PHOTOGRAPHS OF A TRAVEL THROUGH EUROPE, TO BE DIGITALLY DISTRIBUTED, DELETED, AND RE-CONNECTED WITH THE THREAD OF A TAG AND THE NEEDLE OF A SEARCH-ENGINE (OR: XIU XIU TOUR PHOTO PROJECT #???***)
IN MAY AND JUNE 2010 A TRIP WILL OCCUR FROM NEW YORK TO ABERDEEN, TRAVELING THROUGH NORTHERN SCOTLAND INTO THE ORKNEYS AND THE SHETLAND ISLANDS, TO LONDON*, AND THEN PARIS, TO BERLIN TO MEET UP WITH XIU XIU ON PART OF THEIR EUROPEAN TOUR**, AND TO AMSTERDAM TO FLY BACK TO NEW YORK.
- Photographs will be made on this travel using a digital camera.
- Anyone can sign up to receive one of these photographs.
- All photographs will be e-mailed out. Each person will receive a unique photograph. A different photograph for each person.
- Once all the photographs are sent out, I will delete my copies of the files. You will have the only file, unless you copy it.
- I will also send a special tag for the photographs. For those who have a blog, flickr, tumblr, facebook, etc... (any kind of platform that allows the uploading of files), you can upload the photograph with this tag.
- All photos that are uploaded with the tag (on a site with a public setting) can be found by searching for this tag. The photographs that are not uploaded, or uploaded without the tag (or with a private setting), will not be seen.
- Imagine this: a body of photographs from a travel through Europe. Maybe a couple hundred photographs. All scattered and dispersed across the internet on various blogs and other kinds of sites. All of these, tagged with the same tag, are then reconnected through the search engine. The search results page becomes a kind of exhibition space.
TO SIGN UP TO RECEIVE A PHOTOGRAPH, SEND AN EMAIL TO: anyonecansignup@gmail.com
- in the subject write: "SEND ME A PHOTOGRAPH"
- if you want a photograph of Xiu Xiu write: "SEND ME A XIU XIU PHOTOGRAPH"
IF YOU DO NOT WANT A PHOTOGRAPH, BUT WANT TO KNOW THE TAG, SEND AN EMAIL TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS WITH THE SUBJECT: "TAG PLEASE"
note: This is not my normal e-mail account. I will only check this when I am ready to send out the photographs. PHOTOGRAPHS WILL PROBABLY BE SENT OUT IN JUNE, SO BE PATIENT. Please don't write me an email to this account, it may not be read. If you want to email me, send it to the one listed on: www.davidhorvitz.com
-
NOTE: I do not know how many photographs I will shoot. I will try to shoot for as many people that sign up. However, if I am overwhelmed, this will be a first come first serve basis.
-
To make sense of what I mean in the above: the thread of the tag and the needle of the search engine, here: I am metaphorically referring to the tag as a kind of thread - a way of weaving through a vast a mount of information, connecting similar files that exist independently of each other on different web-sites across the internet (though, can we even say things can exist independently of each other on the internet?). I call the search-engine the needle mostly to connect it to the idea of the thread.The tag and the search-engine, like the needle and the thread, depend on each other in this understanding.
-
*I will be in London for a project organized for Rhizome for the No Soul For Sale event at the Tate Modern.
**The Xiu Xiu tour-dates I will be on are as follows:
May 2010
22 - Berlin, Germany @ Hebbel Am Ufer - HAU 2
23 - Poznan, Poland @ TBA
24 - Warsaw, Poland @ Powieszenie
26 - Vienna, Austria @ WUK
27 - Graz, Austria @ Postgarage
28 - Budapest, Hungary @ A38
29 - Ljubljana, Slovenia @ KINO SISKA
30 - Zagreb, Croatia @ ZENDO UHO Festival
31 - Nuernberg, Germany @ K4
June 2010
1 - Frankfurt, Germany @ Brotfabrik
*** This is alternately titled: XIU XIU TOUR PHOTO PROJECT #???. For those of you are are unfamiliar with my past projects with the band Xiu Xiu, who are my dear friends, here is a brief and quick summary: In the past I had traveled with the band on their North American tours. While on tour I conducted different photography projects involving interactions with their fans. For the Polaroid Projects, I asked fans to bring in unopened boxes of polaroid film and a self addressed stamped envelope. I would shoot the polaroids on the tour, and mail them back to the people who had given me the film (ALL FOR FREE). Roughly 2,000 polaroids exist scattered around North America from these tours. A simi liar project was with disposable cameras that attendees of the shows brought to me. Here, I would mail the camera back before the film was developed (making it highly probable that I or the band would never see the photographs). Both of these projects can relate to the current project in the sense that a specific body of work (photographs shot on a specific trip) was made, and then scattered/dispersed over a geographic location. The last photo project I did with the band was attempting to shoot a portrait of every attendee of the shows, and uploading them all to the internet.
Below is a photograph from a disposable camera found online, Xiu Xiu drummer Ches Smith:
-
Something else relevant: Last Year I Made This Post (yes, I am aware that this is really stupid):
Before I made the post nothing existed in image-search results for the number 24154903.
This is a google image search now.
Note the domain name and the products - I have nothing to do with those - they were created after by someone who I do not know.
IDEA: to create a very specific tag that filters out all information, only leaving very specific content. Obviously, there are many ways for this to be subverted and contaminated. Someone can use the tag to upload something else. Room for subversion is good, but what happens when it is not someone's creative interference, when it is someone using the tag to advertise?