Flickrnarrative
Feb. 23rd, 2008 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusAs of this morning, my Flickr photostream contains two new pages. They're images chosen from a much bigger stock of images I've shot in the two weeks since I last "told Flickr about my life". In that two weeks, Yahoo, which owns Flickr, spurned a Microsoft bid to buy it, which means that at least I'm not telling Bill Gates about my life when I post to Flickr. I would hate that, because, you see, the photographs I choose to throw up into my Flickr photostream are mostly designed to show the richness and funkiness of the textures in my life, and I regard Microsoft as an empire built on the notion that sensual, textural richness -- richness of touch and feel, of the senses and of use -- doesn't really matter. It's all about the other kind of richness for them, the money kind, the exchange kind.
My Flickr narrative isn't just structured by my need to tell the world (and whoever owns Yahoo) how rich the textures of my life are. It's also structured by the technical requirements and formatting of the Flickr site itself. For instance, the fact that the Flickr Uploader software recommends that I reformat my photos to a width of 800 pixels (a suggestion I go along with), and that the Flickr site insists that anyone who wants to see the images this big has to have a Yahoo account and be logged in. There are various ways to see the individual pictures -- as a slideshow with or without captions, as individual photos with a comments section underneath and technical information on the right, and as a page of thumbnails three images wide.
No matter how I try to manipulate the final result, there's always an element of surprise when I see the mini-narratives created by this page layout. Here, for instance, you see a slice of three images, "courtesyletter", "goodworks" and "humanalights". I didn't arrange for them to fall together on the page like that; my lower case, single word titling policy creates a little poem along the title line, but more importantly there are complementary colours and perspectives going on which surprise and please me: the pink of the letter paper on the left balances the green of Humana's wall on the right, and the perspective from left to right goes flat, tilted right, tilted even more right. That becomes a new, triple picture plane, something created fortuitously by a combination of my content choices and Flickr's formatting choices. Neither of us "made" these juxtapositions, but we're both responsible for them. Well, along with chance itself, that great composer.
In terms of "the story of my life", the Flickr update says something like: "Nick ate some Japanese food, looked at some improvised gardens, dressed up in silly clothes, hung out with Japanese people and art students, snapped street art, went to the Turkish market, played with his rabbit in the garden wrapped in a blanket, went to a concert by Midori Hirano and Kyoka, went secondhand clothes shopping, saw a friend on the cover of an art mag, ate oysters, took Kyoka to some nice restaurants and cafes in Prenzlauer Berg, and pretended to be Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip on the U8 line home." Business as usual, then.
See the rich textures you're missing by not being me, Bill Gates! You can't even put my me-narrative to work in your Evil Empire by owning my photo-sharing platform. You may be the world's richest man, Bill, but jeez, what a loser! Oh, but wait, what's that it says here? "After rebuffing Microsoft, Yahoo reportedly began discussing a possible Internet partnership with media conglomerate News Corp." Oh fuck. Hi Rupert, I'm home! And what kind of day did you have, dear?
My Flickr narrative isn't just structured by my need to tell the world (and whoever owns Yahoo) how rich the textures of my life are. It's also structured by the technical requirements and formatting of the Flickr site itself. For instance, the fact that the Flickr Uploader software recommends that I reformat my photos to a width of 800 pixels (a suggestion I go along with), and that the Flickr site insists that anyone who wants to see the images this big has to have a Yahoo account and be logged in. There are various ways to see the individual pictures -- as a slideshow with or without captions, as individual photos with a comments section underneath and technical information on the right, and as a page of thumbnails three images wide.
No matter how I try to manipulate the final result, there's always an element of surprise when I see the mini-narratives created by this page layout. Here, for instance, you see a slice of three images, "courtesyletter", "goodworks" and "humanalights". I didn't arrange for them to fall together on the page like that; my lower case, single word titling policy creates a little poem along the title line, but more importantly there are complementary colours and perspectives going on which surprise and please me: the pink of the letter paper on the left balances the green of Humana's wall on the right, and the perspective from left to right goes flat, tilted right, tilted even more right. That becomes a new, triple picture plane, something created fortuitously by a combination of my content choices and Flickr's formatting choices. Neither of us "made" these juxtapositions, but we're both responsible for them. Well, along with chance itself, that great composer.
In terms of "the story of my life", the Flickr update says something like: "Nick ate some Japanese food, looked at some improvised gardens, dressed up in silly clothes, hung out with Japanese people and art students, snapped street art, went to the Turkish market, played with his rabbit in the garden wrapped in a blanket, went to a concert by Midori Hirano and Kyoka, went secondhand clothes shopping, saw a friend on the cover of an art mag, ate oysters, took Kyoka to some nice restaurants and cafes in Prenzlauer Berg, and pretended to be Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip on the U8 line home." Business as usual, then.
See the rich textures you're missing by not being me, Bill Gates! You can't even put my me-narrative to work in your Evil Empire by owning my photo-sharing platform. You may be the world's richest man, Bill, but jeez, what a loser! Oh, but wait, what's that it says here? "After rebuffing Microsoft, Yahoo reportedly began discussing a possible Internet partnership with media conglomerate News Corp." Oh fuck. Hi Rupert, I'm home! And what kind of day did you have, dear?
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 01:06 pm (UTC)------------------------------
Yahoo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo#Criticism_and_controversy)
In March 2004, Yahoo launched a paid inclusion program whereby commercial websites are guaranteed listings on the Yahoo search engine after payment.
