Monthly Archive for December, 2010

Second International Conference on the Image

Published on December 31, 2010 in Conference. 1 Comment

The Second International Conference on the Image will be held in San Sebastian, Spain in September of 2011.

Thank you to all of those who contributed to the 2010 Image Conference, held at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. The conference brought together delegates from many backgrounds and discipline areas, continuing the conference’s commitment to inclusive dialogue.

Both delegates who attended the conference and virtual delegates may upload their presentations and videos to The Image Conference YouTube Playlist. Information about uploading your presentation may be found at http://ontheimage.com.com/conference-2010/online-presentations/. You can also be a part of our Common Ground YouTube community by joining the conference group and becoming a subscriber at: http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPublishing (click on the yellow “subscribe” button in the top left corner of the screen).

Additionally, please join our online conversation by subscribing to our monthly email newsletter and subscribing to our Facebook, RSS, or Twitter feeds at http://ontheimage.com/.

It is no doubt that the 2011 Image Conference will continue on the momentum and successes of the 2010 conference. Please continue to check the conference webpage, newsletter and blog for further information and conference announcements at http://ontheimage.com/.

For Kodachrome Fans, Road Ends at Photo Lab in Kansas

Published on December 30, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 1 Comment

From A. G. Sulzberger at The New York Times…

An unlikely pilgrimage is under way to Dwayne’s Photo, a small family business that has through luck and persistence become the last processor in the world of Kodachrome, the first successful color film and still the most beloved.

That celebrated 75-year run from mainstream to niche photography is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday when the last processing machine is shut down here to be sold for scrap.

In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced here, transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of vivid slides. More…

The Noun Project Uncovers the Designers Behind Our Universal Symbols

Published on December 29, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 1 Comment

From Co.Design…

Pop quiz: who designed the instantly-recognizable, universal symbol for “recycle”? Yeah, we didn’t know either — until we consulted The Noun Project, a brilliant site that’s part design utility, part history lesson. Not only can you download any of these icons and symbols for free, the site also pops up a neat little factoid for each one. (“Recycle” was designed by Gary Anderson in 1970, by the way.)

Edward Boatman launched The Noun Project via Kickstarter with a simple goal: to build a site for “sharing, celebrating and enhancing the world’s visual language.” Apparently it was an idea the web was waiting for, because Boatman has already received more than double the project’s original budget of $1500. (The site itself looks great too, thanks to Scott Thomas, who also designed our very own Co.Design.)

The just-plain-usefulness of the site is obvious to anyone who’s ever used CopyPasteCharacter, a similar compendium of typographical symbols. But the addition of historical tidbits is what makes The Noun Project more than a handy utility — it’s like a design-history wikipedia to lose yourself in. The biohazard symbol was designed by Dow? Who knew? More…

The War on Cameras: It has never been easier—or more dangerous—to record the police

Published on December 9, 2010 in News. 1 Comment

From Reason Magazine…

Michael Allison, a 41-year-old backyard mechanic from southeastern Illinois, faces up to 75 years in prison for an act most people don’t realize is a crime: recording public officials.

Allison lives in Bridgeport, Illinois, and often spends time at his mother’s house in Robinson, one county to the north. Both towns have abandoned property (or “eyesore”) ordinances prohibiting the parking of inoperable or unregistered vehicles on private property except in enclosed garages. These rules place a substantial burden on hobbyists like Allison; to obey the law he must either build a garage—which he says isn’t an option, given his property and his income—or register, plate, and pay insurance on every car he fixes up, even though he never drives them on public roads. So Allison kept working on his cars, and the city of Bridgeport kept impounding them: in 2001, 2003, and 2005. More…

Picture perfect

Published on December 8, 2010 in News. 1 Comment

From The Economist…

The point of the always-connected internet is that your devices would all speak to one another wherever you went. You wouldn’t need to be in the loop. Up-to-date information would pop up of its own accord whenever you woke your phone or other gizmo, banishing “update” or “check for new messages”. In practice, only email, contacts and calendars seem this well tied in, and even that only with certain services on certain phones. (The exception may be the new Windows Phone 7 which spools in social-networking, among other things, and provides the results at a glance in a dashboard-style display.)

There is, however, one device that provides a glimpse of the brave new world: the Eye-Fi, a digital camera storage and networking card. Made by a firm of the same name, it is a clever and compact combination of a CPU, storage, and Wi-Fi radio, all bundled into a Secure Digital (SD) camera card. The Eye-Fi transfers pictures using Wi-Fi networks as you take them. It is opportunistic: whenever an appropriate Wi-Fi network appears, it takes action based on your pre-set preferences. No further intervention is required. It works with any camera, functioning independently so long as the device is powered up. A nifty trick allows the card’s own computer to feed off a trickle of power fed to SD cards. More…

Animals by May Mantell

Published on December 6, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 1 Comment

Interview by Rosecrans Baldwin at The Morning News…

TMN: Your animals seem very unlucky to have been born on the same planet as humans. I take it you’re not a hunter? Is the series politically motivated?

MM: No, I’m not a hunter! Originally, the work was not at all politically motivated, though now I think there is a political resonance that I’m beginning to give some weight to. But, I’m not trying to make any sweeping statements or accusations, and I’m not against hunting. However, it strikes me as a cruel circumstance oftentimes for the animal, and particularly for the ones killed just for sport. They are often at an incredible disadvantage when it comes to human tactics and technologies. The same goes for road kill—the speeding cars are beyond the comprehension of most. Just the mention of road kill generally conjures chuckles from humans, which I think of as most likely a nervous acknowledgement of the obvious imbalance.

TMN: Most of the animals you photograph are dead. I get a sense of poetry from the images—a sense of eulogy—but there’s also a strong sense of some colder documentation, of recording the hand of bad luck or inevitability (fate?) in their deaths. Am I way off the mark? More…