PHOTOGRAPHY AS NEW MEDIA: FROM THE CAMERA OBSCURA TO THE CAMERA PHONE.

Senior Lecturer Richard Vickers University of Lincoln, Hull School of Art and Design, UK.
rvickers@lincoln.ac.uk

Mitchell proposed that the end of the twentieth century was the end of photography, at least as we had known it: Thus late in the century of Joyce and Borges, of cubism and surrealism, of Wittgensteins loss of faith in logical positivism and of post-structuralisms gonzo metaphysics, the production of reproduction was again redefined. From the moment of its sesquicentennial in 1989 photography was dead or, more precisely, radically and permanently displaced as was painting 150 years before.2 16 years later photographys transition from an analogue to digital process is largely complete, however, 2006 may be seen as the year when photography is once again being redefined. The exponential technological change that has occurred since 1994 has been beyond anyones expectations, back then the web was still in its infancy, and digital cameras were either extremely expensive for a professional model, or little more than a novelty for the early consumer versions. The first digital camera was invented at Kodak in 1975 by Steven Sasson, this was a 0.1 megapixel camera that weighed nearly 4 kilos. It was to be another 15 years before technology caught up with the concept. Kodak introduced the Professional Digital Camera System (DCS) in 19913 and released a professional 1.3 megapixel camera based on a Nikon F3 in that year and digital photography as we know it today had truly arrived. This camera was extremely expensive even by todays standards, with a retail price at the time of 13,000 (YTL21,000 or _19,000) which was prohibitive to even professional photographers and way beyond the reach of the amateur. Apple released one of the first consumer digital cameras in 1994, the Apple Quicktake 1004 which could take 8 so called high-resolution 640 x 480 images, before the user had to download the files from the 1MB non-removable flash memory to a

Transitions from silver to silicon to the semantic web: The origins of photography can be traced back to the invention of the camera obscura, an optical device used by artists in the 16th century, although knowledge of the principle goes back to antiquity. It wasnt until the early 19th century that Nipce, Daguerre & Fox Talbot managed to fix an image by chemical means that established the practice of photography that would record and shape history for the next 160 years. I first wrote about the demise of traditional photography some 10 years ago, and at that time the transition from silver to silicon was generating a lot of academic interest. In his 1994 book, The Reconfigured Eye, William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and the Arts at MIT, stated: We can identify certain historical moments at which the sudden crystallisation of a new technology (such as painting, printing, photography or computing) provides the nucleus for new forms of social and cultural practice and marks the beginning of a new era of artistic exploration. The end of the 1830s the moment of Daguerre and Fox Talbot was one of these. And the opening of the 1990s will be remembered as another the time at which the computer processed digital image began to supersede the image fixed on silverbased photographic emulsion 1.
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William Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, MIT Press, 1994. Pg 20. Ibid. http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/kodakHistory/1990_1999.shtml QuickTake Digital Camera: http://www.haystack.mit.edu/computing/camera.html

computer. Interestingly the camera was actually manufactured by Kodak who didnt release their own branded consumer point-and-shoot digital camera until the following year, 95 years after they introduced the first successful consumer camera; the Brownie box. The Brownie opened up photography to the masses, a consequence of which was that the snapshot entered popular culture. Over the last few years the major photographic companies have undergone or are still undergoing a paradigm shift from analogue to digital, indeed it appears that some aspects of the industry were perhaps surprised by the exponential growth in the digital camera market. Konica, the company that made Japans first colour film, announced earlier this year5 that it is closing its camera and film operations and laying off nearly 4000 workers. All the major players have undergone a reduction in film camera output, including Nikon, who are now reducing their production of film cameras to one model. Cannon the worlds largest manufacturer of digital cameras, is now believed to have prepared its total withdrawal strategy from the 35mm market.6 Despite their early involvement in digital camera development, Kodak stayed loyal to their traditional market for as long as possible, maybe too long as they lost their dominant position in the US market for a while. They have been keen to make up the lost ground and have fully embraced new media technology. Amongst the many digital services that they provide, Kodak now offer an online photo sharing feature; Kodak Easy Share Gallery, where users can upload images from their digital camera or camera phone directly to their gallery on the web. Prints can be ordered from the site or users can simply email their friends and relatives a link directly to their personal online gallery. Online digital photography sharing sites have become very popular over the last couple of years
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and the most popular of these is Flickr.com (see image 1) which was started in 2004 and has enjoyed tremendous success ever since. Flickr hosts more than 37 million photographs and has over 1.2 million members7 and last year was bought by the search engine company Yahoo. An interesting aspect of Flickr is the ability for the user to add a keyword tag to their photograph, other users can search for images of a specific nature by their tag or they are able to view the most popular tags. Flickr created the first tag cloud or visual depiction of content, this is displayed in alphabetical order and the most popular tags are depicted by using a larger font. (see image 2) Flickr is cited as a prime example of the effective use of folksonomy, the collaboratively generated, open ended labelling system that allows users to categorise content. Folksonomy may hold the key to developing the semantic web, in which every web page contains machine-readable metadata that describes the pages content and so would dramatically improve search engine retrieval. Flickr, blogs and social networking sites such as Myspace.com embody the principles of the web 2.0, a move away from static sites and towards a more dynamic, interactive and collaborative web. Myspace is a phenomenal success, a personal space on the

