19th Century Ideas in a 21st Century IPhone App

I went on a walk last night and found some grass. Some real grass. I think I ran through it 63 times. (It was littered with cow patties but I avoided all of them!) To see the lush tufts of grass, check out my journal entry. And I think I said I forlicked gleefully... which is probably a more accurate description then "ran". Then I did a starfish in the middle of the pasture. It was fun. My bum got damp and cold, but it was worth it. This was my view:

Nothing but blue sky!

While I was on my walk last night I was thinking about random things that were all floating around in my brain. It was a PERFECT night… all sunny with a crystal clear blue sky. Then it hit me… Instagram. I couldn’t believe that it had taken me that long to realize something so obvious… Instagram is the 21^st century version of the Claude glass.  You all probably think that I am being somewhat ostentatious, but when my thesis for my Master’s degree is centered around the idea of using filters to improve a natural landscape… you feel pretty dumb when it takes you 3+ years to put two and two together. Instagram took an old 19^th century tool rooted in Romanticism and turned it into a 21^st century smartphone app. Simple and genius… no re-invention of the wheel at all. Just use an old idea to become one of the leading social media outlets. Brilliant.

For those of you who haven’t sat through hours of Romanticism (I did that by choice by the way. I think it my favorite period. Guys in cool clothes with that wind swept, hero hair. ) it is a movement that… well… romanticizes everything. J I like it because it introduces the sublime and the idea of naturalism. And everything just looks cooler. Take the two guys below… honestly who would you date? Mr. Neoclassic Boring on his Grand tour or Mr. Romantic Wind Swept? I rest my case. J

 

A Claude Glass is a… piece of glass. (shocker) The tourist would stretch out their hand in front of them, hold the tool up to eye level and survey the scene that was behind them.  The mirror would be slightly convex which blurred the foreground details and framed the center background objects.  Many different kinds glass could be used to create different effects on the landscape.  The blue or gray would produce a moonlight scene, while a morning view could be created with the yellow glass.  The traveler only had a specific amount of time in the landscape that they were visiting so to get the complete view, one could use the frost tinted glass to produce a winter wonderland as the grass turned to snow.

Sound familiar? Instagram allows you to blur the sides, foreground, or background of an image while also allowing the user to pick a colored filter to change the mood and “romanticize” the view. Obviously it is more high-tech than a mirror from the 1800’s… but the same underlying idea is there. Perfecting “nature”. Take the two pictures below… one is no filter from my IPhone. The second is the same picture with the HEFE filter from Instagram.

 

And at this point it’s probably a miracle that you are still reading… J

On to Anna’s Life… its busy. I have 2 dogs and 3 cats with me for a few days. I like having them and I think Watson likes having Praline (his cat friend). They sleep together and lick each other. It’s pretty adorable. What’s not so adorable is the war they had over sleeping on MY face at 5:30am this morning.

This weekend Watson has his followup vet visit. I think he is feeling better. He puts up a fight now with the meds. I have to put him on his back when I hold him, and he fights fights fights! But once I get him settled his will is broken and he just swallows his pill.

That’s it! Ill try to blog on Sunday with Watson updates!