I’m intrigued by a few examples I’ve come across lately that downgrade (to an interesting effect) the visual to the textual.

On Twitter, two feeds that take image-specific services and simply describe them in a few words.

• PicturelessPinterest offers “The best of Pinterest without having to look at the pictures.” (sample tweets: Overexposed picture of a bride walking through a white hallway; A recipe for rhubarb-lemon curd yogurt; Dining room table set up on a beach)
• Text-Only Instagram is “Your personal Instagram feed in a lightweight text format.” (sample tweets: Tilt-shift fortune cookie; Latte with foam shaped like a heart; Four self-portraits of a teenage girl separated by white lines.)

Descriptive Camera is a camera that captures an image and then obtains a typed description of the contents. Example: Looks like a cupboard which is ugly and old having name plates on it with a study lamp attached to it.

After the shutter button is pressed, the photo is sent to Mechanical Turk for processing and the camera waits for the results. A yellow LED indicates that the results are still “developing” in a nod to film-based photo technology. With a HIT price of $1.25, results are returned typically within 6 minutes and sometimes as fast as 3 minutes. The thermal printer outputs the resulting text in the style of a polaroid print.

I love people hacking together some bit of technology (or a technology-enabled experience) to drive just a bit of reflection on what we might take for granted.

Bonus deconstruction: garfield minus garfield

• Gathering insights by having people hand write their stories [DMI News & Views] – Asking people to tell us stories has repeatedly proven to be a rich and productive avenue for important insights. We ask people to tell us a story about a relevant event or experience. For instance, tell me about the last time you baked something from scratch. Or tell me about the last time you purchased a car. We try not to set too many rules or give too much guidance. We let them determine where the story will begin. This, after all, is what we are looking for. We ask for the story to be in writing—and ideally the story will be handwritten, if the logistics permit. We ask for the story to be as descriptive as possible—and we ask that the story be illustrated with pictures (hand drawn stick people or cuttings from magazines or from the Internet).
• 100 Records: Project turns on fictional jackets [SFgate.com] – Exhibiting as "100 Records", Sonny Smith, a San Francisco musician, artist and writer, commissioned nearly 100 artists from around the world to create the artwork for 100 45 rpm record jackets that represent more than 60 fictional bands and singers.

I was in Denver recently for a 10-day stint doing fieldwork. It was a long enough trip that, in addition to conducting interviews and spending time with our clients (who participated in more than half of the fieldwork sessions and some great after-work meals), I had a chance to do some exploring on my own. Here’s a short photojournal of some things that caught my eye…

Cruising by the map store.

Getting out in nature.

Asking our waitress about her tattoo.

Indoor sky diving!

Drive-through liquor store.

A lonely train.

Grills and gold teeth.




Enjoy your stay! Safety warnings on the TV in my room.

I went down to the crossroads (but didn’t get down on my knees, because it was too damn cold!)

Books left on floor, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA

Notice in school bus window, Pacifica, CA

Sign, Bonny Doon, CA

Sign, San Jose, CA

Sign, San Francisco, CA

Posters, San Francisco, CA

6-panel strip on telephone pole, Chicago, IL

Related Posts:
Framed Framework/Conceptual Art
Words
The End of Things

CatCam was making the rounds recently. It’s nice to see this finally realized as a product, even with a good measure of humor. At my old firm, we delivered a concept that was very similar to this. It seemed like a “good” idea but in hindsight it’s not clear how it really connected to any of our research or was appropriate for the client. Ah, youth.

The pet-mounted camera would randomly snap pics throughout the day, when you got to the images, you’d see what s/he had been up to while you were at work. We called it Dog Day Afternoon and we were quite proud of that.

I’ve been holding this post til I dug up the drawing I did (something I was quite proud of, with my lack of training in illustration) but it’s not in my archives. But seeing that Nicolas Nova blogged about another pet camera (Wonderful Shot) I guess this will have to do.

I’ve finally finished posting 269355 pictures from Hong Kong. I put every one most of them through Photoshop and tweaked and optimized and cropped. Uploaded ’em all to flickr, tagged ’em, titled ’em, wrote a description, and sent them to various groups. No wonder it’s taken more than three weeks.

Still to come is Bangkok and India.

Here are just a few samples.

Sorta Tasty Snax

Schoolgirls and Bag-Noodles To Go

Panties on the Street

Burning Incense closeup

White Eyeglasses Frames

Busy Signs

Beware of Pickpocket

I’m slowly posting photos over at flickr into this set. I think there’s over 70 there as I write this, with an enormous amount still to come.

Here is a blog from someone that went from a vegan diet to a highly artificial diet. For a period of time, supposedly ending in April they ate all sorts of crap and logged it, and their general health and other thoughts. I dare you to look at the pictures they took of their stool. Yes, poop.

Gross.