Hoyle, B & Lewis, L, Film camera is killed off by millions of pixels, The Times, 2nd March 2006, P. 12. Ibid. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4201438.stm

web as a supporting medium for their main business, adding extra value features such as behind the scenes footage. In the UK, Channel 4 in conjunction with production company Endemol were expeditious in tapping into these newly available revenue streams, charging users 1.99 (YTL4.75 or _3.00) for a 24 hour pass or 7.99 (YTL18.95 or _11.50) for a series pass, to access 24 hour video streams and video clip highlights from the Big Brother programme online. In a recent move the BBC has made its TV programmes available on the internet for seven days after been broadcast. (See image 3)

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web where users can create private communities and share photographs, journals and interests. At the time of writing Myspace.com is the 7th highest ranking website8 in terms of traffic in the world, generating more traffic than internet giants Ebay and Amazon. Myspace was bought last year by media mogul Rupert Murdochs News Corporation for more than 332 million (YTL758 million or _459 million). Microsoft have added a similar feature to their popular MSN service with MSN Space where users can create a personal space with a blog and picture upload and sharing facility. They can also add photos and content to the blog direct from their mobile phone and in a recent deal have linked up with mobile network 3 to provide bloggers with access to mobile TV and video sharing tools. MSN has signed a three month deal with 3 to create a branded online space where users can submit clips the most popular of which will win cash prizes. Users will also be able to access SeeMeTV 3s mobile TV channel, which shows and pays for customer created content. The mobile lifestyle device for the digital era: Television production was quick to embrace the new digital production & post-production technologies and has already made the transition from the old analogue media to new digital media. UK TV channels were also quick of the mark to utilise the
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The TV channels have also been quick to utilise advances in mobile phone technology, Channel 4 provides mobile portals for Big Brother and other popular series and the BBC have fully embraced this emergent new medium. The BBC provide web sites for WAP enabled phones and provides free* mobile content (*at point of access, but service provider costs are still incurred) and closing programme credits often end with a 6 digit text number to access extra content for mobiles. The content covers a broad range including 3gp video programme tasters, news headlines, sports updates, entertainment and highlights. New developments include the ability to view selected clips from the video diaries series Video Nation via a 3G enabled phone and we can

Hoyle, B & Lewis, L, Film camera is killed off by millions of pixels, The Times, 2nd March 2006, P. 12.

expect to see a lot more 3G content as the uptake increases. (See image 4)

Walkman type phones are now developed and sold by all the major handset manufacturers. Motorola were the first to develop and release a phone with Apples iTunes software installed, the ROKR was much hyped as the first iPod phone, after a great deal of excitement and anticipation had been built up in the pre-release phase, the phone was generally not well received by the general public and was relatively unsuccessful in the UK. Sony Ericsson have been more successful with their Walkman branded phones and have sold some 5.5 million Walkman phones since their launch in August 2005, equivalent to 16 per cent of total shipments since then. The W800i which can store up to 1GB on Sonys propriety Memory Stick Pro Duo, the W950i due out in August 2006 will have 4GB of storage capacity, enough space for a 1000 MP3 songs. Although this may not challenge the considerable 60GB of storage available on the iPod, handset manufacturers are expected to release phones with hard drives in the near future. At the moment phones tend to be used as storage and playback devices for music that has been downloaded via a PC and then transferred, service providers are surely keen to exploit the music download market further by having users download direct to their phone. Sony Ericsson are also keen to exploit or utilise the well established Sony digital camera Cyber-shot brand, for their new generation of camera phones; the K790 and K800 due to be released in June 2006. There is very little difference in the two phones, however the k800 is a 3G phone whilst the K790 utilises EDGE technology. (See image 5) They both feature a 3.2 mega-pixel camera, with auto-focus, xenon flash and a completely new feature developed by Sony Ericsson is BestPic, which ensures that you never miss an important picture. Press the shutter button once and get 9 full quality 3.2 megapixel pictures to choose from in a time sequence 4 pictures before and 4 pictures after the actual image you captured. All 9 pictures are displayed as icons on the display. Simply scroll backwards and forwards through the 9 images and save the ones you like best. Discussing the new range of phones, Rikko Sakaguchi, Senior Vice President, Product &

