Taking a photo means making a memory. Choosing a moment in time and
framing a situation. Archiving it or making it public. Either way, we
create a visual item that we have an emotional attachment to through our
memory. Photos help us to remember moments in our past. Often they even
become a memory in their own right.
For many, making their moments public through services like Flickr is already part the process of
photography itself, creating archives which contain a vast collection of
visual fragments of individual lives.
Buttons takes on this notion of the camera as a networked object.
It is a camera that will capture a
moment at the press of a button.
However, unlike a conventional analog or digital camera, this one
doesn't have any optical parts. It allows you to capture your moment but
in doing so, it effectively seperates it from the subject. Instead, as
you will memorize the moment, the camera memorizes only the time and
starts to continuously search on the net for other photos that have been
taken in the very same moment.
Essentially, it is a camera that - using a mobile communication device -
takes
other's photos. Photos that were created by someone who pressed a
button somewhere at the same time as its own button was pressed. Even
more so, it reduces the cameras to their networked
buttons in order to
create a link between two individuals.
After a few minutes or hours, depending on how soon someone else shares
their photo on the web, an image will appear on the screen.
In a way, it belongs
half to the person who had pressed the button and
still remembers that moment. Because of that connection, the photos are
never dismissed as random, no matter how enigmatic they may be.
To create a networked button and retrieve other individuals photos,
Buttons consequentially employs the technology which some cameras are
presently merging with - the mobile phone.
The object itself is made of laser-cut acrylic. The button was
deliberately chosen and taken from a Agfamatic 901 and is combined with
an electronic button underneath. This in turn is connected to a
SonyEricsson K750i which is running a custom software written in
Mobile Processing. For retrieving other's photos, the device connects
to the internet and contacts the same server as
Blinks. This
server's custom PHP-script will continously search Flickr for the
indicated moment while
Buttons regularily asks for results. As soon
as a photo of the moment has been shared on the web, it is
transmitted and displayed on the device's screen.
Watch the
VIDEO (
Hi /
Lo)
test