Ends: Friday, December 12, 2008

Brief: Find words or text that appeal to you anywhere in your environment. Wait for “something interesting” to happen, with pedestrians, with light, with framing, with angles! Anything creative that strikes you.

In photo challenge #7, we asked you to find things that were “not quite right”. We were amazed by the various submissions that we received and began to think of how our project offers this amazing opportunity for street-level exposure to so many urban centres around the world. Photo challenge #8 has further exploration of this topic at it’s objective.

Street photography became possible in the early 20th century when advancements in technology made it possible to carry a hand-held camera on one’s body. There was much excitement in the ability to capture “everyday life” as the common man experienced it. Street photography allows us to consider how what we see everyday impacts what we know about the world. Considering text as a common thread in urban life adds a common thread from which to view many street photographers’ works.

In the photography of Walker Evans, the visuality of urban life reveals important cultural information about his early 20th century work. At the time of his black and white street photography, capitalism was very much changing the appearance of city streets as the ability to mass produce goods brought about consumerist culture. As we readily recognize, urban street signage dots the landscape:

New Orleans Street Corner, 1935

What does this photo tell us about the urban setting in which it was taken? We can extract a lot just through a quick glance: what language is spoken there, what kinds of products are consumed there, what kind of cars are driven there etc. etc.. Objectively, it’s also relevant to look at the scene as a whole and consider how drastic the advertising really is in relation to the entire scene. Only the fruits and vegetables in the shop window remind us of the natural world and the resources that many of our products are created from.

Later, Fred Herzog mostly documented the changing streets of Vancouver, a city on the west coast of Canada, revealing again, the almost-overwhelming presence of street signs and advertisements, as the city moved from “backwater town” to a world-class city with many desirable goods and services for its inhabitants.

The above photo, taken in Vancouver in 1968, brings colour into the visual spectrum of street photography. The viewer is bombarded by brightly coloured neon and back-lit signage, “games, guns, movies,” “western gym,” “washington.”  

Most street photographers at this time were still using black and white, while Herzog preferred to work in Kodachrome, and shot on slide film. Although unnoticed for years, his work is now recognized as an important body of historical photographs.  Today, the colours, font and designs of those streets signs are associated with forgotten signage in dilapidated and run-down neighbourhoods. The fact that his slide films were just recently developed into prints for exhibitions provides an extraordinary opportunity to look at “new” prints that contain outdated cultural information, including fonts and colours that we no longer associate with contemporary  city scenes.

Arcade, 1968

Herzog also created some interesting use of text in his street photography. One word in the photo below hangs in the frame of a very theatrical San-Francisco moment. What is it about the word “only” that continually piques our curiosity each time we look at it? Here, Herzog has selected a moment in time, well aware of the text that lingers in the top of the frame, something we’re hoping our photo challenge participants will consider as they go out looking for inspiration.

Vercruz 96

Ends: Monday, September 15th, 2008

Brief: Pick a photo in the Glocal flickr pool, print it out and create a new image by superimposing your chosen image on top of a backdrop that you have created. You can decide how to manipulate or interpret that backdrop, but please provide a link to the original image in your images’ description. 

Instructions: Tag your photo with “glocalproject” and “photochallenge5″ and add it to our flickr pool. Need help? Email us.

Our photo challenge topic this week was borne out of comparing historical references from the modernist photo movement with cool web art references. We’ve been inspired by the work of Kenneth Josephson  and the always entertaining web art of sleeveface.com. The contrast between the historical art reference and the web art reference seems to be a relevant challenge for Glocal, given that the project examines the history of photography while experimenting with the potential for mass collaboration on the web. We also like the concept of superimposition as a means to think critically about the uses to which photography is applied, both artistically and in popular culture.

Kenneth Josephson’s photos-within-photos create visual statements that prompt the viewer to think critically of photography, both as an art form and as a representation of reality.

This simple photo of a boat, held against the backdrop of the ocean, reminds us that an image is little more than a representation of reality and never reality itself.

On sleeveface.com, the concept is similar and repeatable. Contributing photographers select an album sleeve of their choice and re-create the scene outside of the borders of the album sleeve:

This beautifully positioned album sleeve lines up nicely with the newly created backdrop. It creates a new image that alters the original context of the album art. Like the Josephson image, the arm holding up the album both adds humour, and suggests that we are supposed to be aware of the layers between the images.

Unlike photographic re-creation (Photo challenge # 3 (re) Create), where the new image is a single layer and a re-interpretation of an earlier image, superimposing an image creates a new narrative that reminds us of the distance from reality that we experience as viewers.

Have fun!

This screenshot from Glocal’s Motion Sequence Application (MSA) is an anonymous portrait of a tree in Holland Park – one of the many trees that were being showcased at Surrey’s Fusion Festival!

 Hello Glocal Blog Readers!

This Summer season has become an extremely prolific one for the info-crew at Glocal… 

In addition to the Canada Day festivities, the Glocal project was also represented by the Fusion Festival in Surrey (July 19-20, 2008), another Cultural Capitals of Canada initiative.

Computers in the tent were used to allow visitors to get creative with a web-cam. An additional computer provided access to the glocal website and blog so that visitors could see first hand how to download the software applications and contribute to the project.

Here are some more pictures from this culturally diverse summer blockbuster event…

Two ladies from a neighboring sponsor booth were quite keen to try out Glocal’s software applications.  Our applications were so enchanting, we lured many people working at other booths to see what Glocal was up to.  Every one we talked with was very impressed that our software applications were free for download.

One of those participants happened to be one of our immediate neighbors as she worked at the Chase booth next door.  You can see her co-workers in the background.  Just about every nearby participant decided to take their lunch break at our booth. 

