Coldlight - Needs your participation

Coldlight is a UK based producer of gallery based digital artworks, its latest work 'Ready in an Hour' needs your Participation.

The idea of the personal photograph as something unambiguous, having meaning, (beyond simple voyeuristic interest) to only those directly concerned with the events captured in the image is possibly an arguable point. However it is the view of this artwork that such images may yet yield a greater emotional response from a ‘strange’ viewer if such images were stripped of their aesthetic form and reduced to a more basic means of representation. Therefore by the first process of this work, images are described by their owners, the visual content of the images being converted to an alternative 'text based' form of communication.

This translated 'text-photograph' is then transferred to the gallery installation, where via the interactive process, participants will be witness to a new visual representation being created via their interaction with the machine. In other words, what once was a visual image translated to text is now converted once more back into a visual image. As the user engages with the device, more and more text-based memories are given ‘form’. At the same time a voice will speak directly to the participant, reading out the memories in a quiet intimate manner.

The end result of this process will hopefully, be one of an emotional connection between website submitter and gallery interactee. Although both processes will be anonymous it is the primary aim of the project to allow personal imagery to be broken down and reformed with a view that some emotional connection can be created, allowing both participant’s to step free of the constraints and confines of the photograph’s borders.

Please think of a photograph that you have an emotional connection with. Please follow this link to the website and click on the CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT A RESPONSE link to go to the submission page. Once there, have that image in mind, enter it into the box provided (Please limit your submissions to 50 words or under).

http://www.coldlight.co.uk

http://www.coldlight.co.uk/ready.html

http://www.coldlight.co.uk/memorypop.html

Thankyou.
– Chris Nelson –

Below are a few examples already received.

"The image is of me at 5 in a shopping cart pushed by my mother in the fresh vegetable section of the grocery store. My grandfather took the photo; it's how he saw us."

"i remember a picture of my parents in the main citystreet. They are very young 18 and 21 or so. The picture is very old, black and white, the paper is thick with a small white band around it. My mother looks at my father and he looks at the photographer. I can see his teeth very well. He is happy and so looks she."

"The image is of my sister, my dad and me all crammed into a photobooth. It's black and white. We all look really happy, just a shame our mum wasn't in there as well."