2010), p. 24
Open design is developing out of a culture of sharing and reciprocity in which designers and end users connect directly, without the need for intermediate organizations, retailers, publishers or marketers.
Powerful digital tools, expert advice and high quality work are now freely available online. Anyone to participate in online conversations, activities and spaces, regardless of professional title or status. — Open Design Now: Why design cannot remain exclusive (2011). edited by Bas van Abel et al.
Instagram > Launched in 2010, sold to Facebook in April 2012 for US $1 billion (Yahoo! paid US $35 M for Flickr in 2005).
> Mobile photo & video (15 sec.) sharing app (sends to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr)
> Hashtags added Jan. 2011, 15 sec. videos supported from June 2013 (competing with Twitter’s Vine), Direct added in Dec. 2013 (competing with Snapchat), non-square images supported from Aug. 2015
> 400 million users, 75% outside the US. (Sept. 2015)
http://blog.instagram.com/post/129662501137/150922-400million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram 4 Oct. 2015
Joanna Zylinska > We have all become “distributors, archivists and curators of the light traces immobilised on photo-sensitive surfaces”.
> Low cost digital storage and digital networks have “changed the very ontology of the photographic medium.”
> Photographs now “function less as individual objects or as media content to be looked at and more as data flows to be dipped or cut into occasionally”.
(Joanna Zylinska, 2015) Photomediations: An Open Book http://photomediationsopenbook.net/data/index.html#ch2
https://instagram.com/lordemusic/ Accessed 4 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/p/7tB-wYNlUU/?taken-by=lordemusic Accessed 4 Oct. 2015
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/11028015/National-Gallery-relents-over-mobile-phones.html
By Hannah Furness 12 Aug. 2014
“Instagram is fast becoming a key platform for advertising art.” https://www.artsy.net/article/newlin-tillotson-smartphone-exhibitions-why-galleries-are-taking-their 28 Aug. 2014
Dunedin School of Art https://instagram.com/p/8wuWGSsLPO/?taken-by=dunedin_school_of_art Accessed 13 Oct. 2015
#MobilePhotoNow (Feb 6 - March 22, 2015) > Largest mobile photography exhibition organized by a museum > 45,000 images via Instagram by 5,000 photographers, 89 countries > Exhibition featured > 320 images, 240 photographers 40 countries. http://www.columbusmuseum.org/mobilephotonow/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
“To submit images, participants had to use the hashtag #mobilephotonowcma in addition to the themed #JJ hashtag. There were four themes spaced out over four weeks announced on the #JJ community feed: #jj_cma_street, #jj_cma_portrait, #jj_cma_community and #jj_cma_blackandwhite. Mr. Kuster and Josh Johnson sifted through some 45,000 and narrowed it to 650.”
From Smartphones to Museum Walls, New York Times, Feb. 10 2014 http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/from-smartphones-to-museum-walls/?_r=1#
Adam Elkins (had a portrait included in #MobilePhotoNow.) > Columbus barista, 27-year-old amateur photographer. > Hosts real-life “InstaMeet” gatherings to connect with users. > His iPhone’s worldview is global. > “It’s wild; I post a photo now, and I get 100 ‘likes’ within a few minutes”
Museum exhibit focuses on pervasiveness of mobile photography. Columbus Dispatch, 5 Oct. 2015 http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2015/02/01/01-candid-captures.html
https://instagram.com/jjcommunity/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/p/8GpoIrtlZx/?taken-by=jjcommunity Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
http://mobilephotoawards.com/4th-annual-mobile-photography-awards-winners/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/nothing_to_worry_about/ 1 Oct. 2015
Patricia Lay-Dorsey documents her life with Multiple Sclerosis https://instagram.com/p/8s-_MJP1qp/?taken-by=patricialaydorsey 12 Oct. 2015
Patricia Lay-Dorsey documents her life with Multiple Sclerosis https://instagram.com/p/8s-_MJP1qp/?taken-by=patricialaydorsey 12 Oct. 2015
“#candyminimal is a movement in mobile photography known as candy-colored minimalism, which I started in 2014. To date, Instagrammers have tagged over 80,000 photos with #candyminimal.” — Matt Crump http://www.mattcrump.com/guide 24 Sept. 2015
> Capture a simple composition against a clear background > Crop, leaving plenty of negative space> Filter: adjust hue, brightness, and saturation (Diptic for iOS), layer and experiment with filters (PicTapGo, VSCOcam, etc.)
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/candyminimal/ 24 Sept. 2015
https://instagram.com/misvincent/ 12 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/fantasy_friday_74/ 12 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/p/8nj-7Zveyi/?tagged=fantasy_friday 12 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/minimalism_world/ 24 Sept. 2015
https://instagram.com/p/79O2tzGlH8/?taken-by=minimalism_world 23 Sept. 2015
https://instagram.com/streetkiwi/ 12 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/p/8ruvnsJT08/?taken-by=streetkiwi 12 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/diagonal_symmetry/ 2 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/p/8TYez_yaj2/?taken-by=diagonal_symmetry 2 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/24hourproject/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/24hr15/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
“These are the photos from the 2015 Edition of the #24HourProject which are part of the exhibit in Caracas Venezuela. Thanks to all the participants who shared their city story one photo per hour during 24 hours. Curated by Renzo Grande” http://www.24hourproject.org/caracas-2015/ Accessed 5 Oct. 2015
#24hr15
“So, every hour, images filtered in from 650 cities around the world, including pictures documenting Albuquerque nightlife and the early morning hustle of a Hong Kong fish market as well as a father and daughter sitting together as they sell flowers on a Tehran street.
“We wanted to see the differences throughout the world, but also the blending and mixing of ethnicities within a single city,” said Smotherman, a developmental disabilities social worker. “Street photography highlights [human nature] by capturing the unplanned but not unnoticed.”
Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2015 http://www.latimes.com/local/moments/la-me-scm-lessons-learned-the-24-hour-project-2015-20150325-story.html Accessed 4 Oct. 2015
#24hr15
Conclusions > It’s not the wood (resource, artefact), it’s the singing around the camp fire (social).
> People value designed experiences that blend the best of online and offline.
> Develop open strategies that integrate collaboration (in groups), cooperation (over networks) + crowdsourcing & dissemination.