Content to be Different
content strategist content researcher content creator
on Twitter on Instagram on AW360
Content Researcher
I’ve published in peer-reviewed journals and open access journals and have a PhD on digital imag(in)ing, JPEG and Facebook’s Haystack.
the PhD (pdf) →
Techne Art + Research pamphlet →
Software Tunnels Through the Rags ‘n Refuse (Paper in Culture Machine) →
The App Object Economy:We’re All Remix Artists Now (Paper in First Monday) →
Digital Common Space: Remixability (Chapter in Digital Public Spaces) →
Critical Criminology: Trust Me I’m Telling you Stories (Paper in Law and Critique… back in 1991!) →
Content objects
My current practice-research is around object-oriented photography (OOPh), everyday remix and content improvisation. I’m researching using a guitar and a mobile phone.
Content Teacher
I’ve written, managed and taught undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in media, journalism, computing and advertising. I currently run the BA in Advertising at London College of Communication.
A collection of lectures and talks → Thoughts on Advertising and Education on AW360 →
Mind full Object Oriented Photography: it’s all a bit weird
Sixty seconds. Looking through the phone screen to the world. Breathing. In. Out. The phone moves slightly. The rhythm of seeing, being with the object in focus. The light dances. The objects connect to each other and the light and the phone and me. This is object-oriented photography (OOPh). This is mind full imag(in)ing: part practice-research and philosophical exploration, part creative commentary and part mindfulness practice. Imag(in)ed in mobile and through Instagram, it begins and ends with “objects”, the weird material mesh of things.
OOPh draw on the work of philosophers developing an object-oriented ontology (OOO) and the turn to the material. Following Graham Harman’s account of a panoply of objects – real/unreal, human/unhuman, concrete/abstract as well as Tim Morton’s ecological mesh where these objects at different scales refract and reflect in a complex Indra’s Net mesh, Following Jane Bennett’s exploration of ‘vibrant matter’, these objects are approached as material. Quantum fluctuations, undersea cables and server farms, lawyers and photographers are presences. Real. Present.
There can never be a decisive moment, only ever indecisive moments. As photographers we are always strangers in a strange land, alien visitors. OOPh celebrates and explores that strange land. The sixty seconds we spend together are a performance, an improvisation the I and other objects jamming an image.
But OOPh is more than photography or philosophy or even cultural critique, it is a mindfulness practice. Its respect, even affection for, objects is mind full – full of mind. In those sixty seconds I am present with that panoply of other objects. There is no hierarchy or separation, no past and future. There is just this. And this. And this.
For fuller musings on OOPh, see Medium.
Content Creator
I’ve been a photographer, journalist, editor and illustrator for B2B magazines such as Marketing Week, New Media Age and The Lawyer. I launched a campaigning magazine for Mencap and took Marketing Week and the Bookseller online during the (first) dotcom boom. I’ve even had work in Horse & Hound.
As part of my practice-research into content improvisation with words, I play with short-form werable imagism and mobile remix imag(in)ings.
As part of my practice research into object-oriented photography, I experiment with digital pinhole and stereo imag(in)ing experiences.
“Fifteen years ago William Gibson wrote that the sky was the colour of a TV tuned to a dead channel. He wrote his novels on a typewriter – as personal computers were still a rarity. Now he is heralded as the man who invented cyberspace. “I’m sort of stuck with that,” he says. “The characters can’t use the word ‘cyberspace’. I can’t allow them to use a word that was invented in another William Gibson fiction. It is a violation of some internal consistency.”” – Interview with William Gibson, Marketing Week
“Chief Executive Martin Sorrell doesn’t think he’s “wired” however. Neither, in his opinion, is his company. “I’d like to be more wired,” he says and then, slipping from the personal to the business, “I don’t think we’re doing enough.”” – Interview with Sir Martin Sorrell, Marketing Week
“When you meet Mrs Edwina Currie, that ‘Mrs’ sticks in your mind. Like ‘Mrs Thatcher’ there is something slightly imposing about the title. You don’t talk to Mrs Currie. You engage in verbal combat, somewhere between a battle and a game.” – Interview with Edwina Currie, Viewpoint, Mencap’s campaigning magazine
