“Phototrails (2013) is a research project that uses media visualization techniques for exploring visual patterns, dynamics and structures in user generated photos.”
-http://phototrails.net/
Thus, this is a research post about a work that is about research. RECEPTION! (Okay it’s a bad joke…)
The Phototrails collections are series of vibrant visual compositions created by Lev Manovich. Using appropriated images from various social media, Manovich creates a variety of distinctive and stunning imageries in various form that narrate different ideas.
” I definitely think of some of these visualizations as “film,”
and my “films” are made up of downloaded visuals, in
which you can then make multiple “films” out of. Depending on our visualization strategy, when compared with traditional documentary filmmaking, is that the kind of narrative you
can get is very, very different. “
-Painting with Data: A Conversation with Lev Manovich
by Randall Packer
While Manovich may have intended political and social undertones in Phototrails, what piques my interest the most is how he create narratives. According to Manovich himself, he definitely sees his artworks as a medium to tell stories like a film. It is a unique way to of “film-making” considering most of his visual medium are literally “found objects” and are all non-moving images. Thus, such technique contradicts the convention of cinematic films. However, this is not the first time an artist employ still images (photography) for narrative films.
La Jetee (1962) is a film that used photographs, voice-over, sounds, and music to tell the story of a dystopic future.
The peculiar element of Phototrails lies in its irregularity and unpredictability. The artist did not hand-pick the photographs individually but rather a cluster of similarly theme images. It’s like hitting something into Google image search and collecting all the consequent results. He do however, juxtapose certain images that he was particularly fond off in order to suit his work.
“I am an artist who is trying to find visual forms, which would represent what I see as central structures or central themes, relationships between individuals taken from random behaviour.”
All the photos were arranged in specific way to generate forms of helix, radial, etc. Aesthetically, they resembles whirlpools and vortexes of photographs of various nature (intimate, public, urban, rural, selfies, groupies, etc). It could subliminally suggest the current situation of our social media tendencies — we are excessively engrossed in our cyber world that we have more “life” online than in reality. Visually, Phototrails could suggests that we were all sucked into the virtual black hole and have been stagnant as a singularity of anti-privacy ever since.
As explicit as the photos could spell out commentaries of the current social or political situation of specific places. The possibly hidden message of this work could be the fascinating (or depressing, depends on how you look at it) fact that we, users of social media, have imprisoned ourselves in cyber cells. How many of us can “survive” a week without using the internet? How many of us can even survive an hour without checking on Facebook?
Even soldiers in the middle of bullet hails don’t hestitate to post a video of their antics on Youtube. Priorities?
Is this one reason why we human are becoming more jaded towards on another outside of the social media? Could your vibrant activities online suggest a stronger imprisonment within the cyber black hole? Only the users themselves will know. I personally are definitely serving life-sentence in cyberspace. I have a get-out key with me that allows me to get out anytime I want. But even if I do leave, I’ll definitely be going back in again.