Saturday, March 31, 2007

Command-Z Opens!

Installation Content (web version) (refreshes every 20 seconds)

This evening was the opening reception for the group show "Command-Z" (posted previously) at the Torrance Art Museum (City of Torrance, Los Angeles county). My installation content, a community driven rotating slideshow of exclusively camera toss photography contributed by the flickr community was activated last night and we had many submissions in short time. Here's a sample of the generated slides as they are seen in the museum projection:

Camera Tossing @ the Torrance Art Museum (by clickykbd)

Camera Tossing @ the Torrance Art Museum (by clickykbd)

Camera Tossing @ the Torrance Art Museum (by clickykbd)

The Submission Interface is up and accepting photos from the public (provided you have a flickr account, as it utilizes the Flickr Public API). Here are some screenshots of the process:

After Authenticating with Flickr...
Camera Tossing Live : Flickr API Submission Application (by clickykbd)

Searching for your camera tosses to submit:
Camera Tossing Live : Flickr API Submission Application (by clickykbd)

Viewing your active photos (after moderator approval):
Camera Tossing Live : Flickr API Submission Application (by clickykbd)

Should you submit, all rights are retained by the author of course, and you have complete control when to add, remove, edit your data in the installation. Here are some tips for submitting to this installation...

Submitting Tips:

Please try to only submit your favorite camera toss results... the gallery can't support all 11,000 camera tosses hosted on flickr! hehe

They must be true to the idea of a camera toss... no intense digital manipulations... no "sort of thrown" cheating. This is really about throwing cameras... and what you can do with that idea.

Use the preview button, and [demo] links for all your submitted photos!... I have tried very hard to make sure everyone's attribution is proper.... but the Flickr-API and your missing profile data may result in incomplete details. You can always fill out those fields with each photo you submit.

Bear in mind, as the moderator/curator of this one piece of the show... I may reject your submission, or just sit on it in pending status indefinitely. Please don't consider it a personal insult. Also It may take me 24 hours sometimes before your pending submission goes live (ocassionally I have a day job). ;-)

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Save The Date - Camera Toss at "Command-Z"



When: March 31st through May 26th
Where: Torrance Art Museum - Torrance, California (Los Angeles Area)

The some of the big news I had been hinting about. I'll be presenting Camera Toss, the concept, the community, and the artwork at the Torrance Art Museum (Los Angeles area) as part of the group show entitled "Command-Z". In the tradition of the Camera Toss concept, open and participatory, one element of the exhibition will be a community driven projected slideshow (which will also be viewable online), created and curated by myself. I'll be posting about how to participate very soon. There is a lot of very interesting digital photography and new media work in this show, I encourage everyone to check it out if they can.

Here's the invitation e-card...

Exhibition Invitation! (by clickykbd)

The official museum press release describes the show as follows...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Kristina Newhouse or Natalie Schoer
310-618-6340
torranceartmuseum@torrnet.com

COMMAND Z

Curated by:
Ted Fisher (New York)
Douglas McCulloh (Los Angeles)

On view: March 31 - May 26, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 31, 7 – 10 pm

Command Z—the Apple keyboard command for undo—presents work by artists exploring the leading edge of digital photography.

Works by: Kate Bingaman-Burt (Starkville, Mississippi); Rebeca Bollinger (San Francisco); Stéphane Degoutin, Marika Dermineur & Gwenola Wagon (Paris, France); Charles Fairbanks (Ann Arbor, MI); Ryan Gallagher (Austin, TX); Ken Gordon (New York); Martha Gorzycki (San Francisco); John Greyson (Toronto, Canada); Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar (San Francisco and New York); Noah Kalina (Brooklyn); Luke Lamborn (Provincetown, MA); leadingzeros (Tokyo, Japan); League of Imaginary Scientists (Los Angeles); Ahree Lee (San Francisco); Iris Lee (Brooklyn); Les LeVeque (New York); Michael David Murphy (San Francisco); Olde English (Brooklyn); Dane Picard (Los Angeles); Stuart Pound (London, Britain); Jacob Reed (Los Angeles); Hong-An Truong (Irvine); Jody Zellen (Los Angeles)

Photographic artists currently find themselves poised at a rare and remarkable moment—a revolutionary shift in basic technology and artistic possibility. There are two primary drivers of the digital revolution: extremely prolific photographic production and an intensifying circulation of these images on the web. In this situation, the systems of encountering the photographs become central, rather than the photographs themselves.

The artistic responses to the vast new digital image stream are memorable, captivating, and have the power to change your view of the world. For Command Z, examples are drawn from around the world: London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, Toronto, and other points on the grid. By drawing from such a diverse group, Command Z sets out to make mid-stream sense of the paradigm shift in photography.

