Tuesday, November 08, 2005

What are my pumpkins?


feminine side

My Flickr eyes were open. I walked into the Room-That-Time-Forgot, and I knew what I would see and photograph. Hannah’s stuff, abandoned like crockery on the dinner table on the Marie Celeste. I’m infected by a meme on collections of stuff.

Last week I posted this: 'We collect things for shelves, wall displays, mantelpieces etc. We collect ideas: "Collecting is a primal phenomenon of study: the student collects knowledge.” (Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project)' ; I read the Dr Kate comments on collections and didn’t comment; I read Colin and Michele wondering about random Flickr groups. I posted pumpkins on a skip and was invited to submit my picture to the Skips and Dumpsters group. I didn’t. I decided to be more cautious about my use of tags.

I think I see a move to construct understandings in different ways. A sort of emergent pattern-recognition, like the way themes emerge in a blog, and tags cluster together as affinities develop. But are my pumpkins part of ‘skips and dumpsters’? LeoL30 politely suggests the picture fits the image pool. I remained unconvinced. After all who’s collecting who and why?

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