Response To Nick's Work

This response is being posted on behalf of Ryan due to technical difficulties

The response to Instagram has been overwhelming not only on the consumer side but to the academic mind as well. It seems that I haven't had class this semester at some point in the hour we end up talking about Instagram. I believe this be for two reasons, one, the social network side of the app and two, the nostalgic filters and how they function in our current culture. For myself the interest the lies in the social networking aspect of Instagram. It's the ability to share ones thoughts and views through the use of images and apply a filter to either obscure it or heighten it. Slowly but surely more and more artists are using Instagram as a database in making art, whether its mixing a single image with multiple filters till the image is no more or appropriating images from Instagram by doing simple word searches. With regards to Nick's work he took an approach that I have yet to see when making art in the context of Instagram.

            When I first started looking at Nick's four images, all four images looked to be bad light leaks from the camera. The images where very small about the size of a medium format negative. Which is the actual size of an Instagram image. So at first I thought they were contact prints and it wasn't until Nick said they were from Instagram that I became more aware of the intent of the images. By looking at what was in front of me I would of never thought these images where from Instagram. They looked like photographs I use to take with my Holga camera with the mixture of whites and oranges in the images. Nick grouped his four images into two double sided glass frames with black edges, each frame had two images in it with the images stacked vertically upon one another. For myself framing the images this way treated the images like precious objects that are to viewed almost on a scientific level. What I mean by this, it reminds of going to museums and viewing the large butterfly’s that are collected for research. When I think of Instagram, I think of it as a large database of images of ones lives in images and don't think this type of framing works with images taken or made on Instagram.

             When thinking about Instagram and how it functions as an application on a smart phone I had to go back and read Lev Manovich “The Language of New Media” specifically chapter two. It deals not only with GUI (graphic user interface) but also the function of cut and paste. The filters in Instagram are really the same as the filters in Photoshop, click and paste. A person just doesn't have the options to get into the detail of the image but one can download or purchase filters for photoshop and those filters will work the same as in Instagram. Instagram's filters are a cut and paste function but where people come to a divide seems to be the labeling of the filters which goes into the nostalgic language of photography. To myself the labels are really nothing more than apart of GUI of Instagram. It's how the filters make the photo look and feel that draws my interest and how amateur photographers choose to use these filters.

            Ultimately I feel Instagram is about the continual building of a database of images that is taking place all the time and what we can draw from the images. In regards to Nicks work I think there have to be more images and what I mean more, is hundreds of images. This I feel would show the simplicity of the filter and how nostalgia can now be easily applied. Nick could keep the same basic image and simply remix it over and over but how those images would be displayed could be thousands of images laid upon the floor.