Went to Peace in the Park on Saturday. Some interesting stuff to photograph and saw a wonderful band Just Potatoes. The lead singer had the most beautiful rich Blues voice but could also belt out the Waits’ Chocolate Jesus, giving a momentous performance.
(This is the singer from Just Potatoes.)
I found out about the event in several ways - all of which were to do with my ‘life online’ Firstly I took a photo last week of a a performer advertising the event - but only found out about the event after I took the shot for my Flickr stream (not yet uploaded); secondly I heard about the event on a discussion thread on Flickr; thirdly I heard about it via a contact on Facebook.
While I was there, I was intent on getting good shots to put on Flickr … but most uncanny was when Ian Jones came up to me and said ‘Hi you’r DrJoolz aren’t you? I recognise you from Flickr … Life Online, huh? Blending Identities.
A few months ago I brought you this story - from my fridge.
And now I see that there is a wonderful blog here all about ‘passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers’
Do other people find notes round their houses?
This is the latest one in my house:
Rosa likes to leave notes … another one here…
I think it is interesting the way people leave text around the place. Sometimes with no hope of seeing most of their audience.
This one is quite bemusing:
And I like Lemon2’s shot here which captures a moment where the text seems to have a relationship with the person in front:
But the relationship is only made by the reader. There are just two items in the image and we as readers join them in a narrative; we make connections between one element of the image and another.
I am really interested in the ways in which environment can change the meanings of text and vice versa. I am interested in the way text changes over time. This one is funny:
But really I am interested in interactivity of the environment - including people, and even the weather - with texts that are in the street …. specifically streetart and grafitti. The life and meanings of street texts.
And the forecast was rain. So we have had two solid days of it.
If I had wanted rain I would have chosen to live in Manchester or Wales.
So this is NOT what I expect or want. It is COLD as well as wet.
Liz Jones, also fed up with the weather and also from Sheffield, has whiled away the hours by uploading photos and the photo on the right is an excellent example. (I love photos of dolls. They are just so ABSURD in my opinion. THIS is one of my favourites ever.)
And in the meantime I have been documenting the further liberation of Sugardudes. See here for latest story.
The story ends horribly:
This is not the first time people have been involved in their rescue. See here.
The whole thing is a story of global bonding through PLAY. Play that happened through the meeting of Flickr people from New York, Sheffield and even Sweden.
I love to take photos and then fiddle around and use photoshop to crop or fiddle with colour etc.
Lots of people are against such post-photographic tampering. But I see it as aprt of the whole photographic process. Even in the ‘darkroom’ used for processing film, there are decisions to be made about chemicals, exposure time etc etc. The type of film used brings about differebnt results, and of course printing can make a qwhole lot of difference in terms of colour outcome, type of paper (glossy or matt), size and even borders.
I like to use photoshop and because I think that because you have to frame the image, focus in a particular way, shoot at a particular angle, wait for the right moment (etc.) the image is always just a representation, never ‘real’. It is not a snap from reality but a version. It is the photographer’s view; it reflects a set of choices or circumstances. It is amazing how you can get so many different types of image when many people take a picture of one thing. (Compare the shots of the same Banksy stencils, for example.) .
I photoshopped this image:
I wanted to also play with the idea that you can shoot in black and white or colour. I called this ‘Shooting in Colour’.
I also wanted to show my position on streetart - that it brightens the environment and can improve and humanise negelgted and forgotten spaces.
I like this video about transforming a model through photography. The video is supposed to shopw how shallow we are in having only one version of beauty. It is apart of a campaign for ‘real beauty’. What is ‘real’? I like the transformative process. It interests me a lot. And what do we mean by ‘natural’ or ‘real’?
Apparently, in line with modern trends to put stuff online, a funeral director (S Clarke and Son) is making his funeral services available to watch online. Rivetting stuff. . And you can see for yourself … check out the website here.
But I prefer the ultimate in multimodality on YouTube … This video has it all … sound; text; moving images, and FOOD as ART… . Here we have speed painting with chips and ketchup.
I love wikipedia.
I love the way anyone can contribute.
You can contribute in many languages.
You can look up practically anything you are interested in - and it is usually there … like
If you want to you can register on wikipedia and start adding to the knowledge base by editing a page. It is as easy as ABC (which is not easy for everyone.)
But
sometimes
naughty people mess about like when I once looked up info about Alison Krauss. She is a fantastic singer and VERY modest.
Someone had deleted all the ‘proper’ text and replaced it with ‘Alison Krauss causes cancer.’ (And I doubt the veracity of this claim).
But the wiki community quickly sorted out the silliness and the text was back in order within the hour. (I this kind of incident is a small price to pay for the uptodateness - especially in comparison to the staid and non contemporaneity of leather bound tomes on library shelves - The Encyclopedia Britannica goes out of date before it is printed.)
With so many people reading and contributing to wikipedia I think it manages to be a dynamic and incredibly uptodate encyclopedia; but no doubt it does enshrine certain idelogical values.
And some people have had ENOUGH . They have set up their own wiki which is more Christian;more Conservative and apparently more pro American.
And so what ever you think of these values, at least they are explicit that they have them.
Found this website for people who have good strong family values but still like using the Internet (is there really such a family?)
One of its guarantees is that it is:
Consistent with commonly-held family values. Most parents don’t want their kids watching ads for beer companies, casinos and the like. So even though they frequently have entertaining videos (this is intentional, of course), they won’t be featured here.
So yeah. Go here and have fun (or not as the case may be.)
I am a bit behind on reporting this but Demos has recently (beginning of January) brought out a new publication (authors Celia Hannon and Hannah Green) called Their Space.
You can download the article for free as a pdf ..
It does what it says on the tin and more:
Their Space: Education for a digital generation draws on qualitative research with children and polling of parents to counter the myths obscuring the true value of digital media.
Approaching technology from the perspective of children, it tells positive stories about how they use online space to build relationships and create original content. It argues that the skills children are developing through these activities, such as creativity, communication and collaboration, are those that will enable them to succeed in a globally networked, knowledge-driven economy
I think it’s really good and Hannah and Celia talk about it here on the radio.
It is a mashup that is to say it is created from content derived from a number of sites. You can see quite a lot of mashups on YouTube - using video spliced from lots of sources. Like here.
It is different from culture jamming, but could be confused with it. Culture jamming is pretty much ant advertising while many mashups are actually marketing ploys. Culture jamming transforms one media message into another like this.
