DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

Holga trying to enjoy an English bank holiday

Originally uploaded by lizjones112

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.

Originally uploaded by iz*source.

Oh how lovely on Valentine’s day …

But there is no need for us to forget what we are REALLY here for … the lurve of WEb 2.0

You Tube is NOT just videos of people at weddings . It is a rich resourrce for info of all kinds. Here are two useful bits about web 2.0

I really like this one:

This one is a bit less funky but a bit more controversial.

I see people take photos.
Lots of the people are taking pictures of themselves.
It is so common to see the self portraiters when you are out and about these days.
They seem to want to have pictures of themselves everywhere.
I think that partly they just like to use their gadgets.

They often share them and talk about them in groups, gathering round and looking at the little screens.

It is so easy to hold the technology and take your own photos in different places. VicCarrington talked recently about how she and her partner are pretty obsessed with this activity… and refuse help from kindly passers by who offer to take their photograph for them.

I am interested in the idea that we want to see ourseves positioned in spaces; the way we want to take control of the images. Berger talked of the ways in which women in particular view themselves as if through other’s eyes. This is becoming an obsession for everyone. But if we hold the camera it is as if we are taking control over other people’s gaze.

Putting the images on a website is taking one step further; viewing ourselves on the global stage. Look on Flickr and you will see so many self portraits. Under the tag ’self portrait’ or see the group ‘ of me’.There is something important going on which is to do with identity positioning.

I have never printed off photos taken by my digital camera.
I have 1,407 photos on Flickr. They have been viewed 29,856 times.
Wow.
(I have one self portrait.)

I was first acquainted with them here and here.

TT and I have been worrying about them ever since so it was a joy to liberate them with Moufle and C-monster.

We had a mission isnpired by the infamous ‘No Dude Left Behind’ mantra in the US. Did we manage to fulfil our dream? Wait and see.

New York is waiting to be snapped up. (By us with our cameras, and by the property developers with their diggers.)

I am unable to make any sense of all the photos I have been taking and to write about the people is going to take a-a-a-a-ages.

This IS fun though.

I am a Flickr activist trying to free the sugar dudes today. You just wait and see!

A few days ago I was a Flickr activist entering areas on the shores of Manhattan where controversial devlopments are taking place.

Nice slideshow of the day here.

I am being educated about street artists such as Swoon and Celso and I will write properly on all this later.
It all needs to settle into my cerbral cortex before I can arrange a narrative.

But there is so much to say about Flickr and online offline affinities and tiers of association.
How is it that we have managed evrytime to meet people from Flickr who are just like us? Who we love to be with and conect with so well? How did we learn these skills? (So much here on cultural capital and social know-how.) We have met people for the first time who we feel we already know. This is fabulous.

Importantly I have bought handmade Cowboy boots (ha ha ludicrously marvellous to wear when listening to Laura Cantrell etc.) ; jeans and t-shirt from Gap; presents from MoMA; bag for son; so much so much. So much more.
Love it here.

It was quite sunny today so I was able to test out my new tea cup in the garden.

I felt extremely English.

I thought of the Queen and of Wimbledon and of Roses in bloom.

This picture which I put on my blog yesterday elicited 18 comments and 47 views on Flickr, which I think is quite strange.

I put the photo in some groups, including ‘my everyday life’ and T’he new domesticity’. I really like these groups at the moment. I enjoy the way people in some of the Flickr groups make it like a kind of club. For example the group admins (people who set up the group) are careful to welcome new members and they praise their photos. It feels REAL.

It’s GREAT, a real buzz.
I think that is why Flickr is addictive.

There is a whole reciprocity thing going on.

I like the groups where people draw you in and where the boundaries between the offline and online spaces start to blur. This seems to happen in the ‘place’ groups (Sheffield; Bristol; Nottingham etc). But also in some others like The new Domesticity’ and ‘Everyday Life”. There is aslo the Thrift group where this happens.

It seems to happen in groups where people are presenting images as if they are glimpses of a life ‘caught in the moment’; they want to offer their perception of their reality as they see and experience it. People in these kinds of group particularly, seem keen to present online identities that cohere with off line selves (whatever that means).

Danath and Boyd talk here about ‘Public Displays of Connection’. And I really am thinking about this in relation to what Guy found in Benkler’s work about ‘thickening social relations’. I love that phrase.

Danath and Boyd talk about the significance of the way in which our online relationships are on public display - so I think we need to look OK all the time, from all angles really. So we reciprocate favours - such as making each other contacts, or puting each other on blogrolls. We have to always be on polite good behaviour and ensure our reputation remains intact as far as all our ‘contacts’ are concerned. It is quite difficult doing all this ‘people-pleasing’ without sounding totally gushing and cheesey I think.