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Mobile service providers have made a extremely heavy investment in 3G infrastructure and are obviously keen to exploit any new revenue streams possible in hopes of gaining a return on investment. One of the leading service providers Vodaphone made an investment of some 14.7 billion (YTL35 billion or _21.25 billion) worldwide for 3G licences, 6 billion (YTL14.3 billion or _8.67 billion) of that in the UK alone. Vodaphone were the first UK mobile network to deliver Sky Mobile TV, subscribers can watch a wide variety of popular channels on their 3G mobile phone. Orange are another mobile network to offer mobile TV and Orange TV currently offers subscribers 16 mobile TV channels. Whether users really want to watch TV content on their phones remains to be seen, however the industry certainly sees it as the next big thing. At Milia/MipTV in Cannes last year, video and TV content for mobiles was the dominant theme for the marketplace, with interactive TV content for mobiles being touted as the next killer application. Whilst service providers are naturally keen to recoup some of their major investment in 3G, hand-set manufacturers have focussed on other features, particularly cameras and the ability to store and play music in MP3 format. With the incredible success of products such as Apples iPod in recent years and the relatively cheap cost and small size of flash memory,

"We are seeing exponential growth in blogging and consumers are turning more and more often to the Internet as a means of sharing information or images in personal blogs. By working with Google, we're able to offer a quick and easy way for people users to blog as they discover how convenient it is as a way to share words and pictures with friends, family and beyond. We are also delighted to collaborate with Google, the undisputed leader in Web Search, to provide our end users with relevant internet information directly to their Sony Ericsson handsets."11
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Application Planning at Sony Ericsson said; "With the Cyber-shot phone we aim to create a new lifestyle of imaging communication by combining Sony Ericssons unique mobile applications and Sony digital imaging technologies. Our aim has always been to innovate and create new values for the mobile life, and with the Cyber-shot phone we will enable anyone to enjoy an entirely new level of communicationtaking quality pictures of anything, anytime and anywhere, and sharing their precious moments with others." 9 As well as all the usual features a modern consumer expects from a mobile phone, the new Sony Ericsson phones are I believe the first to feature a direct ability to blog your pictures. In a unique deal with Google, 10 new generation Sony Ericsson phones will not only feature the web search engine as standard in all new internet-capable phones, but also Googles Blogger. Commenting on this, Jan Wreby, Corporate Executive Vice President, Head of Sales & Marketing at Sony Ericsson said;

The strong consumer demand for camera and Walkman phones has helped Sony Ericsson record a doubling of profits for the first quarter of 2006, pre-tax profit for the January to March period was 104 million (YTL245m or _150m), up from 48 million (YTL115m or _70m) for the same period last year. Sales were 1.37 billion (YTL3.25b or _1.99b) up from 892 million (YTL2.11b or _1.29b) a year earlier. Another important aspect for the growth in the market sector is that consumers are keen to have the latest phone as fashion accessory and not only for function. The Citizen Journalist: The digital era has given rise to a boom in citizen journalism and the web has created an unprecedented egalitarian platform for ordinary citizens to play an active role in the process of reporting and disseminating news, especially with the recent popularity of the web blog. (see image 6) The term web blog was first coined by Jorn Barger in 1997 and this was shortened to simply blog in 1999 by Peter Merholz. There were perhaps hundreds of blogs by the end of the 1990s, today the estimate is thought to be over 35 million12 and a new blog is created every second13. Although it is difficult to pin

