Hypertrace

Just Some Notes ‘n Ideas

I make the realisation that the current situation I find myself in is a worthy candid moment. I reach for my mobile device and flick through my collection of soft-camera apps. Not quite knowing why, I settle on a camera that will give me the same qualities and style as a 1960s Instamatic camera. I take a few pictures flick through them and upload the most successful to share.

This scenario is not uncommon. The popularity of such apps is proven by the high rankings they obtain in Apple’s paid downloads for both still and movie cameras, only outranked by games (). The phenomenon of applying analogue qualities within digital reproduction is not new. We have, if production time allowed, been able to achieve the same result via bitmap filters in desktop computer platforms for decades. Such image manipulation is a more manual digital process but still removed from the original analogue one.

The process has now, however, transformed into a commodity and a form of meta-photography with multiple levels of trace and agency in both consumption and production contexts. Instant analogue qualities applied at the point of a camera click, while reminiscent of Polaroid cameras,  are unique from earlier digital image manipulation in instantaneous speed, as a meta-design tool and proximity to social media distribution.

It is investigating and questioning, with a methodology couched in post-structuralist and affect theory, the use-value of mixing, remixing and generally applying the qualities of past inscriptive media in a digital context that interests me. In other words, researching the fluidity of analogue and digital reproduction in the creation and consumption of artefacts and experiences.