[img]http://3rdi.me/images/Wafaa_Bilal_3rdi_Photo_y_Brad_Farwell.jpg[/img]
I'm sure you heard of 'lifestreaming', the meme (not really in a sort of 4chan durr over 9000 meme, but by it's original definition) of constantly streaming video without end. 3rdi is a project that takes it just one step further.
I'll sum it up as this: [b]3rdi is a site where a coin-sized camera (who randomly takes pictures every minute) is installed on a surgically implanted mount on the back of a Iraqi artist's (whose name is Wafaa Bilal) head shows it's continually updated capture.[/b] It is, to be honest, a very incredibly weird idea.
[quote][i]"And the more natural the process by which the storyteller forgoes psychological shading, the greater becomes the story’s claim to a place in the memory of the listener, the more completely is it integrated into his own experience, the greater will be his inclination to repeat it to someone else someday, sooner or later."
- Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller (p. 91, Illuminations)[/i]
I am nothing if not a storyteller. My work to date has been concerned with the communication of public and private information to an audience so that it may be retold, distributed. The stories I tell are political dramas, which unfold through my past experience and into the present where they interact with the currency of media as the dialectic of aesthetic pleasure and pain. Through various layers of distribution and interpretation, pictures are drawn using interactive models established through the stories’ (technological) framework where they are revealed and shared. With an audience locked in participation, my story may be retold.
The 3rdi is just such a platform for the telling and retelling of another story. A camera temporarily implanted on the back of my head, it spontaneously and objectively captures the images – one per minute – that make up my daily life, and transmits them to a website for public consumption.
During my journey from Iraq to Saudi Arabia, on to Kuwait and then the U.S., I left many people and places behind. The images I have of this journey are inevitably ephemeral, held as they are in my own memory. Many times while I was in transit and chaos the images failed to fully register, I did not have the time to absorb them. Now, in hindsight, I wish I could have recorded these images so that I could look back on them, to have them serve as a reminder and record of all the places I was forced to leave behind and may never see again.
The 3rdi arises from a need to objectively capture my past as it slips behind me from a non-confrontational point of view. It is anti-photography, decoded, and will capture images that are denoted rather than connoted, a technological-biological image. This will be accomplished by the complete removal of my hand and eye from the photographic process, circumventing the traditional conventions of traditional photography or a disruption in the photographic program. Barthes has said, "...from an aesthetic point of view the denoted image can appear as a kind of Edenic state of the image; cleared utopianically of its connotations, the image would become radically objective, or, in the last analysis, innocent." It is this 'innocent' image that I wish to capture through the 3rdi.
Technically, the 3rdi is an automatic photographic apparatus that is comprised of three different components: a small digital camera permanently surgically mounted to the back of my head with a USB connection, a lightweight laptop which I carry on my body connected to the camera with a USB cable, and a 3G wireless connection to access the internet. The website [url]www.3rdi.me[/url] acts as storage and display for the images captured by the camera. The functioning of the apparatus, in theory, is as follows: The camera, through no intervention of the artist, captures an image automatically once a minute and send this image through the USB connection to the receiver (the computer) on my body. The receiver then sends this image through the 3G network to the website, where the images are archived and made available to the public.
The 3rdi makes a technological apparatus part of my body and distributes the recorded content openly within space using the internet. The arbitrary imagery captured by the device will retain fractured records and distribute a narrative to be completed by the viewer as their corporeal space is also compromised by the presentation. Benjamin has described the storyteller as one “who could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.” (Illuminations) In this way I become locked to the story as its teller, passing the interpretive mode to an audience with little context so it may be transformed for their subjective interactions and subsequent expressions. Using this narrative triangle, the work will comment on ways in which imagery is used for the telling and retelling of stories, whether they belong to us or we make them ours.[/quote]
The stream has been going on for about 80 days. His body even rejected the mount at first, which he had to undergo another surgery to remove one of the mount's titanium tissue anchors.
About the guy:
[quote]As an Iraqi refugee who fled the country in 1991 at age 25, New York artist Wafaa Bilal laments all the things he left behind…without the time or technology to document or reflect upon the images and moments that shaped his youth. The 3rdi Project will ensure that for the coming year not a single minute will pass without documentation.
Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, the show is a key example of the rapid emergence of Doha and other Arab metropolises on the world art scene, a mission to facilitate the scholarly study and rewriting of the history and canon of Arab art. The theme of Told/Untold/Retold is storytelling, placing in a modern context the revered historical role of the “al-hakawati,” or storyteller, in Arab life. For Bilal, the 3rdi Project is a way to spontaneously document all the moments – mundane or exceptional, or somewhere in between – that make up a life. Captured objectively without intentional framing or filtering as he goes about his daily life, the images will create a randomized and pure record of Bilal’s own reality. A professor of photo and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, Bilal is known for interactive, unconventional and provocative pieces that use the internet as a platform to engage a wide audience. His 2007 work Domestic Tension had him sequestered in a gallery for one month with a paintball gun that people shot at him over the internet. His 2010 work …And Counting had his back tattooed, live online, with the names of Iraqi cities and 20,000 dots in invisible ink to represent the overlooked Iraqi casualties of the current war.[/quote]
The images are always archived, and according to Popular Science, will archive roughly 525,000 images by the end of the year. Oh, and by the way, also according to PopSci, he has to sleep face down because of this.
You can check it out here, if you want to:
[b][u][i][url]http://www.3rdi.me/[/url][/i][/u][/b]
[i]Surgically implanted?[/i]
:ohdear:
Wow, these guys take the 'Eyes in the back of the head' saying seriously.
why would you have this surgically implanted and not just strapped to your head or something
Would be funny if it showed ghosts when he was sleeping, or if when he was walking down the street everyone was just staring like they are gonna kill him when he's not looking. Just creepy stuff like that, the eye that we don;t have in the back of our heads.
[QUOTE=Nathax;28393693]why would you have this surgically implanted and not just strapped to your head or something[/QUOTE]
it would look like you're retarded and having a surgical implant looks cool and badass and shit while still having some subtlety
[QUOTE=Aurora93;28393714]it would look like you're retarded and having a surgical implant looks cool and badass and shit while still having some subtlety[/QUOTE]
yes the big round piece of plastic hooked into the back of my skull is much more subtle than a clear plastic strap
why the hell would you do this
So this is how the Matrix begins.
[QUOTE=Nathax;28393747]yes the big round piece of plastic hooked into the back of my skull is much more subtle than a clear plastic strap[/QUOTE]
A strap would make it look like you're some idiot banned from a nerd convention
looks like it's uncomfortable to sleep on.
[QUOTE=tehfrog;28393858]looks like it's uncomfortable to sleep on.[/QUOTE]
[release][b]Oh, and by the way, also according to PopSci, he has to sleep face down because of this.[/b][/release]
[QUOTE=Aurora93;28393794]A strap would make it look like you're some idiot banned from a nerd convention[/QUOTE]
tbh i don't think a plastic circle dangling off the back of your head with cords going down into your shirt is going to make you look any different
I'd laugh if he looks it over at the end, and sees that someone's been stalking the shit out of him.
I'll stick with a GoPro on a headband thank you.
Couldn't they have just taped it or something?
[QUOTE=Anonymass2;28394139]Couldn't they have just taped it or something?[/QUOTE]
That's too mainstream.
But seriously why didn't they.
[QUOTE=Anonymass2;28394139]Couldn't they have just taped it or something?[/QUOTE]
it would've fallen off
What kind of huge ass coins do they have where you live?!
What the hell! Why would you do this to your own body? Surely this is just a bold statement a sort of 'ooh look at me' style project. He could exactly the same results with it being stuck on in some sort of fashion that implanted into his head.
I'm all for tech advancement, hell, I can't even think of something stronger to state my stance on that. But this is kinda disturbing. Crosses that ethical line.
That's pretty fucking awesome, no matter how impracticable or useless it is.
Eye got your back.
The back? sounds incredibly boring.
black screen
[QUOTE=MedicWine;28395320]The back? sounds incredibly boring.[/QUOTE]
I want one surgically put on my crotch area. A much more interesting viewpoint. Also, Livestream fapping.
Never be paranoid again. :tinfoil:
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