Rikko Sakaguchi, Senior Vice President, Product & Application Planning Sony Ericsson: http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&lc=en&ver=4000&template=pc3_1_1&zone=pc&lm=pc3&prid=4919 10 http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=2647 11 Jan Wreby, Corporate Executive Vice President, Head of Sales & Marketing at Sony Ericsson: http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&lc=en&ver=4000&template=pc3_1_1&zone=pc&lm=pc3&prid=4916 12 http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1755777,00.html 13 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4737671.stm
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attacks in the US four years earlier, when the footage was captured by either amateurs or professionals using full size video cameras. Where as the 9/11 attacks had happened in broad daylight and over a period of time that allowed TV crews to gain unprecedented footage, the London bombings had happened simultaneously and mainly underground. Burcun Imir deputy head of the Dogan News Agency in Turkey said: We cannot be everywhere. We have 800 correspondents in Turkey but that is not enough. As soon as people understand that we are journalists, once they see our cameras, they change. So we use sources, thats what journalism is, and this time its the citizen journalist.17 In the UK citizen journalist photo agencies such as Scoopt18 have begun to appear, selling mobile camera phone and digital camera pictures to the press and media. Peter Jenkins commented on this: Just before the London Bombings, a new photo agency was bornScoopt. A journalist with the vision to see what cameraphones could do set up an agency capable of taking these new technology images and making some money out of them. It has been a slow start for Glasgow based Kyle MacRae, but his business plan is good and at the time of writing there were around 3,500 amateurs and mobile phone users out there registered with his agency.19 (See image 7) Scoopt have recently signed a deal to install its software onto 10 million handsets. Mobile operator 3 aim to take the concept of citizen journalism one step further and are seeking a deal with leading news channels in the UK to create a direct channel 20 for any member of the public caught

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down exactly when blogging entered popular culture, the 2003 war in Iraq was certainly a turning point. Iraqi citizens were able to publish their uncensored reports online using blogs, such as the Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax whose irreverent blog Where is Raed?14 became an internet sensation during the war and in the UK propelled blogging to the national headlines. The London bombings of July 7 2005 were significant for the first real use of camera phone video footage on the television news. The BBC received more than 1000 still images and 300 amateur video clips during or immediately after the events15. Simon Bucks, associate editor of Sky News stated; This is probably the first big story in Britain where we have seen this effect, where camera phones allow eyewitnesses a method of recording news and getting it broadcast. Its a democratisation of news coverage. Viewers can contribute their own content.16 This was a significant change from the 9/11 terror
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http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ Burt, T. Mobile phone images present dilemma for TV. Financial Times, 11 July 2005. P.2. 16 Ibid. 17 http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4540000/newsid_4546100/4546116.stm 18 http://www.scoopt.com/ 19 Jenkins, P. I know it, you know it, but we need to tell the world. Journalist Magazine of the NUJ. Oct?Nov 2005. P. 17. 20 Wray, R, Mobile group in talks to create TV link for citizen journalists, The Guardian, 10th April 2006.

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up in a major news event. As questions of authenticity will be paramount, stringent editorial control will need to be exercised by news broadcasters. Professional journalists certainly see the rise of citizen journalism as a threat, not to their standards of professionalism, but possibly undermining rates and further complicating issues of ethics and copyright. It is not only serious journalism that is been challenged by cameraphone wielding amateurs, the paparazzi, the nemesis of the rich and famous, can now find their candid work undermined by anyone in the right place at the right time with a cameraphone. What will be the impact of the omnipresence of cameraphones and their ability to allow constant covert intrusion into the private lives of celebrities is hard to imagine. At this years BAFTA film awards, mobile provider Orange, sponsors of the event, provided amateur snappers armed with cameraphones their own press pen outside the Odeon in Leicester Square21. Orange created a new term for the amateur photographers calling them waparazzi and say they will roll out similar events in the future to reflect how consumers are taking a much more interactive role in major news and events.22
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The artistic utilisation of mobile technologies and the democratisation of art in the age of digital production: The leading handset manufacturers have enlisted leading photographers to add professional gravity to their products, Sony Ericsson enrolled renowned photographer Martin Parr for the launch of the K750i and Nokia have another influential photographer Juergen Teller amongst its experts to promote the new N series camera phones. Parr was impressed with the photographs he produced with the K750i and exhibits some of the images on his website www.martinparr.com. Not surprisingly we are beginning to see the utilisation of mobile technologies for artistic purposes. There is an exhibition currently taking place at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery New York called Media Miniature, with contributions from a group of artists including Lev Manovich. Guest curator Christina Yang states; This exhibition aligns itself with a discourse on older forms of literary invention such as the printing press. What was once a mass social experience, whether in cathedrals or theatres, became possible to carry in a pocket. Equally, laptops, cell phones, and iPods have become the matrix of expanded social networks nevertheless human in scale and contact.23 Dean Terry is an artist creating artworks with a cameraphone, mo.vid.1" is a mobile video project that updates every time a video is sent from his mobile phone to the gallery, often several times a day. The display changes as new videos are sent from the phone, through wireless networks, and to a computer in a gallery. These are micro videos, fifteen seconds long, made wherever the artist happens to be. They are projected on a large, vertical wall. A second projection high above the first plays previous videos in random order. The project is centered on the idea of remapping private spaces into public ones, of reversing scale, of

