rethinking cameras

Rethinking cameras

1Hi. This talk is about cameras. I’m not a professional photographer but I’m greatly inspired by them. I think cameras and photography tell us a lot about the culture and moment they live in.

image: the Camera Gardens of André Feliciano

2From old inventions like this Disney’s multiplane camera

Disney multiplane camerahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kN-eCBAOw60

3To the newest Google street view cars. Both show us state of the art technology at that moment. They tell us about the creativity and interests of the people that invented them, and also about the growth of two of the biggest corporations of our era.

photo by freefotoukhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/freefoto/2925638334/

4But what I’m most interested about is consumer photography:What is current people looking at? How did we go from this...

Flickr Library of the Congresshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/6057153876/

5... to this.

photo: Joshua Yospynhttp://www.tbd.com/pictures/2012/03/cherry-blossoms-photos-tidal-basin-filed-with-tourists-dogs-and-tablet-computers/18674-1346.html

6We can probably agree that most of spontaneous, amateur photography is happening on mobile phones today.

7And, while there is some people embracing the nature of today’s technology...

Rolling shutter artifact

8the current aesthetic looks more like this.

instagram images on flickr

9Which is nothing new at all, rather than something deeply rooted on this imperfections of analog photography. (The original glitch, imho).

Lomography ligth leaks

10Lomography is an analog camera movement, as well as a commercial trademark, based on recovering and shooting with cheap plastic cameras from the soviet 80’s. It popularized light leaks, surreal colors and blurry pictures: basically the amateur photographic aesthetic that’s prevalent today.

11lomography toy cameras

12Things aren’t very different if we look at consumer photography accessories.

holga iphone lens filter

13We’re referencing all kinds of objects from analog photography.

usb film rollshttp://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/usb-film-roll/

14And Lomography is not the only star: Polaroid is closely competing with it.

polaroid iphone decalhttp://photojojo.com/store/press/photos/iphone-camera-decal

15We’re still praising the brand for what they did 30 years ago.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/68237750/polaroid-poster-print-instant-rainbow-50

16And we haven’t really moved from there. Why hasn’t instant photography evolved in all these years? Was there any value in it that we weren’t able to bring to the digital domain?One could argue that Instagram or Facebook photos are today’s equivalent of instant photography, because they are instantly shared. But why all the filters and old aesthetics then?

Ikea instant digital camera.

machines + ineffiency = delight?– Bill Lindmeier

17What is so pleasing and personal about instant, bleached out or blurry pictures? Is it just the beauty of analog errors, in opposition to the cold perfection of digital images? Or is it all faked nostalgia, an attempt to make the ordinary look special and magical?

18In any way, there have been many amazing cameras in the past, but we’re basically replicating the look of Lomography, Polaroid and pinhole cameras (to a lesser extent).While the reason still remains uncertain to me, I think a key point is that they were not associated with quality but with people, memories, moments.

lomo supersamplerpolaroid onestep sx-70pinhole camera movement http://corbis.readymech.com/en

“My fascination with design has less to do with finding solutions and much more to do with design as a cultural activity. I’m fascinated by things like this because I think they tell us about culture. They may be ridiculous, they may be funny, but I think they say something profound about the way we think.”

–Sam Jacob

“The symbolic book of the future will be a deluxe object related only slightly to its current Random House ancestor. Current print technology is dying as a mass-tool and will be reborn as art.”

–Andrei Codrescu

19Like I said at the beginning, I relate a lot to Jacob’s quote, but I’d like to expand on it.The same way we can read what objects tell us, we can, as designers or artists, use them to ask new questions and point at new behaviors. There’s also parallels with many other technologies becoming obsolete, such as printed books.

I believe that cameras are loaded, powerful cultural objects, waiting to be repurposed. Let me show you some examples.

20You can repurpose analog cameras in commercial ways, and still ask questions about our visual culture and the way we use photography.It appears to me as if some of our digital pictures wanted to become analog, more personal, more intimate and meaningful. But is it instant photography if you can print the physical photo whenever you want?

The language used to market this product is also interesting, and I can see it becoming more common as we dive deeper into an all-digital era: “A photo that exists physically – IRL. A photo that is a one-of-a-kind original that can be shared, exhibited and preserved. A photo that no longer needs an electronic device to be seen.”