Yahoo has also been criticized for funding spyware and adware — advertising from Yahoo's clients often appears on-screen in pop-ups generated from adware that a user may have installed on their computer without realizing it
Yahoo, along with Google China, Microsoft, Cisco, AOL, Skype, Nortel and others, has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of internet censorship in mainland China. Unlike Google or Microsoft, which keep confidential records of its users outside mainland China, Yahoo stated that the company will not protect the privacy and confidentiality of its Chinese customers from the authorities.
In April 2005, Shi Tao, a journalist working for a Chinese newspaper, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Changsha Intermediate People's Court of Hunan Province, China (First trial case no 29), for "providing state secrets to foreign entities". The "secret", as Shi Tao's family claimed, refers to a brief list of censorship orders he sent from a Yahoo Mail account to the Asia Democracy Forum before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Incident. The verdict stated Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) confirmed that an IP address, registered by a Hunan newspaper that Shi Tao worked for, accessed the mail account at a particular time. Criticism of Yahoo intensified when the court document stated the company aided Chinese authorities in the case of dissident Li Zhi. In December 2003 Li Zhi was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment for "inciting subversion".
Yahoo is a 40% owner of Alibaba, which facilitates the sale of shark-derived products.
-----------------------------
In summery, the money you're giving Yahoo is indirectly funding a paid inclusion program where the rich get to dominate the internet listings, underhand spyware and adware, a company that helps China implement its censorship AND convict those who want to indulge in politcal free speech (something even google and microsoft refuse to do), and you're helping support a company that fins sharks.
Way to stick it to the man, Momus.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 02:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 02:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 09:58 pm (UTC)This is just my opinion, but Google are pretty good. Google has come under criticism because of its size more than anything -- the idea that everyone's search results are all kept in one place bothers people because people dont trust the American government not to try and get into it. It's not so much a criticism of google as a company, because google in the past has tried to fight in court to protect its users privacy, its just the potential danger of the ubiquity of Google thats been attacked.
personally, unless you're using google to search for child pornography or plan a terrorist attack, you have nothing to worry about. Also, google are dedicated to open source software, which is a good thing.
Google has a mail service and a photo hosting service you can sign up to, I have both.
Google wants to appear ethical, they have the slogan "Dont be Evil", and for the most part they are arent bad at all. They also have this whole opensource hipstery thing going on -- watch this video and you'll see what I mean.
Even for a cynic like me, Google really isnt a bad company IMHO, unless someone else has information to the contrary.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-24 01:01 am (UTC)Google/Scroogle
Date: 2008-02-24 02:19 am (UTC)I often use this site: http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html, just to be mean to the google fat cats.
Alessandro Ludovico is onto something when he refers to Google as a 'funny dictator', or better, 'funny totalitarian', their techniques vaguely remind me of New Labour, also Mcdonalds.
(see second to last question http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/01/how-did-neural.php )
+ his project Google Will Eat Itself:
http://gwei.org/index.php
"Google's position is predominant in the same moment it enteres a new business field with a new service. It's the Google effect: creating consensus on a new business, even if it instantly gets the predominant position. The greatest enemy of such a giant is not another giant: it's the parasite. If enough parasitites suck small amounts of money in this self-referentialism embodiment, they will empty this artificial mountain of data and its inner risk of digital totalitarianism."
Personally i'm with the parasites and hope for more diversity in the future.
Having said all this,
I still use Gmail.
neomarxisme
Date: 2008-02-23 06:02 pm (UTC)Re: neomarxisme
Date: 2008-02-23 06:50 pm (UTC)Wasn't that the problem with Neomarxisme? His betes noires were these ridiculously tiny hate figures, and he'd pass in silence over the Iraq war and so on. A bunch of thugs could have taken over the White House (some say they did) and he'd say "Sure, sure, but look at all these sinister black vans on the street where I work". It was a sort of NIMBY-isme.
Re: neomarxisme
Date: 2008-02-23 10:01 pm (UTC)der.
Re: neomarxisme
Date: 2008-02-24 12:54 am (UTC)YES! You get the big picture here on Click Opera.
rabbitcatching
Date: 2008-02-23 03:14 pm (UTC)plush safe he think
Date: 2008-02-24 01:39 am (UTC)Milkmural, featured in your Copenhagen report, still may be the dumbest image I Have ever seen. I would rip my eyes out King Oedipus style if I had to look at that every day. I think your comment was, "can you imagine this on the side of an american building?"
Thankfully, no. But we have Basquiat. You have Bansky.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 09:30 pm (UTC)der.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-24 12:58 am (UTC)NIMBYisme
Date: 2008-02-23 10:28 pm (UTC)conservatives are usually known, among other things, to willfully overlook the problems at home and point the finger abroad. g.w. bush and click opera have some interesting things in common then, it seems! how's that for a charming post-modern paradox!
Re: NIMBYisme
Date: 2008-02-24 02:03 am (UTC)Re: NIMBYisme
Date: 2008-02-24 10:53 am (UTC)Re: NIMBYisme
Date: 2008-02-24 12:18 pm (UTC)Sometimes our imagining of what it would be like to live within a particular culture trumps the reality...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-23 10:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-24 12:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-24 04:24 am (UTC)image size
Date: 2008-02-24 12:35 am (UTC)Hello.. Let's get acquainted...
Date: 2008-10-06 05:47 pm (UTC)My name is Jessika!