User:Huub Huub
Halfway through this quarter i was still stuck on my concept, even after deciding which of a few setups i would proceed on. The first few where about showing time is relative, an idea of an altered design of an hourglass where the sand would flow faster when a camera detected a smile, movement or sound, and flow slower to almost no flow when there were no signs of those. After a talk with Simon I decided to drop that idea because the open source emotion detection software i got was still subjective. A detected smile could still be an evil smile, a faked smile or a cynical smile. The reliabillity of the working of the object would be a lot less. Therefor the concept would be too weak to forfill the thought.
CONCEPT BEFORE SUMMER The Modern Daguerrotype An participation art installation against the hype of selfies. This form of taking pictures tells the least of all forms of photography. Quantity over quality. That is something I don’t like. Statistics say there are taken over one million selfies a day. If we compare taking selfies to the first form of taking photographs a selfie becomes something of such little value. The view on- and accessability of taking picture has changed much since the invention of it. The original value to take pictures is something we don’t value as much as we maybe should. The first conventional way of making photographs was de Daguerrotype, where a silvered copper plate was worked with chemicals and exposed to light from 5 to 30 seconds. The preparation and effort to take the picture was big, only rich and fortunate people could have a picture made. Besides that, they were not allowed to smile, because a smiling face is harder to keep the same for 5-30 seconds than a straight face. Nowadays taking a ‘selfie’ cost less than 5 seconds from grabbing your smartphone out of your pocket tot he moment you have taken a picture of yourself. I wanted to have a variable analog effect that would be just as hard and time consuming as the daguerrotype, but with digital elements as we know them today. My installation gives the viewer or participant the chance to make a selfie. But when the person is part of the chain of the installation, he or she won’t directly succeed to make a clear picture. The working of the installation will be visible, its tot he participant to figure out how they do make a clear picture. The installation only have digital elements to create the selfie-experience as we know it. The rest of it is analog, as a reference to the original process of the first picture to be taken ever. The installation has a camera with a wifi connection to a smartphone. The camera is pointing at the box with water, if the reflected line of the camera direction to the water is followed, there is a mirror, allowing the view of the camera to be on eyesight. The place where the smartphone and participant are is connected with the box of water. When the person moves, the water will have wrinkles and waves which distort the picture in an analog way.
During Summer I figured that i needed something more, or less, to really change the action and thought of people to take a picture. In order to break behavioural patterns i should create something that people know and have connotations with, but then make it hard to forfill the process. Which means, that I was going to make a photobooth, that wasn’t able to make a picture itself. It showed a preview only on the outside of the booth, not on the inside. Through the vibrations in the booth the water would shake and the picture would be distorted. Because the form of the photobooth instead of a more open installation, people expect to have a picture after they take place in the booth. This isn’t the case so in order to make a picture you require assistance from other participants. They would take their phones and make a picture of the screen outside of the photobooth. To get a picture out of the installation requires interaction and more effort than a selfie, it makes taking a picture more fun and worth the effort and extra time. I needed to be able to transport the booth, so I designed it like a building-package. The sketches in dimensions are visible in the picture section. Some measurements had to be made during the making of the process. Such as the window for the picture. During the process I came in touch with David Danos, a fellow student from the academy who organized the second event of an art exposition in Gallery Slash and the performance bar in Rotterdam. He really liked the concept and the idea I had. So he asked me if I would like to expose this Photo-booth in the show. I still needed a name and I wanted to make it approachable but clear. I already had some ideas about names, like The Modern Daguerrotype, the unselfie booth and the unphotobooth. Finally I thought that the modern daguerrotype wasn’t right, because i was inspired by the process of daguerre, but i haven’t used his techniques in my work. The unselfiebooth wouldn’t work, because a selfie is usually made with a mobile phone, not a photobooth. So i came up with the name of the Non Photo Booth, a name that is clear and makes people already questioning what it actually is. The following text was used to describe the work at the exposition of MINT, 2th of september.
Non Photo Booth By Huub Verburg An installation against the selfie-hype, inspired by the high treshold photography used to have.
Back in the days of 1839 the first form of capturing an image was invented by Daguerre. It was called the Daguerrotype. It was a labour intensive thing to do and taking one picture would take around 20 Seconds, without all the preparations. Which is at total odds with the ease we have nowadays with all our smartphones that can snap a picture with a hotkey.
Huub Verburg wanted to come up with a new analog way to distort the expectation one has with just taking a picture. Therefore he used as less technology as possible in the inside of the installation of the non photo booth. He figured that we are inpatient and tend to move and push buttons if something won’t work fast enough.
Inside the installation there’s a system that uses reflection of light through a mirror and water., which reacts and vibrates by the movements against and in the booth.
