Similar to the work of Francis Galton, Nancy Burson generates mixed portraits on the computer.

Below is “Big Brother (Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Hitler, Khomeini, 1983″.

Nancy Burson’s pictures are products of that mentality. And they show it: they show what sort of world will result from that mentality: a world of chimaeras.

The heart desires something: for example, an androgynous human being, or an accomplished Big Brother, or a perfect female beauty. Such a desire may be called a ‹program.› In order to realize such a program in the form of an image, various available photographs should be chosen. [...in this case] the photos of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao and Khomeini. [...] Each of these photos is to be calculated: dissected into very small squares called ‹pixels.› These calculations are to be fed into a computer, which is then instructed to compute the desired image from the pixels according to the program called ‹desire.› The result will be Burson’s photos of chimaeras.

Link: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/big-brother/

Time for an update on final project. After my amazing find of Eye-Fi Explore I decided not to use it due to price and shipping. Plus my original idea proved to be stronger than live lifelogging.

My original idea was to experiment with a mirror and hide a web cam behind it. I wanted to capture snapshots of the people who looked into the mirror and then composite them on top of each other to create a time based image. This would represent the average user of the public space, similar to the work of Francis Galton.

Francis Galton worked with the process of composite photography to verify and illustrate his study of heredity. This involved exposing an arbitrary number of individual portraits of chosen groups of people on a photographic plate, with the respective exposure time for each image made in relation to the number of used portraits. The overlapping caused the subjects’ individual physiognomic qualities to vanish and accentuated common characteristics of the chosen group.

Francis Galton, Composite-Fotografie

The composite process resulted in producing a slightly blurred image, which, as Galton wrote, «portrayed no specific type of person, but rather an imaginary figure endowed with the average characteristics of a specific group of people. [...] [This] represents the portrait of a type and not of an individual.» Galton’s process was founded on the physiognomic idea that a person’s character and potential could be established through appearance alone. The example shown here – the synthesis of the ‹epitomic Jew,› and the intensification of an archive to a single image – demonstrates the most dangerous effects that combining eugenics with composite photography produces.

Link: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/composite-fotografie/

I am really keen on composite photography because of the element of time and the relationship it has with portraiture from the work developed by Galton. I had come across his work whilst researching for my recent paper but did not find any relevance to my work at the time. I am keen to find other projects that use a similar process. Since 1877 technologies have developed rapidly therefore it is not going to be surprising to find computer generated composite imagery. This is something i aim to achieve with the use of a web cam.

Oh wow. I am blown away. First your phone went wireless, then your laptop, now finally, your camera!

Eye-fi is a magical orange SD memory card that will not only store 2GB - 4GB worth of pictures, it’ll upload them to your computer (All Eye-Fis), and to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa (or 14 others) (Eye-Fi Explore and Eye-Fi Share), even geo-tag them so you can see exactly where in the world you took the photo (Eye-Fi Explore) wirelessly, invisibly, automatically!

It looks like a normal memory card and works with nearly any camera that takes SD memory. There are no antennas, no protrusions, no subscription fees, and no cables. You set up the card once with the included USB card reader, choose a photo sharing service of your choice then slip the card in your camera.

From then on, you never have to touch anything. Just take photos. Whenever your camera is near the wireless network you selected and idle, Eye-fi will upload all your photos (JPEGs only) to your computer and/or online photo sharing service.

This is absolutely amazing! The possibilities are endless! I am thinking real time life logging which is documented on a website, an archive and then displayed in a public space for people to view. I love the location based picture taking. It links in so well with the new iphoto software. It’s currently shipping in America and quite tricky to get in the UK but i am willing to pay the postage.

I just saw this on Jason’s blog and thought I would have a go too. It’s a tag cloud of my dissertation, no surprise to see photographs as the biggest word!

Link: http://photojojo.com/content/diy/solar-powered-gps-flickr-camera-bike/

I just found something uber cool!! An amazing picture taking, geotagging, solar-powered bicycle!

It has a built-in camera mounted on the handlebars that takes pictures as you ride, then automatically geotags and uploads them to its very own Flickr stream. All in real time! WOW!

This is very similar to what i originally wanted to do with my project. I am really interested in lifelogging and the idea of it all in real time excites me!! I would love to see a nifty little camera/gadget attached to me like the bike which tags me and tracks me all in real time! You could then imagine a display maybe back at uni or  online, like an archive of my days.

Link: http://www.cameroid.com/

I have been researching around the photo booth and technologies/websites that offer platforms to capture portraits. I am interested particularly in the snapshot and identity. Cameroid is like the mac photo booth application but an online version. It offers various different effects and backdrops to spice up your snap! It offers anyone with a web cam to take snaps from their browser. The snaps then get added to the album like a flickr set.

Pierre Fraenkel specialises in the public presentation of found photos, blown up to varying degrees of massiveness. As he describes this particular project,

Here are some pics of my project from the UnBranded show which turned out to be a great success. As for those who wanted to know if FreeTrade Boutique would be running again, it is unlikely but if there was enough demand i may consider