Here is our volunteer Byron Peters launching our special Balloon Cam camera-kit. The Balloon Cam is made of 60 balloons and is lifting up a tiny digital video camera.  Byron has this special configuration on a leash so it cannot go far.  This Balloon Cam floated all across Holland Park and truly showed the demographic diversity of the Festival’s audience…from above!

Our summer student Erica Lapadat-Janzen (wearing the pink blouse) explains the Glocal project to some booth attendees while Byron Peters sets up his Balloon Cam for a re-launch.

 The re-launched Balloon Cam floats alongside the sky-train  bridge from Surrey Central to King George Station.

 Here, a family is enjoying learning more about the Glocal project and playing with our Motion Sequence Application on the main presentation monitor.  Yes, that little girl has her eyes closed but that was because she blinked.  It had nothing to do with our application (honest!).

Ready! Aim! Fire!  The boy in this family of booth participants treats our applications as if it were some sort of video game. This might be due to the success of our applications being as fun and engaging as any commercial entertainment system.  If it was not for the reflective glare off the screen, we would show you what we mean.

We would have had 10 times the amount of expected booth traffic if it was not for the fact that our booth was behind this fire-track for most of Saturday afternoon…sigh!  Audience members made diagonal bee-lines between main stages without seeing our booth along the way… double sigh!  Having said that, just about everyone who managed to find out hidden booth, was very enthusiastic about the project and took home our promotional handbill.

This particular festival had the largest Police presence per-capita that we had ever seen!  As you can see from the above picture, the Police had their own mobile prison-sized paddywagon (the one next to the white van)! We would have also taken a photo of the Police crew themselves since they had their own massive BBQ to the left of this wagon (behind our monitor) but we were too afraid to point anything at them…even a harmless camera!

This is what happens to a casual viewer after they have played with our Software Applications…heheheh!  Just kidding.  At least our Applications do not stunt your growth after prolonged usage.  There were many stilt-walkers going for a casual stroll throughout Holland Park for this ceremonious occasion.

You might need to zoom in to see the details of this photo but there were quite a few people doing historical re-enactments that were depicting classic Surrey events. We were quite amazed how interactive their monologues were and they seemed to remain immersed in their role-playing act for quite some time…now, imagine the interactive possibilities if  Glocal also wore period-era attire!  

The above image is an example of a participants’ response to exploring colour and motion using the Motion Sequence Application (MSA).

Hello Glocal Blog Readers!

Glocal just held a week-long intensive Digital Summer Camp that was hosted by both Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology and the Surrey Art Gallery.

22 Youth from Surrey were selected to take part in this free digital summer camp from July 14-18, 2008.

 Each day from the camp had different themes:

Day One – Students (such as Sarah Lae whose photo is pictured above) learned about the details behind Glocal’s various open source software toolkits.

Day Two – Students were then given guided workshops using the user-friendly computer programming language, Processing.

Day Three – Arduino camera hacking with the help of guest artist,  Daniel Jolliffe.  The cameras were hacked via labourious soldering sessions using Glocal’s custom-printed circuit boards.  Later in the day, the class went outside to neighboring Holland Park which was the site of Surrey’s Fusion Festival once the Summer Camp had finished.

Day Four – A special conceptual photography workshop was developed in order to educate the Students on ways they could stretch their imagination and make full use of the freshly hacked cameras and their newfound enthusiasm for Glocal’s Software Toolkits.  This included the 60-balloon cam made famous by one of Glocal’s committed volunteers, Byron Peters.  In the above picture, we have an example of conceptual photography by one of our Summer Camp participants, Stephen Golding.

Day Five – This final day at the Camp occurred at Glocal’s home-base, the Surrey Art Gallery.The Camp explored the surrounding Bear Creek Park region and tested out their own camera hacks and newly acquired software skills.

 It was out of these landmark sessions that such hardware devices as the Skatecam were researched and developed. This picture above shows Tyler Mast with his own Skatecam that he had built himself.  Other notable cams included the: Bikecam, Hamstercam and even the innovative Spray-Paint Cam (see below).

Please scroll down for more images from this camp…

 Shifting expectations, young girls made up the majority of youth selected for the camp through an on-line application process.

Digital Intern Dennis Rosenfeld worked with half of the participants of the Digital Summer Camp at a time to demonstrate how to “hack” open a digital camera. He then instructed them on how to intervene into the shutter system so that the wiring could be attached to the circuit boards which would allow the cameras to operate hands free.

Guest Artist Daniel Jolliffe worked with half of the participants of the Summer Camp at a time to teach basic electronic circuitry. Working in pairs, participants were shown how to use a soldering station and wire a circuit board from a circuit schematic diagram.

Mentoring Artist Jer Thorp provided a lecture on generative and regenerative art practices to students, providing an explanation of OpenSource software. ..  Jer then led the group through a basic introduction to the OpenSource programming software called Processing…. 

Students were able to design their own simple Processing program and to save images from their own program.

Participants were invited to use their creativity with the glocal software applications and to provide feedback to improve the functionality of the programs. Participants contributed over 4700 images to the glocal project during the Digital Summer Camp week, many of which provided enlightening insight into the capability of the software and the potential for an amazing exhibit in September 2008. The following image utilized the Multiple Exposure Application.

 The Digital Summer Camp finished with a participant project that utilized the skills acquired during the camp. The objective was to provide a series of photographs that utilized innovative photography. Initially, participants brainstormed possible ideas for their projects, which the glocal team will use to develop educational toolkits for educators. The following image represents one participant’s idea of innovative photography.

Canada Day

This is one of my favourite images from Canada Day. These beautiful Persian girls came into the tent and quite naturally made stunning images.

To view more Canada Day images, check out the new posts on our flickr pool.