A photographic imagination

Poegles project

Ongoing multimedia exploration images and spoken word performances of constructed texts based on Poegles. Poegles are poems made from Google search results.

A season of wants (2008)

Search term "I want"

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Penny candy (2008)

Search term "hometown"

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Some bad news (2008)

Search term "secrets"

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Night light (2008)

Search term "night light"

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About Ron Diorio
Ron Diorio is a web based artist working in multiple media including photography, video, spoken word and interactive applications. Ron has had three solo shows of his photographs, which have also been included in many group shows. Ron's work has been exhibited internationally and is currently represented by Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art in New York City (phhfineart.com) . He produced Zine TV (93-95), a DIY television series on the diversity and creativity of the self publishing community - the "zine scene" of the mid 90s. Ron's current video work focuses on virtuality and the "imitation of life" in the early 21st century. The work is presented through short personal essays weaving, spoken word, video, photography, Poegles, and found public forum
postings and other texts. Ron is VP for Product and Community Development for The Economist/Economist.com. He is a life long New Yorker and lives with his wife and two children in northern Manhattan.

Statement of work
I am a citizen artist and through the social web the audience and this body of work have found each other. This current video work extends my recent photographic explorations challenging the veracity of documentary practices through the ambiguity of place and persona, manipulation of media, low-fi production and social methods of distribution. The video links included in this submission include my most recent work produced and premiered online for the active online community audience involved with my work since 2004.

About the Poegles Project
The Poegles Project was started in 2008 as an exploration of the emerging dominance of meta data indexing, the organization of information and the machine prioritizion of those results. It attempts to re-describe the origination of narration and the assembly of visual and audio cues drawing on the notions of surrealist poetry, Burroughs cut-ups and the photo-cinema of Chris Marker.

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A season of wants

I want to be a super hero
I want to return
I want to date
I want to be heard
I want to focus
I want to lock up
I want 18 million dollars
I want my title back
I want a win
I want to watch
I want to establish an identity
I want to ban booze
I want to stay safe
I want you
I want a child
I want a friend on facebook
I want season tickets
I want be a guy that makes stupid comments
I want date a rock star

I want a lot

I want stay
I want see how it ends
I want be a part
I want discuss your future
I want to change it
I want a new deal
I want to rock
I want it the best way
I want to be a spoiler
I want to stop
I want to outlaw
I want to say too much
I want to keep all my cards on the table
I want to to be patient
I want to you to believe
I want to eat at a table with my own silver
I want a wife
I want to be back

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Back in June 2003, I started what I thought was going to be a small, simple digital storytelling project. That project branched off into a photographic adventure that has left me changed for the better. However as with all circles you eventually come back. In this case I was renewed by the release of Flickr video which allowed me to create with a fixed 90 second framework and publish to a community of people who were familiar with my body of work, some for almost all five years.

Slowly I have become focused on ths "new" thing. It has re-invigorated my photo-image making but had subtly allowed me to re-define myself as a "recording artist": images, video and spoken word. This is the longest of the pieces I have produced.

The text was adapted from a forum posting on Craig's List, I recorded and mixed the voice over and the sound track. I wanted to use as few images as possible within the video with movement and frame transitions adding duration and ambiguity. I am still in the craft stage. No technique comes without repetition and so this is still early days.

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A letter to Aphotoeditor

Rob

Very interesting thread.

I agree that the right marketing materials are needed for the segment you are looking to get work in, as in Rome, well you know the saying …. I think from the reaction here this is experiment you are running is something that “pros” feel for most part valuable and certainly they respect your leadership.

However, I get the feeling in this line “It’s not that difficult to see why I would think you’re an amateur if you put your images on Flickr. That’s what it was created for and that’s who primarily uses it.” that you may be missing something of value. I would argue that by focusing on the “amateurs” and not the audience we will be overlooking a valuable and sustainable marketing opportunity. You own an audience.

This audience of “amateurs” are the same people who consume a photographer’s images in mass magazines. They are the audience. They are the consumers. The photo editors are gate keepers and curators. They are powerful filters but they are not in the case of mass magazines the audience. By perpetuating the stigma, we are keeping photographers from an audience, from the audience.

I think by not encouraging some kind of long term involvement in a photographer’s body of work that a site like Flickr can offer through the mass audience platform it provides, we diminish a fantastic opportunity to connect with the very people who consume the photographs. I am not sure if magazines can make it happen themselves they have a vested interest in their brand - not in establishing a long term connection with broadest possible audience and enhancing the value of the photographer as recognizable.

