The Digital Narcissus

It won't go on forever.
Selfie sticks are already dead.
Just a passing thing.
Next up kids will be taking LIDAR scans of their surroundings and sharing and hacking them, photos will be passé, SOOOO millennial.

The current generation of kids are harmless screen-prodding exhibitionist introverts, let them have their fun.
 

luka

Well-known member
If you go out the house with the intention of taking pictures you engage with the physical environment, your surroundings, stuff, pigeons, bindweed, clouds, cement trucks, churches, in an active way, quite intense and focus sed. You notice things you might not otherwise. You see things in ways you wouldn't otherwise see them. Relationships, juxtapositions, visual puns. You get into a hunter mind set. It's a useful exercise.
 

luka

Well-known member
So for instance any time I see the classic dick and balls drawing graffitied somewhere I take a picture and put it on Instagram. I always tag it #streetart #rebelart #banksy
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"these people are also morons, why bother paying any attention to morons?"

this is way too harsh. I don't see them as morons, I see them as people who have perhaps been fooled, cajoled or seduced into going into an art gallery despite not having much interest in art.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's funny isn't it cos obviously we don't get trained how to use an art gallery. It's not easy to understand what you should do with it. Why is it there? The pictures don't seem to do anything. They're inert. Are they just very prestigious products? Like how you might take a picture standing in front of a lambogini you see parked up.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I reckon as a child/teenager I was dragged around these places not understanding or enjoying anything.

And it was only in the last five years or whatever that I began really enjoying them.

As you say, a lot of these paintings ARE products. In Florence there were rows of people photographing the Boticelli Birth of Venus. Nobody really looking at it, nobody admiring it. I couldn't really admire it, either, perhaps because of the crowds, but also because its something I've seen a million times in reproduction.

The Sistine Chapel transcended all that because there's absolutely no way a reproduction can simulate the experience of looking up at it, being engulfed by it.
 

Leo

Well-known member
"these people are also morons, why bother paying any attention to morons?"

this is way too harsh. I don't see them as morons, I see them as people who have perhaps been fooled, cajoled or seduced into going into an art gallery despite not having much interest in art.

was being a bit (just a bit, tho) facetious in my responses, forget I called them morons. the gist of it is why bother paying attention to things that are annoying. life is better when you tune them out.
 

Leo

Well-known member
cozy!

it's like the religious zealots who sometimes stand in Times Square and rail against all us sinners, how end times is around the corner and we have to repent, etc. it's not a matter of wearing blinders, it's that they're irrelevant to my life, so why bother getting annoyed by them. just tune 'em out.
 

sufi

lala
was being a bit (just a bit, tho) facetious in my responses, forget I called them morons. the gist of it is why bother paying attention to things that are annoying. life is better when you tune them out.
(i went out yesterday with a camera, took some poor photos)

TBH it's not about the photos - they are just symptomatic of how the whole online stew is pandering to our arrogance - talk about the social medias

& the reason to pay attention is that it's become so powerful and we need to do something about it - we are the ones who can fix it
 

Leo

Well-known member
TBH it's not about the photos - they are just symptomatic of how the whole online stew is pandering to our arrogance - talk about the social medias

& the reason to pay attention is that it's become so powerful and we need to do something about it - we are the ones who can fix it

I get your points and even agree to some degree in some broader general terms, but I guess I just don't see damage being done on the same massive scale as you do. thinking about things in relative terms, some arguments on this thread are based on a small number of actors/incidences which then get extrapolated and elevated to being representative of the state of our times. context is still important: some people are annoying or stir up shit on facebook and twitter, but the vast (vast, vast) number of users don't, so it's unfair to demonize technology for the sins of the few.

what is it that's become "so powerful" that it needs to be fixed? who decides what to fix, and how to fix it? it all seems too vague.
 
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