Project Goals
The goal of our project is to enable photographers to add narratives to their photo collection and to extend their narratives to include others’ photos. Users can organize their pictures into linear “photo-arcs” connected by textual narratives. Users can also view other narratives that use the same pictures, or perhaps similar pictures, which introduce a non-linear, interactive element by providing jumping-off points or tangents from their own narratives.This project was inspired by Geoffrey Bowker’s talk at the SIMS Distinguished Lecture Series. Bowker posited that the concept of Perfect Memory is difficult to achieve in digital media because data is stored in databases that do not easily accommodate narrative. Our project attempts to visualize and save some of these ephemeral narratives around photo-sharing.
The project is further inspired by our ongoing interviews concerning the social uses of photographs. We have found that one of the primary uses of photographs is sharing, where sharers construct narratives around the photographs they show which then reinforce relationships and group identity. One of the advantages of face-to-face photo-sharing is the narrative flexibility the sharer, and receiver has. Our goal is to enable and extend this flexibility in a digital medium.
Our interface will support the following tasks:
- Construction and modification of photo-narratives using drag-and-drop of photos and input of text on the line between them
- Views of other related photo-narratives that use photos you use in one’s own narrative (arcs that intersect one’s own)
- Suggestions for photos to add to one’s photo-narrative, based on time of capture and other available metadata (e.g. location, others present, content tags, etc.)