By dismissing the vernacular aesthetic of Flickr with the audience we dismiss “the audience”. I think photographers coming into the business over the next few years will have this in their DNA. A few top tier photographer’s will have other methods of direct to audience marketing. The more intimate an audience is with a photographer, the more valuable the photographer becomes to the properties that hire them.

I am not an editorial photographer but have learned much form the readers contribution here over the last few months. Thanks for this valuable resource.

Posted by admin at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wanted to update you on your interest in participating in the video project

As you may already know, I have created some short videos using the photographs in my stream and text and audio/sound derived from both original and other sources. Those films can be found here:

www.youtube.com/user/avproducer

My goal for this project is to push the boundaries of what I can do with multimedia tools, explore collaboration and the weaving of narratives and different voices. I am hoping to go beyond the slideshow so there is room to experiment.

The project's working title is "A grammar of motives". The title comes from a book by Kenneth Burke that I started to read back in 1979 and have never finished although I own two copies and frequently flip through them.

I am currently planning 5 sections to mirror Burke's dramatic pentad:
+ act
+ scene
+ agent
+ agency
+ purpose

More on Kenneth Burke here
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Burke

With that brief introduction to the project, this is how you can contribute.

Record an audio/video diary entry/entries about the intersections of your life (real or imagined) and the work in my photostream. The entry can be in the form of poem/letter/lullaby/rant.

Record a voice mail message to me about something that has just happened. You can report. I am open to other possibilities - pass the phone around a dinner party, dial in from a church service, a bathroom stall or call from the beach - the settings are endless.

An informal, intimate and authentic voice is all you need to bring!

You can contribute as much as you'd like and it would be helpful to me for you to identify your self at the beginning or the end of your call/recording.

To record you can call a voice mail box

646-495-9204 x 52402

or

Upload a file as MP3/WAV/MP4
URL: drop.io/rdiorio
dropio1

Click (add) File

You can email me via flickr mail with questions.

I appreciate your help and look forward to seeing what we get. I also anticipate the need to have some specific passages of text recorded and I may additionally each out to you for that.

I am hoping to complete the collection of material by mid April.

Posted by admin at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read John Haber's "Learning to love photography" with some interest as you know I am about to open my first solo show here in NY at Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art. My work has benefited in the the digital space as I have spent the last four years evolving a body of work in public on Fotolog and Flickr.

No MFA, no commercial work, no editorial work just the time and space to work through awkwardness of the movement from technique to craft to style. Making this journey doubly interesting is that in my day job I have been able advocate reader participation and contribution rather than comment and rant because of my experience.

In the article there is a reference to the Hollywood "indies". This got me thinking. What makes sense to me in that the audience gathering power of blogs and social networks has allowed an artist like myself to develop a value far beyond what could have been done even 7 years ago. Not sure that is exactly what John meant but I think that this builds on the notion of an outside the system. I am not sure if I am the first photo artist to move from Flickr to a one man show in Chelsea, I know I won't be the last.

And that is a good thing.

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Trying to explain my work ...

An obvious process of translating is happening. My sense of imagery: form, color, framing the perception of light. The workflow: translation, abstraction and interpretation.

Posted by admin at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Discovery. Looking at the image and putting it together again in the rendering: seen - remembered - imagined.

Less direct but more comprehensive, a question of imaginative vision.

A view of the visible, prolonging a moment - neither geometric or photographic.

Orgainized seeing: a personal deformity of vision.

Posted by admin at 11:22 AM | Permalink

From WSJ.com

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs's recent open letter urging that digital music be distributed free of copyright protections was aimed at the recording industry. But it made waves in another key constituency Mr. Jobs does business with: movie makers.

Executives at Hollywood studios believe it is only a matter of time before the debate over removing copyright protections spreads to movies from music. Until now, the studios have steadfastly asserted that copy protections -- known as digital rights management -- are essential to preventing piracy of films.

The studios are increasingly engaged in internal debate over the right course ..

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In Quantity has a quality all of its ownv Davin McHenry writes:

I joined a Yahoo email group recently the focuses on newspaper video. The group seems to be mostly photography staffers hashing out how to add video to their websites. What struck me was how most folks seemed to be centered on buying high-end video equipment and expensive and complicated editing packages. The goal seems to bring documentary-quality video to newspapers, mostly in the hands of photographers-turned-videographers.

And I just don’t see how that’s going to work.

