AGE OF THE CAMERA PHONE BANDIT

THEME: CAMERA PHONE
TITLE: AGE OF THE CAMERA PHONE BANDIT
By Maina Hatchison.

IN 1884, PAUL NIPKOW, a German inventor, professed a new way of sharing captured images as would sound on a transmission medium. This was upheld by Amstutz who stated that indeed pictures could be scanned, reproduced and transferred by wire to a receiving device.

THE DEVICE THESE INVENTORS ENVISIONED was one that could freeze subjects in nature, etch them into representative graphical sculptures that could first be stored at source and later shared within peer consensual cultures.

Mid 1990’s, Philippe Kahn, an American inventor technologist, took the vision an octave higher. He compounded existing phonic, graphic and text transmission technologies into a single platform. Nipkow could not have foreseen that Kahn's impatience for that elusive integrated portable devise capable of both telephone and camera, or, pager-text interchangeable modes could bequeath the planet with a billion unit circulation by 2008.

Dubbed the instant visual communications breakthrough, a mobile phone with a built-in camera could indeed be coupled onto a server protocol allowing instant sharing of pictures with someone else using compatible receiver enabled to display the sent photographs. That sending device - produced as a consumer item – is what came to be known as the camera phone.

Theories on camera phone capability had lain dormant since the 1960's. Digital cameras with cellular capabilities were evident in the 1990's. Video phone wire service prided its staccato frames underlining the flexibility of lone horse un-anchored journalism. While these were favorable pointers to fulfillment of the Amstutz dream, development was stunted by a skeptical market research as to product viability, revenue recoup as well as slow global infrastructure development. Nonetheless, Philippe Kahn is credited with industrial putsch to the early launch of mass produced camera phones for his bold demonstration of June 11, 1997 where he shared instant pictures with 2,000 recipients on a rudimentary rigged apparatus. His act proved the vital break.

It had to be repeated over and over again that the role of the camera phone - as opposed to the digital camera - was its coupling with the duplex phonic functions of the existing mobile phone, that is, tonal and pictorial abilities entwined. Product acceptability was slow because picture resolution was low, ignorance and technology apathy were high, download connecting cables were cumbersome while server upgrades fell short of par.

Archiving per unit memory proved insufficient forcing a continuous delete of pictures to create space for preferable takes. Initial unit prices were also prohibitive. Would be buyers also decried the fact that the camera eye-piece faced the wrong way not allowing chat connectivity as with the cyber web cam. Nobody would have thought that in the space of the next decade, camera phone ownership in the developed world would hit the eighty per cent mark relative to ordinary mobile phones.

Industrial grapevine suggests that Phillipe Kahn sold his integrated camera phone proofs for a measly $270 million. Why he would have settled for such a token tot for a phenomenon product that later defied skepticism to explode into a billion dollar barrel over-spill is neither here nor there. His concept vindicated, the compact gadget soon claimed a niche in the communications market.

The camera phone proved inimitable. Those who had earlier claimed that Kahn had not brought anything new were shocked to note that each and every willing consumer with a Franklin ($100) to spare had been turned into an outside broadcasting (OB)station. A tiny pocket stow item had evolved a metamorphosis of its own not only enhancing the quality of social interaction but inventing a new breed of proselytes to its creed.

Two creeds in fact. The one involved a formal usage where owners could capture social functions, transact business, enforce vigilance, validate story claims, disclaim liability or use as a recreation item.

The other - informal beyond projection - caught up faster, and, especially, among the youth. Fad and fashion strategists initially promoted it as a status symbol. The moment full color animation was replaced with pictorial reality, substitution roles proved aplenty. Clumsy text entry could be obviated by sending a simple picture reminding the recipient of a desired action or visual certainty of tasks accomplished. Gossip majors could not have gotten a better tool to pry their teasing. Intellectual property - paintings especially - could be 'stolen' with a single click while personal privacy within closed bounds became relative.

While this could be claimed of the digital camera, the camera phone's configuration allowed the user latitude unimagined before. Innocent looking text readers needed only point the fish-eyed lens toward a choice subject. To think the camera phone had also acquired a mystical 'Blue-tooth' that obviated use of connecting cables thus allowing for 'transmitting' of pictures to other compatible camera phones or personal computers within a defined locus of a few metres, and, the fact that the very devise was affordable without censure to delinquents, minors and a host of other pathological miscreants was ludicrous. Certainly this was the new idiot box that saw all, told no lies and could transmit our shortcomings as well as outgoings without our consent to a third party.

Every purchase had become a broadcast accredition at our expense. No wonder the elder generation shunned it not wishing to be seen to belong to the lower half of the snoop squawk brigade. All the same, the camera phone was no worse for refining its projected role - sharing of real time images.

Sharing of images stretches back into antiquity. The American Boston and Metropolitan Museums of Fine Art parade images from diverse ages. Commentaries of the unexplained (fierce Oriental gods) preceded those of 'gods in human form' worked by later artists. Both forms were shared with viewers to affirm......

ARTICLE BREAK....

....This high nosed commissioning of aristocratic graphic and sculptures coincided with Greek city states’ evolution into civilized entities. On the other hand, the painting, etching and molding of sculptures depicting ordinary folk in their day to day motions became even more pronounced.Prominent artists loathed to be associated with ordinary pedestrian art. The term ‘higher art’ had to be coined in their favor to refer to all aristocratic commissioned art. In fact, aristocrats despised artists who were known to have stooped low to depict pauper subjects.The most famous of these ordinary folk sculptures were the Tanagra figurines.They featured mainly women and girls smartly or elegantly posed or dancing, sitting, walking, chatting, embracing or playing games.Between 800BC – 500 BC, almost every pose that can be claimed by the modern professional photographer had be sketched, etched or molded into replica figurines. They were mostly shared among peers as gifts the same way modern photographs are exchanged among acquaintances throughout the 20th century.

