Internets

Thursday, April 9th, 2009 - Nicholas Calcott

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Nicholas Calcott

So is the internet – the internet of objects, designs, creativity, cataloguing and chronicling – merely a modern day cast court or print room? All ‘work’ is reduced and resized, hung on the same gallery walls and given the same passing glance, the glancing perusal of the perpetually scrolling museum. Just as the dense clusters of imagery that marked early museums contrasted strongly with the more open, expansive, curated galleries that subsequently evolved, the internet of objects appears increasingly at odds with the internet of connectivity and expanded human horizons. How will we deal with the growing distinction between cabinets within rooms within corridors within buildings within streets within cities?

-From Things Magazine of March 11th, 2009

Photo In An Internet Age

Monday, June 9th, 2008 - Nicholas Calcott

Over at Robert Wright’s blog, there’s an interesting discussion going on in the comments about the limitations of viewing photography on a screen:

…with respect to curation, or editing… the problem is deeper than that, the selections are depicted against a backdrop with no context. This goes to digital imagining in general, the time it takes to make work has shortened dramatically, for those that choose those tools. I have no idea how Patrick Smith [see here] works, but insert any name vs. any other established photographer, the technology has a way of bootstrapping artists into comparisons that should never get made. Just because it looks similar does not mean it has similar merit, for example, what else has this person done, for how long, in what situations? etc. The fact that I can display 20 years of work on my website in some ways is a bad thing because now it lives there with work done 20 minutes ago. The perspective of time is removed.