Italian version
.art
12.07.04 Sent: an exhibition of phonecam pictures.
Is the medium used enough to define an artistic practice? That is, does it make sense to look for unifying characteristics in artistic expressions which share only the medium used? Probably not, but in the history of electronic art the first steps of a new medium were often lumped together based on this criterium (an example is computer graphics in the late Eighties and early Nineties). The number of 'Phonecams', cell phones equipped with a digital camera, has reached a critical mass enough to be considered a separate medium, with their technical limits which influence the results and their portability which encourages a natural use. Sent is the first exhibition of pictures taken with a phonecam. It's made of two parts: the organizers asked a small number of artists to realize an art work using a phonecam and put up a blog to encourage public debate, giving an award to the five best pictures sent by the users. Curated by Xeni Jardin, Sean Bonner and Caryn Coleman, it opens an apparent contradiction between emphasizing the democratization of photography thanks to the immediate availability of a camera and the sharp distinction between 'artists' and 'users'. Every picture will nonetheless be available both in the Sixspace gallery of Los Angeles and online, where everybody can enjoy them. The low resolution and the extreme sensitivity even in low light, together with the approximation of the colours and hues, probably due to the compression algorithms, gives them a low-tech look and feel, reminiscent of the hazy nature of memories.