Larson and Shindelman have been commissioned by FORMAT festival to continue their project- 'Geolocation'- in the UK. Geolocation is a project that involves looking at peoples twitters and using the embedded geotag information in each tweet to visit the exact site that they made it and photograph there.
They describe this process as 'taking virtual moments and pulling them back into the physical world.'
This project is an example of what Baudrillard describes as the third order of simulation- the code. Everything is now made of codes in a sense; a tweet could be seen as a code because people are breaking their experiences and lives down to 140 character statuses. They are also embedded with codes, one being the information that pinpoints them to a specific location in the world. By creating photographs of these places, Larson and Shindelman are contrasting a real experience with a virtual, simulated experience that only exists within the code.
In this image, for example, the tweet could have taken place in any gym, anywhere in the world. The photograph anchors it to this particular street, which people who live in the area would recognize. It also adds an element of humour, with the 'Humps for 1/2 mile' sign included and referencing the sexual nature of the tweet, almost mocking the authors sincerity.
No comments:
Post a Comment