Blind Cameras

 

I just came across Paragraphica, an interesting project by Bjørn Karmann. It is a camera that uses location data and AI to visualize a “photo” of a specific place and moment. The viewfinder displays a real-time description of your current location, and by pressing the trigger, the camera will create a photographic representation of that description.

It reminded me of two similar new media art projects from past, that I also displayed in a couple of exhibitions I curated (in 2010 and 2012).

The first one is Blinks & Buttons by Sascha Pohflepp, a camera that has no lens. It tracks the exact time that the button is pushed, and then goes out and searches for another image taken at that exact time. Once the camera finds one, it displays the image in the LCD located on the back.

The second one is Matt Richardson‘s Descriptive Camera, a device that only outputs the metadata about the content and not the content itself.

update 29/04/24: Kelin Carolyn Zhang and Ryan Mather designed the Poetry Camera, an open source technology that generates a poem based on a photo.

Dear Jennifer

dullart

Constant DullaartJennifer_in_Paradise, 2013. Re-distributed digital image, encrypted message.

“An image taken by John Knoll of his (at that time) soon to be wife, Jennifer. Together with his brother Thomas, John is know for developing Photoshop. Digitized by Kodak in 1987, it is the first known image to have been manipulated using the program. The image is newly distributed online, containing a steganographically encrypted payload.”

See also: A letter to Jennifer Knoll

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