A bit of disclosure here. At Bakersfield.com we’ve taken a decidedly low-fi approach to video. Ninety percent of our video is shot by reporters and 99 percent is shot with point and shoot , consumer-grade cameras. With our staff (~24 reporters) and our equipment (2-3 cameras) we’ve been able to shoot and edit 600+ videos this past year. We’re averaging about 700-800 views per day in recent months.

If we had taken the opposite approach and focused entirely on our photo staff I think the flow would have been significantly lower. I imagine we would have had, at best, 2-3 videos per week, rather than per day.

I don’t see how you build a daily audience with that kind of content flow. Especially given the nature of online video.

Posted by admin at 08:50 AM | Permalink

I contributed this to a conversationon on Art & Perception

My old Nikon FM collects dust on my dresser becuase the digital darkroom transformed what I had come to know as photography. It moved me from picture taking to image making. Now the only real "photographic" moment is the end stage of the manufacturing process when a Digital C-print is pulled. For me it has been important to have the "photographic" in the making of the object while disregarding the "photographic" in the image making process. So in a traditional sense, for me, there's not much photography in my process to enjoy.

What I do enjoy is where image making intersects with storytelling - you frame the world - frame a point of view. In some ways "view finder" better describes what it is. The really emancipating thing has been to find/seek/uncover the authentic - the essence of the emotional connection in the image without the "view" being my truth or something close to me. I'm always chasing that both in my own work and when I'm looking at other's work.

When I first posted on Fotolog in June 2003, I called my page "A photographic imagination". I had just read Sontag's On Photography and I wanted to put a marker down that these images should not be viewed as documents - they were manipulated and as such the images were not representative but representational.

I was also beginning to undestand how pixel based display was a great democratizer - all these screen images were made of the same substance. A Picasso painting, a DaVinci drawing, a deep space image form the Hubble Telescope or an Ansel Adams photograph were certainly different objects in the real world but on the screen they were just a collection of pixels. The playing field was leveled, the image content would be judged on it's own aesthetic and against every other image that could be displayed. The eye would decide.

From the start I wanted to give people something to think about - but not as a message or a lesson or a meaning. I think I lacked the confidence to articulate that early on. But it is there like the manipulation is as part of my whole apporach. I want the viewer active to "look into the image" rather than just looking at the image.

I am not an equipment geek. If the device captures images without a flash, has a memory card I can read and a charged battery I'd probably use it. I don't need a perfect capture, I want to make a capture perfect. I need raw materials so I "harvest" images, hundreds per day. I'll capture till I drain my battery. I hardly look at the LCD when I am shooting, I try never to stop moving. I capture everything at. low res 640 x 480. I have lost any connection to the preciousness of any individual snap.

I use Flickr to post my images because it is a distribution point and provides a publication platform and an audience. I want an audience. Of course this serves two masters because I can move easliy from presenter to an audience to being part of the audience.

At the point where I was searching for a way of working - first Fotolog and then Flickr gave me a daily production and publishing structure and a format to see a body of work developing.

It allows me to be prolific without purpose and organically find threads in the work. The dark side is that there is such a need to get the next image - almost an obligation. I realize this is a product of my own need for immediate gratification. I tend to ration the published images to one per day. The sheer volume of images posted on both of these services is a stark reminder of how insignificant any single image can be. It is quite intimidating.

I am always surprised by what people connect to in an individual image, what they are moved by. I am starting to sense a bond. It is not that I said something nice about their picture or made them a contact so they say something nice about mine. There is something we have in common, something they know and I know.

In the end to me photography is like sex, the intersection of what interests you and what you can get. This is what I can get.

Posted by admin at 08:54 AM | Permalink

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In one of Time's features on "You" they write:

Even more than blogs or video-sharing sites, Flickr has the power to forge international bonds because it works in an entirely nonverbal medium.

They mention two Flickr users Ali Khurshid and Lavannya Goradia but don't provide links to their work. How lame is that!

Posted by admin at 11:48 AM | Permalink

The revolution's question is Amateur v. Professional where are the boundaries, what makes it so and does it matter.

In Amateur v. Professional Coxsoft art writes:

Many people find art an agreeable hobby and produce good quality work. And there are many professional artists who make a living selling junk: rusty bicycle parts cobbled together as a "profound statement" on our throwaway society! So what makes the difference between a talented amateur and an untalented professional who has the cheek to sell rubbish? Art School. At the end of it, the "artist" has a diploma.

It seems that the writing is on the wall for most forms of expression and the "arts" are not an exception. However, the world of the "collector" still has a way to go to be transformed by the disintermediation that most other areas of free exchange are evolving to.

