Recently I started fiddling with the iPhone’s Hipstamatic app. I’ll say it; it is cool. Popular too, it seems many of my iPhone-toting friends have begun running their images through Hipstamatic’s filters. The most astonishing thing about Hipstamatic is how it can transform everyday images into faux-retro works of art.
Through Hipstamatic and tools like it the same people who used to utter such classic phrases as, “I can’t draw a straight line” and “I’m not creative” are beginning to experience the joys of being ‘creative’ in that classic, artful sense of the term. This is wonderful. Everyone should enjoy that experience at some point.
Apple has built an empire on this very premise – that all people should be given the chance to be creative. From its numerous templates for iWork, iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band novice noodlers can create sophisticated looking pieces from photo albums to home movies to business letters, resumes and reports. Pick a template, drag and drop your images and surprise yourself at how polished it all looks!
Do McPictures beget McThinking?
With Hipstamatic I can take any mundane subject, like my thumb (featured above) and turn it into a fairly interesting image. I can do the same with pictures of my car, my kids, a bottle of wine or a cup of coffee. Interesting images can be found everywhere and made from everything. By and large that is a good thing, I think.
But (there’s always a ‘but’)…
Is all this instant artiness one more example of how technology is training our minds to skim rather than dive deep?
In the traditional sense, art – in music, lyrics, poetry, pictures, video – was meant to offer insight, perspective and commentary. Beneath the surface of many art pieces was deeper thought. Even Duchamp’s inverted urinal and Warhol’s Brillo boxes – everyday consumer items elevated to art – held commentary and thoughtfulness. The objects themselves were the distillation of a lot of thought and intention.
With a Hipstamatic picture, something mundane like my thumb is given unnecessary layers of polish which attribute to it no real depth of meaning. It’s still just my thumb.
If we do this again and again, with music, photos, blog posts, etc. are we training ourselves to be superficial, to subvert the seeking of meaning and depth for the less strenuous world of canned effects applied to shallow topics for a shallow visual or aural thrill? Are we creating the fast food of art – tastes good going down but offers no real nutritive value? Worse are we training ourselves to think this way? If so, how will it impact everything else we do – our careers, relationships, purchase decisions, political views, and on and on?
I am guessing many will agree with me that culturally over the past few decades we’ve placed a significant emphasis on transient instances of ‘cool’, media soundbytes (often out of context) and tabloid journalism, shock-value fashion, music and movies and other examples of quick-fix stimulation over insightful thinking or meaningful commentary. In my mind these are related to the ‘one click’ pleasures of Hipstamatic type tools that make it very easy to settle for – and focus purely on – the cosmetically cool even if it is conceptually vacant.
Lest you think I’m some art elitest I am not. I admit it, I like Hipstamatic. I like Garageband and iMovie too. They’re fun to use and as noted before, I think everyone should enjoy the feeling of creating music and imagery and art. I think everyone should recognize that they are creative in some way. However, every new technology or tool brings with it benefits and consequences and if I were to criticize our society it would be that we are myopic, focusing more on rights and benefits than on responsibilities and consequences.
For all the marvels today’s digital tools offer, I can’t quiet this nagging sense that being the shortcuts they are – these tools are in some ways distracting us from an important aspect of the process of creativity, the hard work of innovation rather than the comparatively easier pursuit of decoration.
Great tools do not make great art. Ready-made paint has been available for nearly two centuries now, but it hasn’t made great painters. What it has done is given more potential artists the opportunity to try painting without having to crush and mix their own pigments.
Hipstamatic photos look nice, sure, but it is evident pretty quickly who has ‘an eye,’ as they say. Who can frame or compose a shot. In other words, who has true talent and skill, vs who is simply relying on the tool to make up for their own deficiencies.
If nothing else, hipstamatic means normally boring snapshots will be at least visually interesting. It’s like when they improve flash systems: it doesn’t make better photographers, it just means less bleached out subjects.
Finally, I’d only add that hipstamatic is a trend. It will be short-lived. I love lomography myself, and shoot my own film, yet I’m no more worried about hipstamatic taking over any more than I think readily available paint in tube form will replace Rembrandt or Vermeer.
My concern is less for the trained artist than for the population overall and I think the issue transcends hipstamatic and is evident in pop-music, advertising, politics, product development, etc. The concern is this: With certain easily-available tools it is possible to pass off superficial work as finished. In a culture moving at the speed of light with little time (or inclination, it often seems) to stop and consider what we are exposed to, we can wind up overwhelmed by an endless clip show of superficial vignettes. With enough such fodder circulating around and still only 24 hours in a day, we might easily find ourselves immersed in cheaper thinking with little time to sort the wheat from the chaff. At some point, chaff then becomes acceptable and the desire for wheat begins to erode.
