Here is a transcript from a Q&A I did with a journalist from the Austin Chronicle before my talk at SXSW 2014 on 'How visual life logging is changing photography':
AC: What are the implications of visual life logging at this scale?
DMc: Great question. I think for the amateur life logger, life logging at this scale can be daunting and frankly a difficult task to navigate. The implications are quite clear: how will mainstream loggers cope with big data on this level and are there sufficient smart tools to manage the creative outputs? My own experience has highlighted a real need to connect different tracking apps to my Autographer so I can get a more complete picture.
AC: How has it changed your interactions with people in daily life?
DMc: People always ask what and why I am doing it. There is always a look of curiosity and slight apprehension. A market stall trader was visibly upset I was logging my interaction with her. A colleague pointedly turned away from me in meeting. Tube commuters eyed me suspiciously. And family and friends laughed nervously about my nerdy project. Generally my visual life logging was slightly divisive and parked in the weird box when discussed. My everyday interactions took on a different halo when logging.
AC: When did you begin?
DMc: I started a bit later than expected – back in November. I pre-ordered a Narrative Clip (aka Memoto) but it’s shipment was seriously delayed so I ended up with my alternative choice: the Autographer. Which on reflection was the best outcome, I have been really pleased with the Autographer. I confess that my logging has been inconsistent partly down to my user experience of visual life logging. I have found myself making active decisions to choose when and where not to wear it.
AC: Why did you start the project?
DMc: I have always been intrigued by the promise of the quantified self and the extremes of photography; in the way you can document objectivity and craft new truths through storytelling. The combination of both is quite powerful. Thinking about photos as data is also interesting in its own right. In my day job I spend a lot of time thinking how content travels through networks. Photos are like sponges, taking on new data as they travel through the web, tags, likes, comments: this additional data can shape a new meta narrative beyond the original photo. I guess at a simple level, as someone who takes a lot of photos anyway, I wanted to search for the boundaries of understanding and capturing the reality of what ‘capturing every moment of your life’ actually means.
AC: How long do you suspect it will continue?
DMc: As a project I think it has a natural shelf life, but as another way of capturing the moments that matter I think it will continue as long as I enjoy photography. I don’t see that stopping soon!
AC: Do wearable cameras help you make ‘more of the moment’?
DMc: With smartphones and normal cameras, you basically stop and interrupt the moment to capture it. Or if you are very lucky you have captured it with near partial interruption. But you have still mentally stopped and said you will capture that moment. Alternatively you could choose to fully experience the moment unfettered by any recording device. Are you paying more attention to a moment when you are actively capturing it or is your experience of the moment spiritually diminished by the fact you contaminated the moment’s purity by recording it? No easy answers on this one – and entirely depends on your starting philosophical position.
Of course, the promise of visual life logging is that you are freed from this dilemma. In a way you can enjoy the best of both worlds – capturing and experiencing moments at the same time. But something tells me this is a false promise. The reality is you have a diluted privilege of experiencing both the colour of the moment and the benefit of passively documenting the event. But, and this is the key artistic point, documented without an active narrative of your own design. For me this compromises the magic of photography.
AC: Why ‘do I do photography’? What do you get out of it?
DMc: Great question. I got into photography relatively late, but it was at the very start of the digital era. My first camera was Canon’s first digital SLR – a 300d back in 2001. I remember the feeling of instant payback of trying to capture the perfect shot. I liked the editing process just as much as shooting. And still do. But over the years the ambition for getting ‘the perfect shot’ has passed to a search for collection rather than perfection.
I ‘do photography’ because fundamentally I am a collector, rather than an artist. I guess I am bit more of an Atget than a Cartier Bresson – which is weird because Henri is one of my photographic heroes. His theory of ‘the decisive moment’ is one I subscribe to. I like the idea of collecting genres of situations and objects I experience. I like the idea of a life’s mission spent on collection. The best photography brief for me is the flaneur brief of go seek and collect. The act of collection is a creative process of course, making active choices to compose the moment you are capturing.
I get inspired when I hear stories like that of Vivian Maier – the anonymous French amateur photographer who documented life with such perspective and beauty. She was a visual life logger. Of course, not in the way we now understand it. But perhaps in the way it should be. A journey through life collecting halo moments.
AC: What will you do with all the logged photos you have collected?
DMc: Good question, not sure yet. At the moment all of them are archived using Autographer’s proprietary image management software. I can filter for shots by custom tags, location and different camera selections. I have analysed data for any ‘signature aesthetics’ and found a few. I am interested to use the archive as a ‘mirror’ to my other photography to see how each collection is developing.
My perfect solution to this question is the (yet to be invented!) Life Curation Agent. An intelligent cloud curation and archiving system that can use a self learning curation engine to algorithmically make sense of and exhibit your images. Searching for anomalies, halos and signature events. Surfacing moments serendipitously to reflect on and generate auto share moment albums.
At this stage I am not interested in the idea of making an art project out of it. Although this may change as I go down the rabbit hole even further!