Your audience should be in conversation with you not just the gallerist.

Posted by admin at 12:03 PM | Permalink

I was reading on Alec Soth's blog on "The Sentence"

But while photographers can help shape their sentence, they can’t control it. No matter how many times Cartier-Bresson called himself an anarchist it would never make the sentence. And if Paul Shambroom ends up taking a picture of George Bush’s assassination, that will be his sentence. Unless you change your name, the sentence can only be shaped, not controlled.

and then ran into this

From Mark Mothersbaugh, 2002 with Andy Spade

It takes a masterful artist to have his art embraced by popular culture and not turn to shit. You have to be really clever or really subversive. Target used the Devo song "Beautiful World" in a commercial last Christmas. That was one of my favorite moments for us as a band, even though they didn't include the punch line of the song, which is, "It's a beautiful world for you, for you, but not for me." That song was basically a diatribe against mindless consumerism. It's very ironic but also very satisfying that they'd use it.

Makes me wonder if it is better to have a hand at writing your sentence and have if forgotten or embracing the open source nature of one's own reputation and go with the flow.

Posted by admin at 11:33 AM | Permalink

From Thomas Hawk

Why after a year and a half can't Yahoo! get it together and get Flickr's interesting photos integrated better into Yahoo! Image Search? It's amazing that Yahoo! has a legitimate trump card where they could dramatically show their superiority to Google and it largely gets ignored.

I know I sound like a broken record but why doesn't Flickr just throw the video upload switch and let this very dedicated community develop into the leading shared orginal content video service.

Posted by admin at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An interview with Alex Soth
Via Conscientious

The one caveat is that blogging is probably bad for one’s reputation in the art world. The art world is built on exclusivity. Blogs are built on availability. Most art stars don’t even have websites for fear of appearing pedestrian. But photography, for me, is a pedestrian art. It is democratic and accessible. So I participate in the blogosphere knowing full well that it probably hurts my art-world reputation.

This maybe true, but more and more artists may find a "direct to consumer" approach another path which opens doors to opportunity and audience. There is tangible value you have having people involved in your body of work over time even as you are striving for other things - gallery and books.

What do you think?

Posted by admin at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am so often convinced the blogs, vlogs, pods are linked to the very modern tradition of photography.

Does this statement ring true?

Blogging is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about blogs we are talking about modernity; the doubts that blogs inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Blogging is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of blogging was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was blogging a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

The original:
The Treacherous Medium

Photography is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about photography we are talking about modernity; the doubts that photography inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Photography is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of photography was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was photography a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

Thanks to GalleryHopper for the pointer

What do you think?

Posted by admin at 12:30 PM | Permalink

Eric Schmidt of Google estimated that on avergae every blog has only one reader....

Thousands of Words About Pictures
from Personism

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s some afoot in the world of blogs about photography (not to be confused with photoblogs). Lately it seems like lots and lots of smart people are writing interesting things on the subject. Some people, like Raul Gutierrez, have been writing interesting blogs for a long time now. Others, like say Brian Ulrich have recently stepped it up a bit, perhaps nudged along by Alec Soth, who only started his blog recently, but has already acquired an almost slavish following. (I too am one of those enthusiastic fans.)

I am pleased by this new development, but also somewhat dismayed. Pleased because the best of these blogs are enlightening about the discipline, but not single-mindedly about photography - they’re broader than than that and touch on life, inspiration and sometimes politics. It’s nice having a window into what makes the people who I enjoy and admire tick. I’m dismayed because, well, how’s a girl supposed to keep up?? I’m not just talking about my ever-growing list of bookmarks, a formidable undertaking in and of itself… I’m also talking about my own musings here. It’s a struggle to stay up to par. All these smart people are messing with the curve, damnit. Anyway, all of that said, here’s what I’m reading and why:

Posted by admin at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A short film.
Words by John Dos Passos

Posted by admin at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Toy fatigue
from Alex Soth

With the iPod I was able to watch every Magnum in Motion podcast. I’d seen a handful before but always became web-distracted. But seeing these programs on the iPod brought up some other problems. First, the image is ridiculously small. Most of the Magnum images were too rich and complex for the tiny screen (The exception was Thomas Dworzak’s ‘7/7 The Longest Week‘ which seemed to have been shot for the iPod). My second problem was with the brevity of the programs. On the web all you want is a little teaser. It is all you have time for. But with the containment of the iPod I wanted a fuller experience. The Magnum programs were too short. I searched the web looking for video and slideshow podcasts that would give me a more complete artistic experience; I looked for programs that could immerse me in their small-screen world. My search was unsuccessful.

