Pixels: The Art of the iPhone

For those of you aboout to rock, we salute you.

All my unicorns died upon hearing the news. Now I must start building my secret happy farm all over.

Life In LoFi, the pre-eminent iPhonographic blog, is reporting that the tale of the origins of the Hipstamatic app are not true, that the brothers Bruce and Winston Dorbowski, who supposedly were attempting to build cheap lomo cameras back in the early eighties before they died, cameras whose unique imaging Hipstamatic purportedly imitated with its digital filtering, never actually walked the Earth like Cain, or like anybody else. Nor, we may surmise, did these camera prototypes ever exist. Jesus, maybe there is no Aunt Jemina, Colonel Sanders, or Orville Redenbacher either.

I am shaken to the core.

In case anybody forgot, this is what I think of Hipstamatic.

Hipstamatic, the app suite everybody loves except me and a couple of other people who wisely prefer to remain anonymous, released a new filter pack today, apparently. Included in it is the Dali Goodpak for Hipstamatic. I’ve already received two submissions using the app. I passed on both.

(Please: no offense to the people who sent the pictures in. I know your other work, which I post often. I have been planning a new Hipsta screed for a while.)

57 Channels and Nothing On by Reservoir Sally

First off, I hardly EVER post mirror image pictures here on the site. Most of the time, I write to the artist and ask him/her for the original, un-mirrored picture, which tells the actual story.

What does a mirrored image tell us? That it is a mirrored image. And that’s it. There is never anything else in the picture. I’ve seen hundreds. I know of one, and only one, artist who can create mirror images and get away with it, but he does so much more one barely notices.

Double Bacon Please by Reservoir Sally

They’ve programmed Hipstamatic Dali Goodpak to do some left-right variation in color/contrast, but, like every other Hipstamatic imprint, it is entirely predictable and stale coming out of the box. The fact that the Hipstamatic people made a plug-in that automatically makes a mirror image implies to me a kind of aesthetic bankruptcy. But I am certain they will make bank with it.

“Knox,” you say, “why do you have such a problem with Hipstamatic? Everybody loves it and the pictures are cool!” Read the rest of this entry →

Erik Satie is the patron saint of Pixels, and we love René Magritte as well.

It has come to my attention that some of my submission guidelines have been misinterpreted by some, and misrepresented by others, sometimes intentionally, to many iphonographers out there. I tried to make our policies very clear, but I guess I failed in that regard.

First off, there is no exclusivity requirement here on Pixels for any image or artist. The only thing I ask is that an artist not post an image on any sites that allow computer or off-iphone editing of images, if the artist wants us to consider that image for inclusion in Apple events or gallery shows that we put together. We believe that contests are anathema, an outrage, to art as well.

The reason for this is simple: we put tremendous effort into presenting works in a professional manner to give the utmost respect to the art and the artist.  We believe, with no equivocation, that the medium is defined by the device, the iPhone itself, that contests, rigged as many are, are abhorrent, and that posting on such sites is tacit approval of such policies and games. But that is the business of the individual artist. We would not prevent anyone from posting anywhere: it is the artist’s right. By the same token, we decline, as is our right, to print and promote and display (as at Apple events or in galleries) images that are also on those sites.

We also decline to publish or exhibit images which have been processed on any device other than the iPhone.  We have witnessed, first-hand, over and over, at our gallery shows, the reaction people have when they are told that there was no computer manipulation allowed. It is important to the public that it be so. It is important to the Pixels’ artists who do all their work on the iPhone that it be so, that we do not publish computer-processed work next to theirs and also call it iPhonography. Computer-manipulated imagery no longer is iPhonography. We must look out for all the Pixels’ artists who do the hard work of bringing forth their beautiful works of magical realism on the tiny iPhone screen, with the buggy apps we know so well, and love. Read the rest of this entry →