The Decisive Moment is Dead. Long Live the Constant Moment

kbg32

kbg32

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http://petapixel.com/2013/05/22/on-the-constant-moment/

I cannot remember if this article was discussed here. I tried searching but couldn't come up with anything. An interesting read, but what I have been trying to convey with this article and the one from yesterday, where's life? I read about some photographer, Daniel Gordon - http://www.pdnonline.com/news/Daniel-Gordon-Wins-2-10485.shtml, in Brooklyn getting 20,000 Euro for his collaged images he took off the internet. While interesting, colorful, sculptural, I kind of felt they were infantile. I'd rather see the constructions themselves then the photographs thereof.

I have a 5 year old son, that couldn't care less about technology, living in NYC, or the latest and greatest. All he wants to do is build his own house, garden, sustain himself off the land, and be in love. This is all on his own volition. It has been an eye opener for me and my wife.

Who the hell wants to sit in front of a computer all day and cull imagery? There's a whole world/universe out there. Am I old fashioned?
 
Can't read the article. Tastes like Henri Cartier-Bresson words mixed into vinaigrette multimedia salad. 🙂

Living in big cities turning many adults to 5 years old in terms of their basic capabilities and knowledge of natural things. My opinion based on living in one of the world's largest capital and then moving to Canadian suburbs.

One of the examples is seasonal hysteria on our local message board after each appearance of crane flies. From those who were growing in the cities and seeing nature only in over-crowded campsites.
Another example is how during power outbreak on passed winter people kept food it the non-working fridge and losing it. Instead of taking it outside, where it is same temperature as in the functioning freezer. Old fashioned method we used all time in winter.
 
kbg32 said:
...I have a 5 year old son, that couldn't care less about technology, living in NYC, or the latest and greatest. All he wants to do is build his own house, garden, sustain himself off the land, and be in love. This is all on his own volition. It has been an eye opener for me and my wife. ...
Click to expand...

You would expect a 5 years old child to be excited about technology? Is that common in the place of "latest and greatest"?

But, yes, the article is very difficult to read. Total mix of whatever.
 
Very uncommon. Most children his age are totally smitten by the tech bug. They have their own tablets. You see their parents constantly attached to their cells phones, even while "watching" their children in the playground. Those parents are not engaged the way my parents were when I was younger.
 
The technology will make it possible for the virtual life to be continuous, i.e., you don't have to be present, you have an almost unlimited choice of moments to choose to present/save sitting alone at your computer, etc. This does not appeal to me, I'm not a fan of virtual life. It's not very humane, I prefer real life, which, to me, means being there and feeling that not every moment I see or some remote device sees is worthy of recording and considering.

But of course the whole purpose is to sell the next generation of stuff.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
Can't read the article. Tastes like Henri Cartier-Bresson words mixed into vinaigrette multimedia salad. 🙂

...
Another example is how during power outbreak on passed winter people kept food it the non-working fridge and losing it. Instead of taking it outside, where it is same temperature as in the functioning freezer. Old fashioned method we used all time in winter.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of the time I put the Thanksgiving turkey outside in the sub-zero cold, because it wouldn't fit in the freezer. I wrapped it and put it in a garbage can to keep it safe from animals.

Then the garbage man took it away. ;-(

Regarding the article, I read through it; it is better written than it first appears. (I almost quit when I saw 'shotgun' used as a verb.) The ideas are pretty widespread now, ranging from the debate about google glass to the new dystopian novel 'The Circle'. What an empty, foolish idea to record all in your purvey, whether or not you intend to 'curate' it later. I can't imagine anyone actually doing that.

But then I live in a world where people routinely walk down the street shouting at some unseen person via hands-free phone, so I guess my imagination is limited.

Randy
 
zauhar said:
Reminds me of the time I put the Thanksgiving turkey outside in the sub-zero cold, because it wouldn't fit in the freezer. I wrapped it and put it in a garbage can to keep it safe from animals.

Then the garbage man took it away. ;-(


Randy
Click to expand...

