Between Blinks and Buttons (NOT the Blind Camera) – Sascha Pohflepp

www.blinksandbuttons.net

• designer and artist based in Berlin
• blogs for wmmna

Networked things

(Tim Hawkinson, Secret Sync) – every day objects turned into clocks by tiny alterations. Clocks are all synchronised. Eg: two hairs on a hairbrush.

It’s always people that communicate, not people and objects; objects and networks intermediate between individuals.

Of course: this exists already (the camera – one of the easiest intermediates to adapt.)

Three things that make cameras suitable for intermediating

1. Ubiquity: about 50% of the business population owns a phone with a camera in it. It’s becoming ubiquitous.
2. Metadata: starting with the date-back, stamping dates onto pictures (you could argue scrawling on polaroids is the same thing.)
   • Metadata is now invisible; it’s in the EXIF, so we don’t see it, but there’s this vast chunk of data attached to everything.
3. Way we distribute/experience these – Flickr acts as archives of experience filtered across so many axes of metadata.

The big connector is, of course, time: the camera is better a clock. Given how many pictures there are on Flickr, there are many for every second (about 8-10 at the moment)

When you take a photo, you share a connection with someone taking a photo at the same time. Not location, not topic – but you share time.

cf: Twittervision.

How do you tackle this in projects?

Blinks

• installation that shows the relatoinships between images over time
• in information visualisation, photos become icons – more like dots; you gain structure but you lose imagery
• solution: extend the visualisation into the space around it.
• table – “ray of time” runs vertically; your image is flat on the table, and a prism refracts the “ray of time” along with all the other images at the same time (which end up on the sides of the box, through the prism. it’s fab.)
• the video explains things really, really well.

What if you don’t have a camera on you?

Buttons

• Built a portable camera.
• Has a button, display, no lens.
• It turns the camera into a networked button/object – photography becomes a moment-oriented activity.
• Button comes from old Agfa camera – because it needs to feel right

Buttons are the part of the device that are sensors for the human will

• Photos are “never dismissed as random” – they half-belong to the person who pressed the button in the first place. they “cannot deny that, in a way, it’s their picture”
• often takes a while for the photo to appear on the phone.