Thank you Alex Cox

When I was a teenager (which suddenly seems a very long time ago) there was a show on BBC called Moviedrome. I say show, but really it was more of an introduction to a weekly movie, one which felt hand picked by the host, Alex Cox (even though they weren't). It introduced me to many films and set up my video library for art college. Here's the full listing - brilliantly eclectic, some utter gems on there (the Alex Cox list is at the end).

I was reminded of Moviedrome as I watched Brazil on an AirFrance flight the other day and it reminded me of what an impact that film had on me. It got me thinking about how there are a handful of films that I saw in the late 80's early 90's, (not necessary the greatest films or even my favourite films) but ones that some how left their mark on me.

Here are my big 3:
Brazil
Subway
Blade Runner

3 more that have a special place in my heart:
Le Grande Bleu
Fitzcarraldo
Rumble Fish

And 3 more that always come to mind that I saw around the same time:
Il Grande Silenzio
They live
Repo Man


Here's the Alex Cox list from his time as host of Moviedrome (lifted from http://www.kurtodrome.net/moviedrome.htm )

1988

The Wicker Man 
Electra Glide in Blue
Diva
Razorback
Big Wednesday
Fat City
The Last Picture Show
Barbarella
The Hired Hand
Johnny Guitar
The Parallax View
The Long Hair of Death
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
The Fly (1958)
One From The Heart
The Man Who Fell To Earth
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
One-Eyed Jacks

1989

The Man With The X-Ray Eyes
Jabberwocky
D.O.A.
The Thing From Another World
The Incredible Shrinking Man
California Dolls
THX 1138
Stardust Memories 
Night of the Comet
The Grissom Gang
The Big Carnival (Ace in the Hole)
Alphaville
Two-Lane Blacktop
Trancers
The Buddy Holly Story
Five Easy Pieces
Sweet Smell of Success
Sunset Boulevard

1990

Assault on Precinct 13
Brazil
Get Carter 
Goin’ South
Dead of Night
The Terminator
The Honeymoon Killers
Ulzana's Raid
The Loved One
An American Werewolf in London 
Yojimbo
A Wedding
The Phenix City Story
Walk on the Wild Side
Il Grande Silenzio
Quien sabe?

1991

The Beguiled
Vamp
Knightriders 
Something Wild
Carnival of Souls
Badlands / The Prowler
Performance
At Close Range
The Duellists / Cape Fear (duels)
The Music Lovers
Manhunter
Hells Angels on Wheels / Rumble Fish (gangs)
Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? 
Solaris
Mishima

1992

Mad Max II / F for Fake
Dead Ringers / Rabid  (Cronenberg)
Inserts
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Les Diaboliques
La Strategia del Ragno
Escape from New York
Alligator / Q - The Winged Serpent
Wise Blood / The Witchfinder General
Lolita
Play Misty For Me
Walker
Tracks
The Day of the Locust / The Big Knife (Hollywood satires) 

1993

Darkman
House of Games
Escape from Alcatraz / Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (prison) 
The Hill
Cry-Baby / Lenny
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)  / Romance of a Horsethief
Gothic/ The Navigator
The Terminator
Get Carter / Week-end
Rebel Without A Cause / 200 Motels
Django  / Grim Prairie Tales
Run of the Arrow / Verboten! (Fuller)
The Long Riders
The Big Combo
Face to Face 
Requiescant 
Qué he heche yo para merecer esto? 
Carrie

1994 (Alex Cox's final year)

The Andromeda Strain  / Fiend Without A Face
Talk Radio
Carnal Knowledge
Coogan’s Bluff  / The Narrow Margin
The Harder They Come
Salvador
The People Under the Stairs
Halloween  / The Baby
Carny
Girl on a Motorcycle / Psychomania (motorcycles) 
Race with the Devil / Detour (keep death on the road) 
Rope / 84 Charlie Mopic (experimental filming)
To Sleep with Anger / Le Mépris
Excalibur / Nothing Lasts Forever
Naked Tango / Apartment Zero (Buenos Aires)
Major Dundee / Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah) 
Kiss Me Deadly

What do 1000 images mean?

Questions

When I posted my 1000 images from Instagram I posed the following questions:

  • What do they say about me? 
  • Is there an agenda or story that they are obviously spinning?
  • How long did I spend taking, choosing and posting them? 
  • How long did I spend viewing them and tracking the likes and comments?
  • How much energy did they use (are they using)?
  • How many minutes of the worlds collective time have been spent looking at them? 
  • Has anyone else seen them all? 

I haven't even come close to understanding how to answer most these especially as I can't get the complete data out of Instagram, so I can only give some measurements and guestimates and postulations. With the deeper ones I can only share my thoughts. But first the easier ones...

Physically in the digital realm

Pixels covered: 374,544,000 pixels or 374.5 Megapixels

That's a pretty big image. The best layout I found was to do a 40x25 grid (see here). Which gives you an full size image that is 24480x15300 pixels. So depending on your preference (if you print it at 300dpi or 72dpi) it gives you a poster that's either 81.6x51 inches (207x130 cm approx) or 340x212.5 inches (863x540 cm approx). Lets go with 72dpi for now, thats around 30 A4 sheets of paper.

So if we change the layout to fit better on an ipad (1 directional scrolling)...
On an old iPad thats means scrolling or paging the screen almost 600 times (1 image high)
Compared to only 150 times on a new retina iPad (2 images high)
Either way that's quite an effort.