Lol randy...
 
It's an interesting thought experiment, but how is it that the decisive moment is dead?
I think there's some merit to this as an artistic process, but it ain't for me. I'd much rather be creating than curating (I say this on a sunny day before I'm about to sit in front of a computer and cut down a 300 image project to 30).

Two things come to mind here: the Lytro camera and the Banksy documentary "Exit Throgh The Gift Shop". The first for the idea of deferring image decisions to after the moment of capture, and the second for the subjects obsessive drive to record video that, in the end, is never edited. Do we as photographers enjoy the act of capturing an image more than editing it? For myself, that's a definite yes.
 
So ... I'd be curious to know how many people who disliked the premise of the author's thesis in the article didn't fully comprehend it, or completely read it, first.

I read it, understand what he's arguing but disagree with many of his points. He argues that Cartier Bresson's "decisive moment" was a result of technological refinements in photography since the static view camera of the 19th century, and that the subsequent Internet-connected technology of our present time will enable a new modality that eschews the capturing of single moments for a continual melange of continuous live data.

I agree with the technological evolution part as a simple recounting of history (that handheld photography evolved from tripod-mounted large format cameras, etc.) but disagree that one form of aesthetic or technological usage mode is discarded in favor of new ones.

Kevin Kelly uses the term "technium" to describe the sum totality of man's technology. Under his definition, the technium is always expanding. Buggy whips live alongside automated transportation. Manual typewriters get repurposed as finger-operated printing presses for the hipster class, rather than bland tools of the mid-20th century office. And still photography lives on, as does the concept of the Decisive Moment, because it has become a new cultural meme, developing its own cultural genetics that are self-replicating (to slaughter the metaphor).

I also disagree with his lazy employment of Moore's Law to describe the decrease in cost of the iPhone's camera module. First, we don't have clear data to show that Apple's manufacturing costs for their camera components have actually gone down over time; and second, Moore's Law (rather, Moore's Observation of Economies of Scale in Semiconductor Manufacturing) is invalidated if transistor density cannot double every 18-24 months. Clearly, sensor pixel sizes are not shrinking at that rate (as light sensitivity would also have to increase at the same rate in order to enable equivalent low-light capability as the older, larger sensor); and as I've argued here at various times, any camera format that dictates sensor size cannot, by definition, scale to Moore's Law (and since iPhone sensor size is dictated by form factor - phone body thickness - it places an upper limit on how big of a sensor can be employed).

~Joe
 
"Petapixel" immediately invites Sturgeon's Law: 90% of anything is crud.

This is definitely in the 90%. It may be poor argument or poor writing. Either way, the latter is so true that it's impossible to guess about the former.

Cheers,

R.
 
This shift from being present for the "decisive moment" to "curation" is analogous to active pursuit hunting verses setting traps. You set the traps and then check on them occasionally to see if they have captured anything of interest.

So the technologies that will need to be perfected are:

1. Better traps. Smaller, faster, cheaper, more numerous.
2. Better (automated) means for recognizing when the trap has caught something interesting. This requires massive computing power along with the ability to automatically recognize various qualities of the image that would make it of interest to a human.

So, once the technology has become sufficiently advanced, the cutting edge of art will revolve around the image recognition and search algorithms, which could then be customized to particular genre's and tastes. When things get to this point, photography will become analogous to "conjuring up" an image or to creating a talisman to produce certain effects.
 
There is no shift, just different things. That is, taking a picture is a thing. Running a search engine is a different thing. It's just word games. Everybody wants to be an artiste, few are any good or committed, so the cheating starts. The easiest way is to attack the definitions so my pile of **** fits now.
 
Ranchu said:
There is no shift, just different things. That is, taking a picture is a thing. Running a search engine is a different thing. It's just word games. Everybody wants to be an artiste, few are any good or committed, so the cheating starts. The easiest way is to attack the definitions so my pile of **** fits now.
Click to expand...
Nicely phrased!

Cheers,

R.
 
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