Mindmeister allows me to give editing rights to people so if you can help me in any way, contact me and I’ll let you through the window.

As discussed on the About and App pages, that imag(in)ing involves building a window that pulls in the distributed images and fragments from across the Live Web  between now and 2012. That App is a visual practice. This is a window and a distributed image:



Similarly, my presence as collector is a visual practice.

But I want to go further. I want to imag(in)e off network. I want to photograph in a way that cannot be seen through that window, that cannot be part of the power-full governmental relations set in motion by network protocols.

This is not simply an analogue-digital divide. The issue is more fundamental. It is about what image, media, texts and practices are network-enabled/ready/dependent and which are not. Networked fragments are distributed – they can exist in multiple places even simultaneously. The same photograph – not a copy, the same digital code –  can exist on a Facebook page, Flickr, TwitPic and a hard drive at home simultaneously. Networked fragments are fluid. That code image can be streamed, embedded and mashed-up with other code. It can be mosaic and montage ¹ as part of a constellation of images, which in the case of this Project are arguably dialectical.

Their existence as digital is important in that it enables that position as code which facilitates that miscellaneousness ² and fluidity but it is their existence as network fragments – with all the power implications of that position – that is crucial. It is the ways in which new power/knowledge relations are set in motion by their existence as miscellaneous, fluid images across networks that is the focus.

Any practice that seeks to step outside those relations must step outside the network, not just the digital.

Kodachrome

Kodachrome has an iconic position within photography. The chosen film of the first generation of colour street photographers like Joel Meyerowitz and of course William Eggleston, Kodachrome has a particular contrast and saturation that, like the secret ingredient in Coke, is jealously guarded. Kodachrome, unlike other colour slide films requires special processing by Kodak labs. Part alchemy, part myth, when Kodak announced that it was stopping making Kodachrome on June 22 2009 it did so as though saying goodbye to an old friend:

“Kodak Retires KODACHROME Film; Celebrates Life of Oldest Film Icon in its Portfolio. [...]

“KODACHROME Film is an iconic product and a testament to Kodak’s long and continuing leadership in imaging technology,” said Mary Jane Hellyar, President of Kodak’s Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group. ” It was certainly a difficult decision to retire it, given its rich history. [...]

Among the well-known professional photographers who used KODACHROME Film is Steve McCurry, whose picture of a young Afghan girl captured the hearts of millions of people around the world as she peered hauntingly from the cover of National Geographic Magazine in 1985.

As part of a tribute to KODACHROME Film, Kodak will donate the last rolls of the film to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, which houses the world’s largest collection of cameras and related artifacts. McCurry will shoot one of those last rolls and the images will be donated to Eastman House.

“The early part of my career was dominated by KODACHROME Film, and I reached for that film to shoot some of my most memorable images,” said McCurry.[...]

For all of its magic, KODACHROME is a complex film to manufacture and an even more complex film to process. There is only one remaining photofinishing lab in the world – Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas – that processes KODACHROME Film, precisely because of the difficulty of processing. This lack of widespread processing availability, as well as the features of newer films introduced by Kodak over the years, has accelerated the decline of demand for KODACHROME Film.

During its run, KODACHROME Film filled a special niche in the annals of the imaging world. It was used to capture some of the best-known photographs in history, while also being the film of choice for family slide shows of the Baby Boom generation.

To celebrate the film’s storied history, Kodak has created a gallery of iconic images, including the Afghan girl and other McCurry photos, as well as others from professional photographers Eric Meola and Peter Guttman on its website:www.kodak.com/go/kodachrometribute. Special podcasts featuring McCurry and Guttman will also be featured on the website.

Kodak estimates that current supplies of KODACHROME Film will last until early this fall at the current sales pace. Dwayne’s Photo has indicated it will continue to offer processing for the film through 2010. Current KODACHROME Film users are encouraged to try other KODAK Films, such as KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME E100G and EKTAR 100 Film. These films both feature extremely fine grain.” ³

Here the spin of pushing photographers towards other products is the positioning of this film and the company as at the heart of photography, photographic and cultural history as well as a particular scopic regime.