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impossible/impossible-instant-lab-turn-iphone-images-into-rea

21In a similar, but maybe more provocative way, a simple iPhone app uses a DSLR camera and an old CRT screen to challenge the authenticity of the filters we use daily.

InstaCRT a real world filter for photoshttp://instacrt.com

22Julius Von Bismarck hacked a reflex camera and subverted its use. Instead of taking pictures, it projects messages that, even though invisible to the human eye, are registered by nearby cameras taking pictures with flash.

Julius Von Bismarck - Image Fulguratorhttp://www.juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/index.php?/projects/fulgurator-idee/

23Julius Von Bismarck - Image Fulguratorhttp://www.juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/index.php?/projects/fulgurator-idee/

24In another project, he modified a 16mm camera to turn it into an UV-light projector, which also rotates according to the camera movements of the original footage.

Julius Von Bismarck - the space beyond mehttp://www.juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/index.php?/projects/the-space-beyond-me/

25But, in fact, there’s no need to repurpose an actual camera, rather than the concept of it, to challenge our assumptions of what a camera is. Roy’s electronic instant camera talks about old and new materials, and about our expectations of instant photography (since the camera doesn’t store anything, people have to stay still for about three minutes while the receipt is being printed)

Niklas Roy - electronic instant camerahttp://www.niklasroy.com/project/103/electronic_instant_camera

26Matt Richardson’s Descriptive camera also uses receipts to crowdsource his photos, questioning what we consider metadata and pointing that, sometimes, an image is not worth a thousand words.

Matt Richardson’s Descriptive Camerahttp://mattrichardson.com/Descriptive-Camera/

27Nadia plays with our aesthetic judgement, setting limits on the infinite possibilities of digital technology.

Nadia, the camera that thinks, so you don’t have tohttp://andrewkupresanin.com/nadia/

28Buttons conceives the camera as a networked object, creating invisible connections between two strangers taking a photo at the same time.

SASCHA POHFLEPP - Buttons www.blinksandbuttons.net/buttons_en.html

29I even believe that simply shooting unusual things, things you’re not supposed to take pictures of, can be a way of asking questions

Stephan Tillmans Luminant point arrayshttp://stephantillmans.com/index.php/project/13/

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Stephan Tillmans Luminant point arrayshttp://stephantillmans.com/index.php/project/13/

31And sometimes instant photography seems, again, the perfect medium for it.

Grant Hamiltonhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/granthamilton/sets/72157594381857577/

32This was my starting point for Polaroid Cacher, a project about unusual instant photography.

http://polaroidcacher.adrianavarro.net

33It started with the belief that this is something we should be looking at now. This is real people having real interactions.

34With my own nostalgia about old systems and interfaces.

35With the confirmation that I wasn’t the only nerd

36This service was important for the people of my generation, along with several forums, social networks and conversational spaces that will eventually be outdated and no longer accessible.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/06/end-of-an-era-windows-live-messenger-to-be-retired-users-transitioned-to-skype/

37So we built a camera to take pictures of our digital life. To have physical souvenirs of it, which for now are the most durable ones.

38We also felt there was something interesting about putting digital graphics in a very traditional, analog format, with all the meaning that Polaroid already had. And also in saving them and going back to them after x years, when all those interfaces will look clunky, and most of the data in those pictures will be lost.

39We wanted to hack an old polaroid camera but ended up repurposing only the front face. We built a modern, laser cut case for the G10 Zink printer that goes inside, to somehow represent this old-new convergence.

40In this first prototype, the viewfinder is activated through a Chrome extension.

User Flow!

41The extension saves an image file on a folder, which is monitored by a Folder Action that sends it wiressly (bluetooth) to the printer inside the camera.

We thought about other options, like having a local application to take the pictures, so we could shoot things outside of our browser, or even taking pictures of the screen automatically depending on different metrics (smile detection, social media statistics of a particular post...). There’s also lots of possibilities for interaction if we allow the camera to be shared by different computers.

42In the end, turns out that Bill Atkinson did almost the same that 30 years ago.

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Bill Moggridge - Designing Interactions bookhttp://www.folklore.org/ProjectView.py?name=Macintosh&topic=User+Interface&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date&detail=Show+Everything

thanksadrianavarro.net

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