I don’t see it that way. I agree that there is a lot more crap accessible to a lot more people, but I think there is a tendency to think that in days past culture for the masses was any better. Throughout most of human history, common people lacked access to almost any kind of high culture — libraries, educational facilities and other cultural venues open only to the elite / wealthy/ entitled. Most culture was extremely lowbrow, maybe even as lowbrow as what passes for mass culture these days.
On the other hand, today anyone with a TV, computer, or mobile phone, or $10 to plop down a the corner Barnes & Noble can get access to any form of high culture. That they choose not to is more a reflection on human nature than on technology.
So, for my part, I’m glad that there is a democratizing effect of technology, enabling almost anyone to participate. My hope is that they will.
Though, Corey, I do agree that, like fast food, we are growing obese on bad information. The plenty of pixels containing little or no content of value may, in fact, have a negative affect on human progress. However, just as with bad food, the solution wouldn’t be to prohibit bad pixels, but to encourage consumption of healthier pixels. Excuse the twisted metaphor.
And please forgive the typos above (e.g., affect instead of effect); this is what happens when you try to respond coherently using an iPhone.
Michael, you raise great points about access to high culture and even the definition thereof. Its given me much to think about. Which is great. I really appreciate your commentary and thoughtfulness. Good brain food.
why put sweat and tears and hours of work in the darkroom when you can get the same effect with the click of a button and the image is sometimes even better. that gives you more time to take more creative images, or save the world.
you’re being somewhat silly to think someone has to put a lot of work in something in order for it to be worthy. if you can’t tell the difference and you like the image, stop being negative (darkroom joke) about technology.
I spent too many hours with fixer laden hands and sepia stained fingers and hours away from my family in order to do what now I can achieve with software in a few clicks.
save the planet ~ chems are dangerous !
Hi Peggy. Thanks for your comment. My point was not at all about the amount of work that had to be put in. Certainly one can’t fault Pollack’s approach to painting for taking less time than Seurat’s simply because of the technique he used. The quality and importance of both artists is unquestionable. Instead, my thought was only that if I can sit and crank off pictures of my thumb (as in my post) all day, and the effect makes them visually novel, there is little reason to explore the reasons for my selection of subject – the ‘art’ is created by the technology not the artist. Certainly you’ve seen many hipstamatic galleries where there are dozens of pictures of wine glasses, snowbanks, etc. These are all well and good, but the effect, en mass, can be collectively like hanging out with Lotus eaters. It can make us lazy as seekers of meaning. It can make us settle for the superficially novel as a culture if only because we’re flooded with it.
Most people I have discussions with would nod their head if I were to say the overall quality of our cultural output is lessening in its merits. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large Britney Spears is not Mozart of even Elvis. Art, music, theatre (‘Spiderman the Musical’, really?) all have similar trends. I believe this is because these easy technologies are like fry-o-laters in McDonald’s. They make things tasty but not nutritious and we culturally bloat ourselves on these McCultural pieces of art.
I realize that can sound heavily elitest, and perhaps in some ways it is, but still our society focuses much on what t is gaining and pays little attention to what it gives up along the way. I think in making superficially novel image creation easy we make it harder for thoughtful imagery to see the light of day in our society and that that is very unfortunate.
@Corey: “Most people I have discussions with would nod their head if I were to say the overall quality of our cultural output is lessening in its merits.”
Meh, I don’t know. I see incredible theater, incredible literature, and incredible art being made. I think the difference is that now there is also a lot more schlock jamming up the works. It’s a lot more of everything. Britney may be no Elvis, but Elvis was no Lead Belly. It’s the curmudgeon’s gripe (no offense) that things just aren’t as good now as they were “back in the olden days.”
But go beyond the top 40, and you can find some absolutely amazing music. Likewise in many of the other arts. Sure, Spiderman is a joke. But will you pay $25 to go to a small theater in the LES and see some amazing, fresh writing? No, most people sit in their lazyboys and decry the decline of our culture.
Jackson Pollock was called a fraud because he wasn’t as talented as Rembrandt. It goes on and on. And, there was one Shakespeare…name several other great playwrights from those centuries. Maybe you come up with 5 or 10, or 20 if you’re a liberal arts major. But the truth is, throughout history most art was mass garbage. The bards, the baudy shows. We like to think it was all Mozart and Chaucer, but everyday people subsisted on shit entertainment.
Today, at least, thankfully, I can get my fill of great art, literature, and music with the click of a mouse or a short venture on the subway. That wasn’t always possible.
The hipstamatic is just a toy, a tool…something people are having fun with. It is neither great art, nor is it eroding art as we know it, any more than kids using Spirographs in the 60s and 70s destroyed the legacy of Jackson Pollock.
“more of everything” — yes, exactly, people are now bathed in pop culture product and that was not the case in earlier times. Before electricity (that’s not that long ago: practical light bulb, 1880; phonograph, 1877) it was live voices and musicians when available; books were more expensive and more scarce, etc.