Kodachrome is ‘film’ of course, analogue. But more than that, a Kodachrome slide is an object not merely because of its physical but also because of its discursive presence. It has  aparticular position within photographic and visual discourse but also within real spaces and places. A Kodachrome, whether in a family shoebox or the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film is off-Net. It cannot be embedded, mashed-up or even linked-to ⁴.

To imag(in)e with Kodachrome is similarly to take a particular off-Net stand. Kodachromes are not deleted or overwritten, they can be destroyed but not reshot. Unlike a RAW file, it cannot be adjusted later for exposure or colour balance. Their histogram is frozen at the second of exposure and unless it is scanned or printed, that histogram remains inextricably tied to the object. The photographer’s decisions are final, inscribed in the object as definitively as geolocation is encode in an iPhone photograph.

And now, with Kodak having ceased production and its last remaining European lab in Switzerland stopping processing at the end of 2010, ‘Kodachrome’ takes on a new dimension, time. To shoot one of the rolls you have in the fridge is to use a limited resource. But the clock is ticking and not to do so is to lose an opportunity for imag(in)ing that is set to run out.  ’2012′ will end. The event will happen and then their will be… ‘legacy’. ‘Kodachrome’ will end. It will become memory, myth with its objects as well as the image as legacy.

The Leica

If Kodachrome is the medium that defines a particular 35mm scopic regime, then the Leica is the technology. From Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank through to the street photographers of the 70s and on until large-format became the new practice, the Leica has been an icon and even a practice.

To use one, particularly the classic M2 and M3 models, was to engage in a particular practice and with a particular discourse of photography and seeing. The rangefinder’s bright line within the viewfinder, allowing the photographer to see what was outside the frame; the lack of light meter forcing an almost instinctual feeling for light and time as well as the weight of history combine to create a particular practice.

It is not the lightness and flexibility that makes the Leica different. As this Project is exploring, the mobile phone camera is lighter, more flexible and more ‘always on’. Like Kodachrome, the Leica is out-of-the-loop. Of course it is branded – arguably more heavily engaged with global brands and objectification than any other camera ⁵. Of course it works on a different time – 35mm film require development (which in the case of Kodachrome can be a few weeks). But where the 35mm Leica ⁶ is off-Net is that like Kodachrome it resists connection. It cannot ‘talk to’ other technologies or media. It cannot connect to networks or protocols.  It may be a conversation piece but it cannot be part of a conversation.

Again it is not just that the Leica is analogue. This would have been important before the issue became not one of digital but one of network. Arguably an ‘offline’ digital camera or a different 35mm camera can assume a position of resistance to protocol and network power. But what these alternative technologies cannot add is the ideology of the Leica. To haev images ‘taken on an M2′ is to add those images to a history of imag(in)ing and seeing with power full implications. For this Project’s contributions to the imag(in)ing of 2012 to carry the label ‘taken with a Leica’ change the way of reading and, from my perspective, the way of seeing.

Photo imag(in)ing off-Net

I have 59 rolls of the last batch of Kodachrome. I will use these to take pictures of ‘2012′. Between October 2009 and October 2010. These fragments form part of this project but they will remain off-Net. They will be stored in archival slide boxes. They will not be scanned, printed or added to any Network. What will appear on the Net will be their shadows.

As each film is returned from the Kodak lab in Switzerland I will add their ’shadows’ to the distributed web on Flickr. I will create a text image that shadows each photograph. These word images (with the deliberate connotations of imagist and objectvist poetry as well as haiku and renga)  will join the network of scopic fragments visualising and imag(in)ing 2012.