Disk space used: 110.8 MB

Which in todays terms is a trivial amount of data, but it would have been a lot of floppy disks. But more importantly it would have taken some considerable time to download over a 56k Modem. Thankfully that doesn't matter much in Northern Europe anymore. But it does in some places and there are times on my mobile when it still sucks. But it's nothing compared to the time needed to view the images.

Time - is tricky (as ever)

So if you were to read the 1 million words these images are supposed to represent, it would take anywhere between 60 and 86 hours (200 or 250 words per minute, source) unless you are World champion speed reader Anne Jones then it will only take you about 4 hours!

But that's silly, what is it really like to view an image on Instagram, how long do I look at an image? So I had a little experiment and have decided that the following incredibly vague and approximate measures will do.

I spend probably 1 second at most to view (or scan) an image, that is enough to see who posted it and assess whether it appeals to me. If it appeals to me I engage with it further, I even read the caption and comments but still only about 5 seconds. If I properly engage with it and even write a comment, then maybe a whole 10 seconds. Not long really, not exactly deep sounding either, but that's the nature of social media - it's snacking and poking and general twitchiness. Now I only have 83 followers and only maybe 20 that probably see every picture (yep, definitely not a social media god). Anyway if they were scanning the pics in the most basic way it would have cost them 28 minutes each (38hours 45mins collective time gone). For those who actually engaged with each image 2hours 20mins each (so lets just use the 20 core followers - that's still 45 hours blown). 

So how long did I spend making these 1000 images, not long at all. If I'd used film and a 35mm camera I'd of spent time choosing the shot, framing it, waiting for the moment, talking the shot, developing it and then printing that perfect print. As it is I take 1000's more pictures that I deem instagramable, even such a disposable media has my built in quality control in overtime. But I can't even begin to guestimate how long I spent capturing each image, they vary so much. Some are quick from the hip and straight to the feed, others waited for, shot and reshot, tweaked in Snapseed, cropped, 'effected' and carefully captioned and tagged. So I've decided to just look at the process. If I can post, without error or changing of my mind, then it takes around 30 seconds per image - thats over 8 hours work, a whole days work!

Energy

I don't know how I can calculate the energy used for this, but it would be very interesting to get a sense of the energy for a single pic, or even 1000. The energy cost of cloud services and mobile seems very remote to the end user, out of sight and out of mind. I think there's a lot of work needed to surface those costs. Here's a link to an interesting piece on the subject. 

The deeper questions

What do all these images mean, is there a message or an agenda? For me they are the hard questions to answer. Where stats and data always fall short. I've played the designer/artist in the past and everything I created had to be driven by meaning and have a reason to exist, I was never happy with simple aesthetic values, there always had to be more. But with these, and at this time it's not so clear. I definitely have a a reason for this, it might not be a particularly good one or even outwardly known, it might not even be a conscious one, but it's there.

However I think I'm going to save the messy psychological analysis on why I feel the need to share these images with strangers (and friends). I'll leave it for another post along with the content and subjects as they are so intrinsically linked to the why - for now it's a lot easier to hide behind the stats.

1000 images

374.5 Megapixels (size)

30 A4 sheets (printed)

110.8 MB (disk space)

28 minutes - 38hours 45mins collective time (to view)

8 hours work (to make)

previous posts found under mgm1000images

A growing problem with Pareidolia

Or more realistically a slight interest is finding 'things with faces'. Here's my collection (from instagram) of things I've spotted/found that I think have a 'face'. This is an ever growing image pool and if you start finding them that's it, you'll be hooked. 

Check out the thousands more on instagram and twitter, tagged as #thingswithfaces, #pareidolia, #iseefaces etc.

Here's the link if you want to keep track of the gallery: http://paperposts.me/things-with-faces

The Ornithology of Managers

Many years ago I was working with a few guys and we came up with the idea of mapping Project Managers to birds, but to be honest it works for any manager. Here it is 'The Ornithology of Managers'.

The Woodpecker - stands beside you constantly pestering you and asking 'is it done yet'.

The Albatross - circles way up yonder, crapping in your eye whenever you look up to see where they are.

The Kiwi - arrives from a far off place and is barely recognizable in form or function.

The Seagull - swoops in depositing shit all over the place.

The Penguin - fucking useless, but makes you smile.

The Lovebird - thinks that flattery and getting up close and personal will bend you to their will.

The Peregrine Falcon - moves so fast that you didn't see them coming and now you’re totally fucked.

The Christmas Turkey - stuffed by the new year.

The Robin - small plucky and very territorial, will fight to the death before backing down.

The Tawny Owl - wise and serene but merciless when it matters.

The Vulture - flys in at the end and strips you down to the bone.

The Peacock - struts around making a lot of noise about who they are.

And lastly The Ostrich - yep you guessed it, buries their head in the sand until everything goes wrong, at which point they turn and run like the wind.

Did you spot anyone familiar in the list above?

 

The seagull painting cover image is by eastwitching http://etsy.me/1kj9As0

 

Here are my 1000 images

Here are the 1000 click on it for a slightly bigger - 100px sq instagrams (via flickr)

And here are a bunch of stats from statigram.

This is richer than the quilt as it adds the narrative of time but still lacks any real depth. I can't help but think of the project by Paul Thompson '1000 words' where 4 writers supplied the 1000 word for 4 images. http://www.paulthompsonstudio.com/thousand-words/

That's real depth, from quality content and talented individuals.

So what else can I do...

well here's the video version... still not too interesting yet, just the raw mechanics.