Neptune

Status & Origins This project is Practice-as-research. It was conceived as a piece of creative practice initially in response to a call for a curated exhibition in the USA called, “Scan2Go”. Issues & Contexts Neptune is a series of video and photographic pieces created to be accessed via QR codes and viewed on mobile and portable devices. Due to the processual and participatory nature of engagement with media that is inspired by such devices, the project consists of a number of iterative pieces. While the image and its place in digital media is not a new concern, this project takes its key points of reference from the emerging body of work that interrogates the multiple and very active ways in which portable and mobile devices lead us to engage with media. It is informed by Michael Shanks work on Mobile Media Photography, Ingrid Hözl’s provocative questions about the intersection of, ‘expanded cinema’ and photography and Manovich’s notions of a kind of poetics emerging from augmented space. Process / Method During the research and development phase of the project, systems were developed to explore how a project might be both communicative and evocative on such a small scale. Questions around how images and stories might be effectively told in the limited space and attention afforded mobile media were explored. A new system of rules was developed around image composition, text size and nature, duration of display and use of sound (with the latter often being omitted due to the nature of mobile use). These rules built upon existing practices in interaction design but pushed them by not always adhering to familiar rules. There is no direct and literal links and, unlike much design for media such as the web, there are no buttons that look like buttons. Approaches & Outcomes This project is distinct in that it uses QR codes as a point of both access and delivery to the work. The photographic and visual narratives are not presented in solely or predominantly in a web browser or exhibition space. A key goal of the work was to create something that might comfortably exist in all three spaces (mobile media, web browser and gallery space). With some minor modification, that might be possible and the ongoing development of this work will see just that. Research Dissemination Neptune was exhibited in the USA and online as part of the Scan2Go exhibition in Los Angeles, USA. It was also shown as research-in-progress as part of a British Council exchange in Croatia.