RYNSA: WORDS

I can’t decide if this Lego photography series (with gratitude to Make Magazine for the link) is really clever and insightful, or perhaps a little dismissive of history. Maybe all of the above? I don’t know.

The artist is a British guy named Mike Stimpson, and on his redbubble profile page he has published (and apparently adopted) this telling quote attributed to American ’street photographer’ Garry Winogrand:

“I photograph to see what something will look like photographed” 

Not to whine too much about it, but my initial response is annoyance. Admittedly, I’m a little sore on all these ironic ‘art projects’ that rely on retroactive repurposing of an original form. Didn’t Warhol kill that metaphor a few decades ago?  I mean, is this high art, or just more posturing witticism from my iconoclastic, millennial cohorts?

That being said, I appreciate Stimpson’s interest in so-called ‘macro lighting.’ He really did put quite a bit of effort into setting up and reproducing these tiny snippets of global culture. I admire the dedication to an aesthetic… even if that’s all that’s there.

The fine folks over at the University of Washington’s Master of Communication in Digital Media program (MCDM) are apparently putting together a documentary about “…how the media landscape is changing.” The filmmakers ask, “With the barriers to technology and distribution becoming nearly non-existent, how will traditional media compete with the masses who will produce work for free?”

Good question. I’m probably not the person to answer it. But I do admire any doc that tries to tackle the complex issues of consumer culture, digital technology, and amateur media. For one thing, nobody really agrees on what’s gonna happen. The technocrats see a bright, remediated future. But others see merely a recasting of characters in the same old movie. Reconciling these perspectives will be tough.

Important questions I would like to see addressed:

1. If the ‘masses’ simply imitate older, corrupt narratives from the mainstream culture, but do so through fancy new tools, can we really call it a ‘revolution?’
2. For that matter, can a technological revolution ever really precede a structural (ie, socio-political) revolution?
3. And what’s gonna happen to sci-fi if the dumb kid down the street shares equal footing with small-screen genius, Joss Whedon?  I mean, dude, come on!

Okay, so maybe that last one’s a bit of a straw man. But you get my point.

The full title of the upcoming doc is ‘Flip the Media: A Media (r)Evolution,’ and the trailer can be found on the MCDM website. Interestingly, the word ‘Flip’ in ‘Flip the Media’ is a bit of a play on words in that it not-so-subtly references the Flip Video Camera. I’m a big fan of this little device (more on that in another post someday), and so I’m curious to see how the filmmakers use it, or not, as a jumping off point for what I can only assume will be wide-eyed tribute to participatory media.

In any case, and from what I gather on the website, the four-minute trailer was cut together by a student named Kirk Mastin. A photographer by trade, Mastin is an accomplished media-maker in his own right, and he’s got a beautiful professional website where you can view some of his imagery. I am particularly fond of his ‘Utah’ series, having visited that part of the country myself.

I’ll be watching for the finished piece. Rest assured, I’ll post an update shortly after it comes out. Stay tuned…