1.4 Tribute: Filtering history

I swear I didn't choose this because it wasn't listed in the possible topics and I felt offended, I swear! Okay maybe I did.

Here is my cliché story that photography has been with me since I was quite a little boy, it was and has grown on me like my arms, legs and head. Bottom line of the story is, photography is a medium familiar to everyone. It's been around for such a long time that even the oldest person on the planet knows about it, our cognitively advanced children as well, but they will have no idea why the camera's on their phone make such a cool 'click-gzsweee' noise.

Greek and Chinese philosophers were already dabbling with optics and the camera obscura in the 4th and 5th century, and according to some their ancestors before them. This is because a camera obscura does not use a difficult mechanism nor theory, if you wake up in your room, sometimes you even create them by accident by closing your windows in such a way that a tiny sliver of light can still pass through. The first captured image that made it into modern history however was probably made by Joseph Niepce in 1814, it was a barely recognizable. After this, development in photography went relatively quick, from acid treated metal plates to film roll, to digital image sensors.

My project is like a small interactive part of history, where I chose to take what modern society likes so much and cast history in this mould: filters. I went and created a filter for many of the different aesthetics that came with new techniques in the history of photography.

The final idea is to have a setup, much like the TV Buddha (Nam June Paik) where a loop is playing of all these filters, of course you can stand before the camera and gaze at yourself. The loop will continue with you in it, being filtered. Of course the idea is that finally the audience will snap a picture of them in a filter and thus the continuous flow of photographic history is captured and continued. Of course, website viewers will be able to follow a livestream of the exhibited work somewhere online.

'Filtering History'