We can mourn the loss of quiet time and solitude, as well as the effect of swimming in mostly mediocre commercial pop culture, upon human minds.
Michael, I think you’re slightly urban-NewYork in your outlook here. To someone in NYC, Chicago, London, etc sure art is everywhere and easily accessible. But that’s not true for Scranton or Erie, say nothing for non-urban areas.
My argument was never about there being no quality out there. But it is precisely about ‘going beyond the top 40 – or moreover the increasing difficulty in doing so because of the deluge of poorly-made superficial crap.
In my mind, while hipstamatic is fun and allows people to enjoy instant ‘creativity’ it also contributes significantly to the pool of crap which I believe is growing at a faster rate than the quality pool.
Sure, there’s always been shit entertainment. But I do believe technology is enabling the production of more of it and at a faster rate than has been in the case in the past.
I agree hipstamatic is not eroding art, it is however, making it easier for people to become distracted by the novel at the expense of the meaningful. And there’s enough of this going on that the Lotus Eater analogy seems appropriate to me.
Corey, in fact, the great thing about the age we live in is anyone anywhere can experience almost any great work of art, literature, music, etc.; sure, it might be virtual in some cases, but the point is that people have far more access to high art than they did before. I’d hardly call that a New York urban outlook; if anything, it’s far more egalitarian than that. In the past, I had to trek to a concert or Tower Records to hear the latest great alternative music; now it’s a click away. Same with books, paintings, etc.
But that’s not the main point.
I’ve been trying to figure out what your dog is in this fight, and I think your second-to-last sentence finally clarifies it for me: “…it is, however, making it easier for people to become distracted by the novel at the expense of the meaningful.”
Yes, that’s probably true, but there’s an overt implication in your argument that people were somehow more invested in ‘the meaningful’ than they are now, and I don’t buy it. Some portion of the population will always be more invested in meaningful pursuits, and now it’s far easier for them to do so, either as consumers or producers. Similarly, some portion of the population will always be inclined to more trivial pursuits, and now it’s both easier to consume and produce it.
I could just as easily argue the inverse, i.e., that the computer and HD video cameras is creating much greater art, because more and more people have access to the tools. It’s not true. There are still only a few real geniuses, and the rest are mostly crap. But, I will say this: the technology, the cheapness and ready availability, probably means more geniuses get a shot than in times past.
Did you know that at one time, art schools forbade tube paint, because real artists should make their own paint from pigments and oil? Graphic design programs eschewed the computer for years. Filmographers eschewed digital video. Writers eschewed word processors.
And yet, great art was still made. Art lives above and beyond the tools.
Michael, you hit the nail on the head insofar as my ‘dog’ goes. That’s precisely my angle. I have to admit, having read what you’ve just written, its hard to argue against much of it. In fact, your point about more geniuses getting their shot is well taken.
Still, I can’t silence this feeling I have that as a whole we’re trending more superficially and that the readily available tech toys like Hipstamatic, while giving some geniuses their shot, are giving far more crap merchants their shot by proportion. They are contributing to a fixation on the superficial.
In doing so, the output is skewing the overall tonnage of output in favor of crap. Filtering the good from the crap then becomes harder because you have to wade through more crap to find anything worth the time.
Of course, we all have less time to do this filtering.
Ah, Corey…yes, with that point I don’t disagree. You’re absolutely right…when everyone is producing things for mass consumption, from self-published books to arty photos to instantaneous opinions to auto-tuned music, there’s a helluva lot more garbage out there.
I believe, though, there will be arbiters of taste that will fill the void, and somehow it will remain possible to find the best of the best fairly easily. Fingers crossed, anyway.
WOW! Very interesting read. “McPictures” I can’t think of a better term to sum up all the visual nonsense being produced out there. Nice, I may borrow that term sometime
I myself am also guilty of Hipstamatic-ing. It’s fun, it’s easy, people who don’t know the true nature of art are WOWed. And believe me, that’s a lot of WOW-ing. Perhaps ol’ Marshall McLuhan was right “The medium is the message” It’s the technology that’s cool. It’s the technology that is wow-ing people. To me Hipstamatic is Synonymous with the iPhone, and lets face it. The iPhone is the coolest little gizmo out there. Maybe what people are really in love with is the fact that visually interesting images can be mass produced with the push of a button? In any case i’m getting off topic. I just wanted to say I enjoyed the read. I’m happy I stumbled on your blog. I’m going to go take a look around now 
Vasko, I’m glad you enjoyed this post. It’s gotten a goodly amount of traffic and I think is an interesting topic. I struggle personally with the conflict between allowing anyone to make ‘art’ (which I am generally in favor of) and the outcome (which is a lot of crap to sift through to find anything worth looking at). McLuhan was more right about more things than I think he gets credit for. The ‘message’ of digital photography (especially on everyday consumer devices, like phones) has been significant, from undermining privacy to spotlighting abuse to exploitation and further lowering the bar of culture. And as with everything, there are pros and cons to all of it. I’ve not idea what the solution is (I’m not even sure I know what the question is) but its enjoyable to ponder and think about. We live in interesting times.
