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Self-Portraitr, a Rant.
Daily Ink
Stored in: In Situ
Posted On: July 18 2006
By: Bryan Partington
Photo © portseye
There was a little bit of hubub and foofarah last week regarding a little project project called 'Self-Portraitr' at the Pace/MacGill gallery.
From the project's hypocritically right-click protected press release:
The exhibition will not only rely on the Flickr community for content, but will also depend upon the activity of the site's users for the organization and editing of what is anticipated to be thousands of images from the age-old genre of self-portraiture... each image posted on Flickr and "tagged" as a self-portrait will automatically be filtered and directed into the exhibition... The mining and showcasing of this material strives to engage and expand a rapidly growing virtual arts community.
Forgetting the legalities of Self-Portraitr's consentless re-use of copyright Flickr imagery, since it is almost certainly legal, I'd like to instead challenge the project's artistic merit.
The Flickr community remains almost entirely disengaged from the project, which has certainly not 'expanded a rapidly growing visual arts community'. Self-Portraitr might 'mine' and 'showcase' flickr imagery, but it does so no better than flickr itself, so what's the point?
If the point is to pick out an interesting tag and watch how gallery goers sculpt it using the crudest of popularity ranking systems, then perhaps the exhibition is a success. If the point is to stir debate amongst the flickr community about whether they are being shafted by some New York city Gallery, then perhaps the exhibition is a success... But if the idea is to "engage and expand a rapidly growing virtual arts community."?
Flickr is as much a social milieu as it is a photographic one, yet despite a supposed desire to "observe the online conversation", the Self-portraitr interface goes a long way in sheltering gallery goers from that conversation.
The only 'conversation' occurring here is within the gallery walls, as the most notable difference between the Self-Portraitr and the average Flickr interface is the lack of a keyboard. After all, we mustn't have gallery goers communing with the rabble - short of handing out the occasional purple star for effort.
For examples of successful online curation you can start with "The Mirror Project", created by Heather Champ before becoming Flickr's community manager. This project covers much of the same ground as Self-Portraitr while being more engaged, creative and inspiring. Jim Bumgardner's Phyllotaxy poster was built from submissions to the squared circle pool and it's creation involved a Creative Commons licensing campaign to get explicit, opt-in permission for photo use. The campaign spawned an interactive version of the poster, and the project was stronger for it.
I'm glad that the Pace/MacGill Gallery and the School of Visual Arts are self proclaimed "leading forces in the New York art world", because when it comes to addressing the social web they are out of touch and behind the curve.
1 comments on this Ink
On November 30, 2006, Unknown said ...
What kind of idea is that?
Don't tell me they didn't do any filtering?
Just the tag?
I can just imagine what that show looked like.
&shakes her head, thinking of some images she posted some months back, tagged self portrait - ppuuuuhhh :)*
Otherwise, in In Situ:
- Previously: The Great Cluetrain Robbery
- Next: Would You join a Mob?
Utata Ink is a daily publication edited by Bryan Partington (striatic). Photos used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and obtained via the flickr API unless otherwise noted. To make a contribution to Ink, please visit Ink Me.