“If the sociology I propose differs in any significant way from the other sociologies of the past and of the present, it is above all in that it continually turns back onto itself the scientific weapons it produces.” ¹

Leaving aside the problematic word ’scientific’, this claim is also of course a challenge to the community or may be even ‘field’. It certainly goes to the heart of the problem of  ’practice-based’ research.

If this Project is to be critical and also avoid the trap of a simple partnership of practice and thesis, then the weapons  of ‘dialectical images’ and ’scopic regime’ must run through the critique of the images and imag(in)ing practices. But they must also run therough the App I build and the process of building it.

I may be a collector of rags ‘n refuse, the scopic fragments that construct and position ‘2012′ but I am also a visualiser and my App and its forerunner (this site) are part of that regime and should be open to dialectical critique.

My weapons are far from scientific in a Bourdieu or an Althusserian sense but they are focused out towards the mobile web/edge of London under investigation. And it is on that web and at the edge that my practice (photographic and academic) is located. I cannot avoid their eye.

Couldry argues that we need both concepts in order to be able to understand digital storytelling (although he does not really explore that concept or the differences between a ‘Twitter’ Renga-style story of fragments and a Hollywood-narrative on YouTube).

He argues that ‘mediatization’, a ‘linear logic’ of media where everything becomes part of a media space and practice is useful in order to be able to address standardization and access (an issue that could be looked at in terms of Protocol ¹. ‘Mediation’ on the other hand offers a way of exploring how:

“the availability of digital storytelling forms enable enduring habits of exchange, archiving, commentary and reinterpretation” (p388)

as well as issues of institutional embedding.

Couldry notes issues of space in terms of Lefebvre’s ideas of how social relations become ‘inscribed’ in and transform social space as well as Wuthnow’s account of ‘the book’ as  historically articulated through different spaces ².

He notes the way in which mobile media may complicate these issues still further but does not address mobile reading or writing in any depth.

The storytelling he seems to be addressing is extended narratives rather than lifestreaming, relational fragments. Arguably the reading and writing (with words and pictures) carried out on mobiles and in/through/across mobile space must be seen in different terms.

Individual images or text-stories have their own semiotic and narrative forms (however condensed) but they also exist in relation to all the others in the Set, stream, or conversation.

The concept of  ’mediation’ , with its emphasis on flow, dialectics and relationships may offer a way of mapping those texts and textual practices but any analysis must shift from the story-text to the space between the stories, where the story fragments collide and montage creating the sort of dialectical images that Benjamin was looking for.

“If you live near an Olympic development – do you see it as a bonus or a curse? Will it give companies across the country opportunities to be part of the building programme and and [sic] create long term local jobs… or will its legacy be no more than a than a summer of sport…”

Once again the hook is around ‘legacy’ and myth/reality but this is being positioned here in terms of a local view. Here the question is being aimed at those on the edge of the developments, those who can see that ‘development’ and place that picture alongside their local experience.

Leaving aside a call-in show’s desire to create a debate, the call is based on those local viewers having a particular perspective. Those quite literally around 2012 – arguably those kept outside (literally by the Fence as well as discursively) – are positioned opposite the woman from the inside.

The London2012 site has a video launching the new exhibition at City Hall.

The site does not allow its videos to be embedded elsewhere on the Net so this is a screengrab. The Blog entry reads:

“The exhibition is free and is on for three weeks. It includes a new interactive simulator that allows visitors to navigate their way around a computer-generated version of the Olympic Park. There are also models of the Park and major venues such as the Olympic Stadium and Velodrome.
Come down to City Hall to take a look!”

The video features Mayor Boris Johnson talking to schoolchildren, one of whom asks him which is his favourite venue, a question he then asks them.

With a little over 1,000 days to go before the event, 2012 is being articulated around the twin poles of ‘legacy’ and ‘architecture’. Johnson says:

“We’ve got to get the message across to everyone in london that the Olympics are a great thing, aren’t they? Do you think they’re  a great thing or not?… Yeh that’s the spirit. It’s a massive investment that will help to give jobs and growth in areas of London that need it.”