I think that many online relationships are very temporary whilst others become quite deep.
The reciprocity in the relationships can be quite formulaic; gestural; ritualistic in some. You say something nice about my photo, I say something nice about yours. With others it is more than that and I think when it is more than that you can break out of the ritual routines and the politeness.

I am thinking about how that happens.

I have found out that you have to stick to the rituals until people know you otherwise they get offended and then you have to grovel your way out of the hole you dug. (I did that today.)

PostScript - added Monday 24th April:
This photo hit most interesting yesterday(23rd)!! Look here.

Wow how exciting!!!

Hairy Potter took this photograph and put it on Flickr, asking for help in identifying where it was taken.

Roger B went off hunting and came back with the answer which he posted on Flickr here.

Hairy Potter used to live in Sheffield but now lives on the West Coast of Canada. He is part of the Sheffield group though and I guess it is nice for him to keep in contact with the place through the people who post their Sheffield shots there. After several meetings of some of the Sheffield Flickr Group, we have now set up a blog!! (Yes, I know …) which is here.

So interesting .. it all goes to strengthen the idea that we thicken our social relations through our online activities, and vice versa. (Guy wrote about it.) And he even gave a link where you can dowload the whole of Benkler’s book on networking.

Just one more litle point … when I met a few people from the Bristol Flickl group, one of them talked about how she hated it when people joined the group and ’spammed it’ with photos of all the tourist places in Bristol, and left again without contributing to the group at all. Fascinating really that there is a sense in some of the ‘place based’ Flickr groups of the LOCAL and that people are keen to get a community feel from it. It is not just ‘another group’. Popular groups on Flickr have people who really strongly interact and for them the other groups are not as good. The personal is crucial in all of this.

So Roger B and Hairy Potter - I reckon they are friends from way back in time when HP lived in Sheffield.

At the weekend I went to two Flickr meets.

Firstly met Moufle from NYC who came into London; she was joined by Bingo Little and .danimal from Bristol, as well as .Danny from Cambridge. Quite a brigade . We had lunch in Bloomsbury and took a little walk down to Shoreditch where we went to the Eagle on City Road. (See its mention in this nursery rhyme here.)
There we met the London Flickr group and did half their walk with them. (We left early as had to do other stuff).
It was grand to meet people and cemented the idea that while it is great to communicate on a global scale there is never anythung quite so humane as being in aface to face situation.
On Sunday we had our own Sheffield Flickrmeet in The Showroom. It ws our fourth meeting and a couple of new people came along which is good. We voted on the winer of the Cathedral shot competition and have set up a series of new projects. We are also planning an exhibition of our work and want to show it somewhere central. Bristol have done something similar. It is interesting again that while we enjoy the mixing on a global scale we relish the idea of meeting new people in our locality … all people we would never otherwise have come into conatct with. Fascinating. (However there are those who do NOT come to the meets and so we cannot run far with that idea.)

And finally, in checking out arrangements for when we go to NYC in a couple of weeks, we found that the New York group is using Wayfarer to show aspects of their city as they see it. I love this idea of bringing a personal perspective on the maps available and labelling the world in this manner. You add a photo and a description to a wayfarer map. This is Niznoz’s work .. must have taken him ages. (Small world, Niznoz is Moufle’s cousin.) TT also had a go here.

We have come a long way since the ol metaphysicals drew up maps and discovered the world was round .. but that really was quite a discovery!

Here is Moufle:

and here are TT and Little Bingo (thankfully in the controlled zone):

Oh yes. One more thing … I got chucked out of a Flickr group today … have yet to discover why. Now I am over the trauma (do I look like I care?) I am amused by all this and must consult Iona and Peter to check out why some kids on the playground feel compelled to set up rules so that they have hardly anyone left to play with… (the group has gone down to only 8 members now - from loads and loads)

for a really great day.
What a line up of wonderful researchers and practitioners.
Here are photos ..

Firstly here are some of the contributors to Kate and Jennifer’s new book. We are:
Gunther Kress, Barbara Comber, Hilary Janks, Jennifer Rowsell, Kate Pahl, Julia Davies and Pippa Stein.

Jennifer and Kate were our wonderful editors:

And the day today was not only a book launch but a showcase for excellent research arsing from Creative Partnerships locally and excellent practice globally. See here, here and here.

You may be interested to know I have been writing this post whilst having the multimodal experience of listening to a Flickr podcast from New York: from here. Fabulous - they have a documentary, interviews, pictures from NYC and a map of the tour they made whilst recordeing the broadcast.
TT was very excited as Star not Star was mentioned - a group he set up aaaages ago. And our friend moufle was on.