Peculiaris

Peculiaris.net is a collaborative moblog that questions identity and self-representation. It is based on concepts of an identity that is mutant, fluid, liquid, and open… And this mutant identity is here characterized by self-portrait.

The project intention is to collect a huge number of these ephemeras photos taken by mobile camera.

The moblog will be receiving mobile photos from May 2007 to May 2008. The images will show the process of collecting these “glimpses” of identity. They will also represent the time change, the mutability, since people are encouraged to send many photos of different periods.

Artistic motivation

Reading articles about identity I found an interview with Zgymunt Bauman where he talks about an identity “in movement”. It is about us, nowadays, always in search of an identity. Based on these concepts of an identity that is mutant, fluid, liquid, difficult to be shaped and closed, I decided to create a collaborative self-portrait project.

As the time goes by, we change or personality, character, way of thinking, ultimately, our identity. With peculiaris I try to show a bit of this, being here the identity represented by the self-portraiture. The most evident way to show someone’s identity is through photo, and, for example, the public institutions use the photography in Ids and passports.

Peculiaris is a collaborative moblog that has the intention of collecting assorted “identity photos”. Zgymunt Bauman1, in the book Identity, when reflecting over identity uses the theory of Beata Frydryczak to say that the hero of modernity lives the moment, the “here and now”, it couldn’t be a collector, unless he/she would be a collector of sensations, emotions, Erlebnisse.

Accordingly, peculiaris is a project to collect these ephemera end fragile emotions. Generally the photos taken with mobile camera are reproductions and attempts to strain the time of theses Erlebnisse (experiences).

The name “Peculiaris”

The name “peculiaris” came from the Latin work for “peculiar”, something particular, private, curious… It is the particular characteristic of each person, something typical to his/her identity. I chose the word in Latin by relating to the notion of identifying species, as in biology where the names are Latin. Here we are identifying species, the human being portrait identities.

This moblog

The best way to represent the relation of identity and time on the net was using a moblog. First, it is a blog because blogs give the idea of a journal, something you write everyday and keep as recordings of a time. Secondly, it is a moblog (mobile blog), that is, a blog where the feeds are sent from a mobile phone via mms or email. The content created can be uploaded to the website anytime from anywhere. This is important because mobile images are strongly related to time, a lot more than any other type of photography and this immediacy in uploading gives dynamism to the project.

Here the use of mobile camera is mandatory given that the project’s idea is to capture, collect, archive the photos made with this type of media. I believe
that there is a different aesthetics of photos done with mobile phone; they are more informal, done in any place, in mobility. Usually they are taken in
public spaces, when in company of friends and family. They are spontaneous we take when we did not plan to take photos (because when we plan ahead we take
a digital camera with us). These photos, thus, have a certain sense of spontaneity and naturality, a playful logic that we would like to capture with this project.

The moblog will be receiving images for a year, from May 2007 to May 2008.

Collaborate

We invite everyone to collaborate; it is easy. You just need to make a self-portrait with you mobile camera and send it by mms or email to

.
Your photo will appear automatically at our moblog. The subject of your message or email will be the title of the post. It is interesting if you use your name as the title or in the body of the post, together with the photo. In doing that, you can later on search for you name and see all the photos you have sent (and from other people with the same name too).

Requirements to participate:

- the photo should be a self-portrait

- the photo should be made using a mobile camera.

The project is open to many self-portrait of the same person; we even recommend that you send more than one. Although, e only ask that you don’t sen many photos of the same moment, please, wait at least a day to resend a self-portrait. As our identity change with time, our self-portrait will change too.

Please, don’t forget to make it a self-portrait, and not a photo done by other people. Once more, for not seeing exactly how the photo is made, we don’t have the total control over it, what makes that self-portrait more unpredictable than a portrait. It becomes something particular to us, the way we see ourselves.

In sending the photo to the website via mms or email, the participant has agreed that the photo will be published on the web.

Authorship

This project was created by Karla Brunet as an experimental work with photography, collaboration and mobile phone. For further information, please contact karla [ @ ] peculiaris.net