DIGIARTE 2007, Florence Italy, May 11th thru 26th

Today, May 11th, "Camera Toss" makes it's third appearance in a public exhibition setting. DIGIARTE 2007, the 4th installment of this annual group exhibition opens at the Plasma Club in Florence, Italy (see the profile on exibart.com). I was invited by the curator/director Lorenzo "LOGU" Guasti to contribute a few prints to the Digiarte permanent collection. There are several photographers and many digital/video/animation artists in this show, additionally many guest speaker/topic engagements and activities are scheduled during the show through May 26th (see digiarte.info for schedule and details).

Exhibition Details:



DIGIARTE IV (2007 Edition) - State of the Art
Press Release (Italian, PDF)

May 11th - May 26th 2007
Plasma Club, Florence, Italy
Piazza Francesco Ferrucci 1r (50126)
+39 0550516926 (info), +39 0550516927 (fax)
info@virtualplasma.it
www.virtualplasma.it
MapQuest

Curated by: Lorenzo "LOGU" Guasti
Press Contact: press[at]digiarte.info

Full list of contributing artists to DIGIARTE 2007: Caterina Pecchioli, Influx, Ciboideale, Marco Cardini, Federico Bucalossi, Claudio Bozzatello, Paolo Carta, and photography by LostItaly, Maggie KS, Sébastien Pérez-Duarte, and Ryan Gallagher - Camera Toss.


Of the photography included, three are also flickr users: Sébastien Pérez-Duarte, Maggie KS, and myself (Ryan Gallagher).

Sébastien is known for his mathematically inspired digital transformations and panoramic projections...


Curved church, hyperbolic by Sébastien Pérez-Duarte

Maggie for many things, but particularly her compelling self portraiture...


mix tape by Maggie KS

And myself, of course, for exploring the edges of kinetic motion photography with "Camera Tossing"...


Sheets and Strikes No. 51 by Ryan Gallagher

The other exhibiting artists have some really interesting work too, so be sure to dig those links rather deeply that I posted. Much of it is viewable online.

A twist I wasn't expecting when I signed on to this show... in line with the theme of digital art, this will be the first exhibition of any of my photographs in an entirely digital world! Digiarte launched an extension of the exhibition in the popular "meta-verse", Second Life. Here's some previews of the virtual exhibitions:



So if you are in Florenza, be sure to check it out! I sure wish I was there! If by some miracle I can coax Second Life into running on this slowish laptop, perhaps I'll stop by the virtual world version of the opening. ;-)

Camera Toss on Die Zeit

Camera Toss on Die Zeit (www.zeit.de), originally uploaded by clickykbd.

Last week (4-26-2007) Die Zeit published a 13 page online gallery and article on the subject of Camera Tossing. They spoke to many and included a diverse range of photos from the community.

Interesting side story to this publication... Die Zeit is a respectable German news outlet, comparable to America's "New York Times". They had actually been interested in the subject of Camera Tossing a while back when I had the exhibition in Hamburg last year. A reporter came to the opening I had a chance to speak with her in person. She loved the subject... but I later learned that no story was going to be published because "Die Zeit" had backed away from the topic... deciding that it was "too trendy" for their audience. I admit it was being parleyed into a very trendy subject... but most of that was the fault of the German media itself, especially programs such as Polylux. heh.

A year later, they are back, and have published this piece. Perhaps avoiding "trends" simply means consciously choosing not to discuss topics while everyone else is doing so too. I sometimes avoid going to certain movies for the same reason... no matter how much I end up enjoying it when I finally do see them.

Anyone who knows me in person, knows i'm one of the LEAST trendy individuals you'll likely ever meet, so I found the irony quite amusing.

Camera Toss of a Camera Toss

Camera Toss of a Camera Toss, originally uploaded by jon62690.

Flickr photographer Jonathan Vo has begun exploring recursion in camera toss. A few others have posted examples previously, and I myself had been planning on playing with this concept in other ways. So a good time to blog it! Here, an example of a camera toss using a computer screen as the subject, recently posted to the group discussion on that particular sub-genre, where the image on the screen was... yup, a previous camera toss!

Being a bit of a lover of math and geometry, I find recursion delicious.

Jonathan, although fairly new to the online community, has gotten into camera tossing enough to set up his own blog/gallery for them. Check them out. He's also been one of the more active online contributors to the Camera Toss Live Community Gallery currently being projected in Command-Z at the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles since it opened last month. FYI, the show closes May 26th, which is also the last chance to contribute your own.

In the forums, a new member asks the following about TV style camera tosses:

how do you do these??? No flash, dark, only TV on? Computers could work well too right?

I replied with a somewhat technical explaination:

Yes, pretty much. I assume you are already aware that the cameras are being thrown with (sometimes rapid) rotation while it is taking the pictures too? But yes, any cathode ray tube type device, which relies on scanning lines to the screen very rapidly, such as a TV or computer monitor, produces this multiple image pattern when the camera moves alot during the photograph. There is a delay between each pass of the scanning, be it progressive scanning or interlaced, and that delay is long enough for a gap or "shift" of each recording of that image in the photograph.

You'll find some displays behave differently however, such as a laptop LCD, which doesn't rely on scanning at all... and instead allows you to get smooth blurs. Each screen type has been used by different photographers of this group to achieve intentional effects made possible by those distinct properties of the screen.

(sorry, probably more technical detail than you asked for) ;-)

I could go into even more detail about refresh rates and shutter sync rates etc etc, but you can learn most of that by googling 'photographing televisions'

Camera Toss Community Gallery - RSS Feed

Many contributors and followers of the Live Community Gallery currently on display at the Torrance Art Museum have requested a way to keep up with new submissions. The Contact Sheet is a great way to browse all submissions. But what this project really needed was an Syndicated Feed, which it no has!

Subscribe in a reader

This feed contains incoming submissions to the exhibited gallery, as I activate them.

If you've been wanting to share your camera tosses now is the time! Grab your flickr account and push some camera toss photographs to the submissions interface via my Flickr API application. I announce most new features to this project here, but if you are really interested stop by in our flickr community forums.

Camera Toss Community Gallery (Contact Sheet Mode)

Camera Toss Community Gallery (Contact Sheet Mode), originally uploaded by clickykbd.

The installation slideshow on exhibit at the Torrance Art Museum now has a new way to navigate it!

Hello browsable Contact Sheet Mode!

A Growing Installation...

The community driven Camera Toss installation at the Torrance Art Museum is only a few days old but already contains over 450 submissions!

The Web Version makes a great screen-saver or active desktop background. I projected it in Austin at a friend's birthday party the same day as the opening and it generated a fair amount of discussion. It will remain active and accepting submissions for until at least the end of the show (May 26th).

Here's a few recent slides generated from submissions:







Also note, I've fixed a couple bugs lately with the code. If you were having problems viewing the installation with IE7 it should be fixed now. If you were one of the handful experiencing submission problems I fixed that issue too. Keep them coming! Great contributions so far!

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:







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...


Searching for your camera tosses to submit:


Viewing your active photos (after moderator approval):


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). ;-)

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...



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.

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...






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.

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.



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.



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...