Some 40 billion digital images were made in 2003, the year that digital camera sales surpassed those of conventional film-based devices. In 2004, the amount of photos produced rose to 94 billion, according to former Hewlett-Packard CEO, Carly Fiorina. Phone maker Nokia estimates that camera-phones alone will create 100 billion increasingly high resolution photographs in 2007. And Hewlett-Packard predicts that digital devices will capture 312 billion images in 2008. Whatever the exact figures, the unprecedented scale of imagemaking is clear. Meanwhile, the internet makes these images omnipresent and available. One example among many is the website, www.flickr.com. In February 2004, Flickr emerged as an online photo storage and sharing system. By November of 2005 the New York Times reported that photographs available on Flickr passed the billion-image mark. The site now adds more than a million photographs per day. The result for the new photographic artists is the rarest of situations—completely unexplored artistic territory. Rather than merely make images, digital artists now devise methods of gathering, sorting and encountering images. The results range from the mundane to the sublime, from the hilarious to the strangely profound. In all cases, this is a largely new art, made possible by the scale of the current image universe and enabled by the new tools for encountering it, reshaping it, and making sense of it.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

clickykbd's picks - issue 25

Noticed an upswing in both activity and quality of the photos being submitted to the photo pool lately. What better time than to post another best-of recent contributions (since issue 24).

Very soon there will be another venue for community members and the public to showcase their favorite camera tosses, more news on that shortly...

Toss050 (by Beer30) toss1 (by nck) chocolate. (by yummyseamonkies) Calm Waves (by jon62690) Ooky Kooky Camera Toss (by Valentinian)
130001 (by markr82) Flaming Prism (by jon62690) Camera Toss 2 (by ACPhoto2007) gold-bond-toss (by this_is_not_a_name) Spinning_Phone_07 (by Not_Just_Pixels)
Camera Spin (by icantshoot) Spin (by Embra) Another Toss of the Camera (by Baxter302) What a drift (by tossthecam) Flying Camera (by The Real Ferg)
lollipop (by IgniNyani) toss (by Miaitza) flying the aspidistra (by mappamundi) Vertabre (by IgniNyani)

Photo Credits:

All photos taken by users of the Camera Toss flickr community. Hover to see author attribution, click to follow to the image's original location on flickr.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Adobe® Acrobat®'s new look... Camera Toss

This announcement is long long overdue... the events transpired during a period when I was relatively inactive when it comes to updating this blog. But it was big news, and still is.

Many have perhaps wondered "Why throw cameras?"... well. One reason could be to influence the major players in the design and graphic arts world. Haha... well no one exactly set out to do that... most of us do it because it's fun... but that hasn't changed the result.

Adobe® Acrobat® 8.0 Professional Package Design

Back in mid 2006 the huge design firm, MetaDesign® contacted myself and a few other members of the Camera Toss community about the possibility of purchasing some images for a client's project involving brand/logo/package/interface designs. I knew enough to know they worked with some pretty huge clients, but the exact client was not disclosed during the course of the negotiations. Several months passed as they worked up presentations and mock-ups. The project almost fell through over a rather humorous (I think) technicality. When doing corporate logo design firms usually provide a spec-sheet that describes exactly how the logo should and shouldn't be presented in order to maintain brand integrity. It seems coming up with WORDS to describe the exact nature of a camera toss image is a rather perplexing task. But in the end the power of the photographs won out... and ADOBE SYSTEMS® (*jaw drop*) was satisfied! The product was released in Nov. of 2006, that is when I became aware of the client.

Camera Toss images were used as the base for the product design of the entire Acrobat® 8 Family! This included package design, user interface elements, splash screen, promotional medias, walk-throughs etc etc.

Adobe Acrobat 3D Version 8 Package Design Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional Edition Package Design Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard Edition Package Design Adobe Acrobat 8 Elements Package Design

In the end the images selected and purchased were a few taken by community member QuakkauQ (Jens Ludwig), and a couple others who I was not privy to. Congratulations Jens! And the fact they were considering several other sets from photographers in the community (myself included) indicates it really was the look of this technique that they were attracted to. So congratulations are in order for Camera Toss and ALL it's members... because without the numbers I'm sure it never would registered on the radar of a design firm such as MetaDesign®.

I've often been put on the spot by the press trying to define exactly what this is... art, photography, graphic-art, extreme-sports, horse-play. I really despise that. It is what it is... and I think those doing it put it in any and all of those categories depending. It has definitely made it's mark as commercial graphic art now, that is for sure. It is quite flattering actually, and having pioneered the public's awareness of this technique... I can't help but feel a little proud too. I mean think about it... the company that produces Photoshop thinks our photos... taken by some of the cheapest cameras out there... mostly produced in camera without Photoshop/editing... are cool enough to grace the design for one of their award winning products.

Stay tuned... more big news soon...