They said the same thing about color film when it was first introduced. Oh sure color is novel and exciting, but it’s a gimmick. If the photographer is relying on the newness of the gimmick to create intriguing images then the viewers will tend to quickly become bored with the gimmick, and then the lack of intriguing subject matter is revealed.
Anytime discussion of a photograph is started with talk about the gear, process, or technique I tend to suspect it’s because the subject matter is less worth consideration. The fact is that your photos of your car, bottle of wine, and cup of coffee are not particularly interesting. Only the newness of the processing gimmick attracts our eye, but our eye will quickly become jaded when we see the same effect everywhere.
I would agree, when the production process leads the conversation then the image itself is probably not compelling. The issue, I think, is that by making mundane-but-technically-novel images so easy to make, we flood the marketplace (and our consciousness) with far more chafe than wheat. Combined with everyone having too little time today in general, my concern is that people will ‘gloss over’ meaning and settle for gimmickry. If that happens en masse I think humanity will be worse for the wear.
I don’t think so. It’s a fad, a trend. If it stays around, it will only be because the retro hipstamtic effect has burrowed its way into our visual vocabulary, our collective visual subconscious. But in no way does it harken the death of Art (with a capital A), as artists will always strive to find new and arresting ways to communicate.
The spirograph didn’t mean everyone was suddenly an expressionist painter a la Jackson Pollock. It just meant a lot of kids had fun spilling paint on spinning paper. And, like the spirograph, hipstamatic images are transient. Look at Instagram: wildly popular, and when you boil it down, it’s really just instant photo sharing with a twist: your images can look slightly more interesting than if they were shot with an iPhone with no effects applied.
In a way, applying the hipstamatic effect is like switching fonts in a document…they don’t alter the value of the content, they just enhance (or detract) from the mood the author was going for. Want to sound serious, use a solid serif typeface; need to sound casual, use a handwritten font. As Matt points out, it doesn’t change the underlying quality of the content.
Oh, I don’t think it’s the death of Art per se, only a contributor to obfuscation and clutter that is possibly training us to be more shallow in our expectations.
This observation has been made about almost every new form of communication, from theater to radio, pop music to pop lit. Maybe it’s true. Maybe we’re hitting the point of total overload.
But, I want to be clear: I do hear your concern. Take the tilt-and-shift effect. The first time I saw a photographer use it, I was blown away. Now it seems every cool new video or photo I see employs the tile-shift effect. This tells me two things: the original effect was so cool everyone wanted to emulate it, and the effect will soon lose its ability to wow us, if it hasn’t already, if only because of its overuse.
If there is something sad here for me, I guess it’s that technology allows us to easily allow anyone to imitate unique visual effects in such a way that even the originals lose some of their impact. If everyone had started painting like Picasso, I guess it’s fair to say a Picasso wouldn’t be as meaningful, except that he was fist.
Still, great art is more than technique, and a great photograph is more than a filter or effect.
“Still, great art is more than technique, and a great photograph is more than a filter or effect.”
I couldn’t agree more. However, I think the gimmicky technology out there creates an inertia-like pull that could easily distract people from seeking meaning and to fixate on technique. Not through a fault of their own, but rather because given limited time to do anything, they journey never has a chance to go further.
I’m confused. Are you talking about the viewers of these photos, or the creators? If you’re talking about the viewers, it’s quite possibly true that most people wouldn’t know a great photograph from a decent one.
But if you’re talking about the creators, I still disagree. People who make things, true artists, do so to fill a great desire within themselves. This desire is rarely satisfied simply by hitting an ‘apply retro effect’ button.
I’m talking about the viewers, who now with the tools at their disposal, easily become creators as well. Perhaps now you’re getting me to the point and it is this: The tools make novel effects initially intriguing to a viewer of an image. They then allow that viewer to imitate the effect with their own images. Because of the ease of this, the viewer who never saw beneath the superficial in the first place, now is creating the superficial as well. This tide of superficial images with novel effects overwhelms and drowns out more thoughtful art because of some very real barrier like the amount of time we all have to devote to such matters as image seeing and creating. Therefore, by matter of ratios, while great art is still being produced, it becomes less likely to be seen due to the deluge of the superficial which replicates itself more quickly due to more ‘carriers’ of the superficial aesthetic expectation.
…damn, that sounds more like chemistry than art but I think there’s a kernal of what I’m getting at in there.
At the same time, technology is allowing great art from people who would otherwise be shut out to be distributed freely and widely, for everyone to enjoy. Pluses and minuses, I guess.