Your Pictures, Your Politics

Left, Right, Center – Your Pictures Your Politics is an installation by FABRICA selected to coincide with the upcoming Italian national election*, focusing on the power and creative expression of citizen media through the use of mobile phones.

Three interactive picture frames are hung in the shop window of the Fabrica Features store close to Piazza Maggiore in Bologna. Each frame is displaying a rolling sequence of images. Viewers are invited to upload their camera phone pictures or videos to the frames via Bluetooth. Each frame is assigned a title of “Left”, “Right” or “Center”, a theme designed to hint at the current political climate around election time; however, the association of images and political stances are entirely up to the viewers’ interpretation.

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FABRICA invites everyone in Bologna to share their camera phone images captured around the time of the national election, resulting in a collective statement that is both fun and serious, displaying a unique character of Bologna as expressed by its inhabitants and visitors.

The work is based on the CommPose system. This unit, a modified 12″ Apple iBook in a wooden box, is hung on the wall as a picture frame, constantly playing a sequence of images and it can receive new images from a near by camera phone when requested.

By Mark Argo, Ann Poochareon, Silvia Marini, Grisha Morgenstern.

LEFT, RIGHT, CENTER – Your Pictures, Your Politics
Via Rizzoli 8, Bologna and runs through April 17.

At the end of the installation selected media will be available for viewing.

*I’d like to add one thing: i’ve been living in this country for 3 loooong years and never met anyone who said s/he had voted for the current Prime Minister. Actually can’t remember having met anyone who said he had voted. So please, do me a favour, go and vote this time: no one will get rid of this buffone, unless you go and vote for someone else.