While the narrator from the ODA says:

“Come and see what London 2012 is all about.”

While the ODA  uses a visual discourse of Great-Exhibition-like spectacle and wonder, it positions that in terms of ‘discovery’, hailing the viewer into a phantasmagoria, but one that reveals a truth.

Johnson similarly imag(in)es a ‘wonder’ but one underpinned by economic and political legacy.

What both do is locate those discourses around visualisations, models, ‘interactive fly-throughs’ and images – a power-full scopic imag(in)ing.

“PhonoCam -Record an ambient image.
PhonoCam is a camera application which records sounds from the environment together with a photograph.It records audio for a set amount of time (between 2 seconds to unlimited) until the photograph is captured. After copying files to iTunes via Wi-Fi, images are displayed as album cover artwork and can be browsed together with sounds using iTunes CoverFlow.”

Phonography can be addressed as a ‘way of seeing’, with sound providing the images or the s(t)imulation that generates the images. Lothar Baumgarten’s Seven Sounds/Seven Circles ‘performed/displayed’ at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in April/June 2009 features what he calls ‘phonic images’ ¹ where because of the binaural recording, “with headphones especially, one will experience an unusually rich life-lied sound panorama” ².

This use of visual language to position sound can be seen as part of the struggle between scopic and sonic regimes or perhaps more productively as an emerging hybrid ‘way of experiencing’ partly enabled by portable media technologies.

The PhonoCam app can be seen as part of the same emergence but in terms of production. This is not video nor stills nor even phonography, it is a mobilised (in)decisive moment practicesomewhere in the spaces between. It is also worth noting that the sound precedes the image taking. It leads up sonically to a scopic climax.

As a sidenote, when I checked Baumgarten’s Book/CD on Amazon, the site asked me to help classify the work:

“Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product. Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite [sic] items.”

I have tagged this fragment but only within the context of this project. Folksonomy always has the problem of multiple language practices and nowhere more than when faced with multiple media-language practices.

Clearly one reason is to embrace but also explore the rhetoric of ‘open source’ and networked, distributed content. By putting my fragments of work and drafts of ‘chapters’ on the Networks and allowing comments, subscriptions and embedding, I am exploring the wisdom of crowds – the vision of group writing being ’smarter’ than any one monkey with a typewriter.

But by building this Project in a Blog rather than on a wiki, by allowing commenting within structures I have determined, I retain a form of authorship – a vision maybe –  and build the windows through which the Olympic Arcades can be seen.

A second reason for working through this site/space is that by doing so I am admitting my own position within the network relations under analysis. I am not outside the Net, the Net discourse nor its power relations. Even if I was not developing the Project online I would still be part of those relations but by deliberately working in space built through XML, HTTP and TCPIP I am foregrounding my relationship to those protocols ¹.

A third reason for developing this ‘practice-based PhD’ here (wherever that is) is so I can explore and even discover what that ‘practice’ is as I collect fragments and images. The mindmaps that form some of the fragments, the screengrabs filed in multiple miscellaneous categories ² and the audio and Kodachrome explorations are fragments not just of content or reportage but of practice. By allowing them to be ‘filed’ as they are found means they can exist as practice as well as text and so allow me to unpick my own practice, the practice part of Birkbeck’s brief and the wider issue of networked media practice.

Rather, this convolute will seek to map these spaces, relations and practices as sites of struggle and seeing, open to exploitation ¹. Mobile seeing and being seen as well as ‘2012′ and the ‘Edge of London’ are network phenomena and this convolute looks for ways of intervening in those relations.

The new mobile, networked photographic production and consumption practices must be looked at within that wider discursive frame.

Furthermore, ‘2012′ is being imag(in)ed through historically located visual practices and discourses. This convolute seeks to map those practices and discourses as they overlap and interweave.