Of course the era of the podcast is still quite young. So perhaps great artistry will emerge. But this is where I really get frustrated. I don’t think it has time to emerge. Next year the iPod will have a bigger screen. The year after that it will have a web browser. And the year after that it will be obsolete as some new unforeseen technology takes over. The medium only has time to be a toy. It never has time to mature into a tool.

I think Alex has stumbled upon the an interesting point which made me think that the web 1.0 bubble burst allowed the time and freedom to embrace and mature the tools. Will web 2.0 ever stop to breathe?

Posted by admin at 10:25 AM | Permalink

Last year I ran and lost for a position on the School Leadership committee at my daughter's school here in NY. My campaign focused on bringing in a media literacy program. Wish I had this in hand for the campaign!

From DIY Media WeblogHosted by USC Annenberg Center

Henry Jenkins has posted on his blog about the paper he and his colleagues have written for the MacArthur Foundation, about participatory culture and media literacy. I have followed Jenkins' lead in my attempts to learn how to link DIY media skills with civic engagement, and agree that this is about more than just entertainment -- it's about an entire approach to culture, which Jenkins calls "participatory culture."

We have also identified a set of core social skills and cultural competencies that young people should acquire if they are to be full, active, creative, and ethical participants in this emerging participatory culture:

Play -- the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance -- the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

Simulation -- the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes

Appropriation -- the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking -- the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition -- the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

Collective Intelligence -- the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Judgment -- the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation -- the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking -- the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation -- the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Some children are acquiring some of these skills through their participation in the informal learning communities that surround popular culture. Some teachers are incorporating some of these skills into their classroom instruction. Some afterschool programs are incorporating some of these skills into their activities. Yet, as the above qualifications suggest, the integration of these important social skills and cultural competencies remains haphazard at best. Media education is taking place for some youth across a variety of contexts, but it is not a central part of the educational experience of all students. Our goal for this report is to encourage greater reflection and public discussion on how we might incorporate these core principles systematically across curricula and across the divide between in-school and out-of-school activities. Such a systemic approach is needed if we are to close the participation gap, confront the transparency problem, and help young people work through the ethical dilemmas they face in their everyday lives. Such a systemic approach is needed if children are to acquire the core social skills and cultural competencies needed in a modern era.

Posted by admin at 05:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over ten years ago when Lionel Martinez and I were trawlng FactSheet 5 for material for our local show Zine TV, it was already clear the most edgy and provactive material was being produced not in NY or SF but in all places in between where there was an all night Kinkos.

As a matter of record, self publsining did not begin with blogs. Micro niche publishing did not begin with blogs. What blogs came to the table with was push button software like the Brownie camera, a way of keeping score with counters for links and page views, instant feedback and Ad sesne dollars.

Urban Scrawl
From the NY Times

BY Megan O'rourke

Does Downtown still exist — and does it matter? The quick answer to the first question is no. “Up Is Up” drives home the argument that it wasn’t just rising rents but AIDS that brought this period to a definitive end. The age of outrageous play was replaced by an age of sex ed and condo conversions. The media may proclaim Red Hook or Bushwick the new Bohemia, but these neighborhoods simply don’t have the seedy charge of the East Village in the 1970s and ’80s — and contemporary hipster style, intellectual and sartorial, hardly has the same anti-authoritarian bristle. As little kids in New York in the 1980s, my brother and I were scared (I blush to remember) of punks’ metallic studs and mohawks; it’s hard to imagine first graders being terrified of a hipster in a trucker cap and expensive jeans. Today, the city is so expensive that the real Bohemians are dispersed among disparate, far-flung neighborhoods.

But maybe that’s not so tragic. After all, the third factor in the disappearance of Downtown is the Internet. In an era when real estate is costly but virtual space is cheap, the community that once could be found only on Astor Place exists online. Today, there are plenty of magazines and Web sites continuing the do-it-yourself tradition of Downtown. But they’re largely in the yonder regions of America, where outfits like Spork (out of Tucson) and Forklift, Ohio (out of Cincinnati), to name just two I like, are publishing irreverent work that swipes at the mainstream. In the afterword to “Up Is Up,” Dennis Cooper declares “I wanted to make it as a writer, and I thought I had to be in New York for that to happen.” But many writers no longer feel that way. If there is to be a new Downtown, it is probably taking shape in a city like Portland, Ore., out among the fresh pine trees, and those of us in New York can visit it online.

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