Sharing did not stop there.

Gift images representative of deceased persona and other votive items were buried with the departed subject- to lie in undisturbed grave until they were discovered in the late 19th century. In Africa, Nok Nigerians fired such figurines. Again, figurines were not restricted to sharing as gifts or burying as votive tributes. They were in themselves molded as complete works kept by their owners much like the modern picture print out.

Notably, the human body had always been conceived by artists as the ideal or perfect creation worth duplicating the finished study being displayed for public viewing. The unclothed human form long became a popular depiction especially in sculpture. Obviously, artists knew that costume fad changed such that art work lost it’s authenticity to class and cultural profiling depending on the preferred attire. Hence – to the artist – the absolute uncorrupted subjects be they paupers or pedigree had to be the nudes. Artistically, this nudity in sculpture and dimensional artwork was collectively displayed to portray a statement that ‘life is beautiful’. A finished body study could only project this unique perfection when unadulterated by fabric cover. None the less, finished sculpture was appraised as a better reality than paintings or etchings.

Besides, in every day to day life, live expressive nudity was common. Nude athletes were prevalent in contemporary amphitheaters. It is however misleading to assume that nude posing was universally sanctioned at such pre-Christian age. Indeed, there was a telling restraint for an intermediate artistic license to be employed to cut a compromise between clothed and unadorned figurines. Thus it became a rule of thumb to expect commission of Tanagra figurines ‘tight robed to reveal the rhythm of the body within’. Sculptors – unlike the photographer –made particular effort to stress the perfect state of the bust, torso per tight robed body by paying particular close detail to limb proportions, torso curves and facial moods, where clothed subjects demanded implication of fad value above that of the raw body, heavy shading in paintings was employed. Artists called it ‘volume’. As stated, dimensional sculptures appeared more real than paintings. Sculpture fullness carried a unique character that suppressed any inhibitions against displayed explicit nudity. Hence, tradition of sharing nude paintings in galleries and sculptures in outdoor parks received acceptance to each and other viewer’s unspoken critique. And Greece was full of such sculptures.

The Greeks were however not the ultimate masters in portraying that which – in nature was not so beautiful as required wit representation of dead bodies along with attendant funeral and burial motions. It was the Etruscans – Italian colonists from Asia Minor – who introduced unique methods of etching very artistic portraits onto coffins of clay and stone. This was common in 800 BC Italy where Etruscans lorded over most social paradigms. At first, Etruscan artists only etched the deceased’s portrait (head) on jars or tomb walls. Later, they painted full length images of dead subjects stretched on covers of coffins. While to the stranger that might have helped in identification - by likeness - of ‘the resident dead in the casket’, the etchings were actually commissioned more as a permanent honor and worthy tribute to the memory of the departed subject not necessarily as an identifier.To ordinary folk who lived within the transient era, stark differences between contemporary Greek and Etruscan styles became all too apparent. While Greek art set to portray beauty, ethical and mystical attitudes, Etruscans majored on diverse expressionism ‘that mirrored the times’. Portraits of joy were countered with other s of despair. Etruscans sought to depict not beauty alone but the true fabric of life. Images of average prosperity could even be exaggerated to project awe, honor and festive spirits as if to capture the definitive unfulfilled wishes of subjects. Etruscans knew that instinctive acclaim – even from an uncritical eye – could not argue with works that challenged lifted and delighted the viewer.

They were careful to recognize shared works as preconceived emotive attachments to that which was familiar to the viewer. Representative style proved the artist’s dexterity. This high point is what invited a need for preservation (archiving) of personalized miniature works.

Such sculptures - as frozen subjects - were quite good at capturing moods while paintings - propped with backdrops - allowed portrayal of diverse ethical, religious and mystical statements. These attributes were to be exploited in full during the latter Byzantium era.

For example, a Byzantium King’s portrait with eyes lifted skyward reflected the mystical aspect of transcendent faith even where the subject was known to all and sundry to be a base atheist! It was thus quite arguable that it was the Greeks – not Etruscans – who pioneered self gratifying imagery which was neither representative nor explicitly abstracted for cryptic effect. That yearning for subjects to be augmented to impute imaginary golden moments as the ultimate goal of the finished work were common long before Etruscans invaded Greece from Asia Minor. Peasants had left images captured in aristocratic attire well before the Etruscan era. It was a trait known to Greeks as ‘Alexander’s pothos’ – the ‘yearning for the unattained’.

Two millennia hence, Nipkow showed up with his revolutionary digital camera.

As the camera imagery progressed to replace the artist - sculpture having absconded into commercial abstractions - this impulsive pothos for capturing images that 'more than' approximated the status of the subject became a compulsive prop for subjects psyche.

Improvised attire, back-dropped studio sets, passive lighting and filters, polarizer’s and proximity positioning (mergers) were infused into compositions such that a viewer a generation removed would be none the wiser. The turning point was that by simply owning a camera, subjects turned themselves into artists. True lies could hence be told through a camera lens rigged to capture improvised subjective images.

In colonial Africa, natives learnt the trick rather well. They would borrow shoes, western attire, watches and prop garb for a pothos set. Missionaries even tried to tidy up the proselyte in khaki and linen clothes to bespeak a testimonial of alienation from their animist past. There was, of course, the imperial racist who remained true portraying the raw native as a romantized primitive savage. To date, topless African girls are readily accepted as typecast for the tourist post card while elsewhere bare breasted girls are thought out of place and indecent.

The subsequent entry of the video enabled camera phone brought the ethical threshold a notch lower. It neither sought to uphold Greek or Etruscan commentaries of beauty nor appraise the familiar. It impelled proliferation of a 'click - click'.......

CONTINUED..

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