Participatoryculture

I was inspired to write this post by the work of Kim Douillard and Kevin Hodgson in a project called "Slices of Life". I was especially struck by Kevin's photos here (and I am avidly awaiting Kim's).  In Kevin's night picture, however, I found myself wondering about what I could not see just as much as by what I could see.  Having taken night photos before, I also thought about how limiting the camera is as it tries to record the fullness that the night can seem.  I know that is not a fair comparison in many ways, but technology is almost always like that.  In other words, in the fair light of day or night, technology reduces, delimits, and otherwise 'cheapens' experience. It makes the world more legible, but less wise. For example, below is a photo of a rectangular platte of ground shot this morning just outside my back door. What we see has little to do with it means.  For one thing, the metaphor of the 'frame' makes legible only a very small portion of the available universe.  In a way this is exactly