http://www.orange.co.uk/entertainment/film/baftasWaparazzi.php http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1713281,00.html 23 http://www.pratt.edu/news/popup.php?story=03.02.06_Pratt_Manhattan_Gallery_Exhibition_Explores_ Diminutive_Scale.html

inverting and rejecting the consumerist idea of "quality" and its technological expression in ever higher resolutions by exploiting the limits of the devices. The videos are really pretty poor with all the compression artifacts, and these limitations are exposed by using two Apple Mac G5's to drive the system and two high resolution projectors to display it. This work was exhibited at the Dallas Center for Contemporary Arts last year and can also be viewed at www.100lies.com. Terrys project also examines what it means to project very private space immediately surrounding the body into meta-space. Many of the videos show objects little more than a few centimeters beyond the tiny lens, often some body part, like hands or forearms that obscure an unknown, overexposed background space. Other pieces are gestural performances, recording the movements required when following a line, or when trying to create shapes by moving the camera in certain ways. Traditional paintings are often created over a long period. This project is atomistic and performative. The bits (individual 15 second videos) pile up over time, and the composite, the themes, are the paintings - collections of idea streams, are captured in development, in process. This is a real time art piece, and so the themes are being worked out over the course of two months. The artist says that the next iteration of this project will use different strategies and develop new themes. As part of the British Art Show 06 artist Goshka Macuga has created an artwork entitled Showcases A Virtual Gallery which was exhibited at the Hayward gallery in London and is now on tour around the UK. This installation allows members of the public to send in their own artwork via cameraphones to display in the virtual gallery. (See image 8) The challenge was to seamlessly integrate basic and often low resolution cameraphone imagery into a polished, virtual environment. Showcases is a cinematic sequence of intriguing rooms, staircases and dramatic corridors beautifully shot in black and white by photographer Nigel Spalding. The result is a constantly updated artwork in ever changing

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environments. The showcases website allows users to view their submissions at any time. I am currently working on a new art project called 15x15 with two colleagues, Oliver Dore & Greg Brant. The 15x15 project is a homage to Warhol, a realisation of the artistic utilisation of new media technology and the democratisation of art in the age of digital production. In 1968 Andy Warhol stated that; In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Warhol's statement was based in his interest in fame and famous people. His view of the media was that they could enable any person to become famous, the rise of reality television shows has given new meaning to Warhol's 15 minutes quote. Using Warhols statement as a premise, 15x15 advances the statement into the 21st century; with new media technology anyone and everyone can be world famous....for 15 seconds. (See image 9) In the 21st century art is being fundamentally realigned for anyone and everyone. Participants can contribute to the piece using a standard mobile camera phone that can capture video and can send video clips directly from their camera phone using MMS (Multimedia Message Service), via email or upload from their personal computer to the online database; http://www15x15.org or email me@15x15.org. The clips can be portraits, experiential, vignettes, experimental, of love, of life, of anything, from the

image in the digital age and the ephemeral nature of born-digital materials and the web at large remains to be seen. With the exponential technological change that has occurred over the last decade, photographys artistic and social utilisation requires that the medium and the concept be reconsidered, yet again. The web has created new opportunities for the dissemination and exhibition of photographic work and the cameraphone is only just beginning to have an impact. That camera phones will continue to improve with every model release is certain and that they will continue to become central lifestyle devices capable of much more than the humble telephone call. We are beginning to see their artistic and social utilisation increase and act as a nucleus for new forms of social and cultural practice and the beginning of a new era of artistic exploration. Photography is not dead, it is simply being redefined as new media.

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banal to the downright bizarre! The viewable artwork is an interface consisting of 15 individual rectangular screens, each individual screen displays a random video clip stored within the database for a 15 second duration: 15x15. The work was first shown at the 4th International Symposium of Interactive Media Design, Yeditepe University, and will be exhibited at other locations throughout the world and viewable on the web at anytime, any location. Conclusion: William J Mitchell stated that on its 150th anniversary in 1989 photography was dead, at least as it had been known, and that the digital era signalled a new paradigm shift for photography at large. In an unprecedented way 16 years later, the web and mobile camera phones are redefining photography once more, signalling another paradigm shift. The photographic image is no longer a printed image, it is much more likely to be seen on a screen than on paper. Images can be easily shared and disseminated via the web, which has superseded the traditional modes of presentation and publication. They can be tagged and commented on and archived for prosperity. Photography has never been so instantaneous or so disposable, one click to capture and another to delete. Photography (still & moving) has simultaneously shaped and recorded history, what then will be the impact of the disposability of the