Experimenting with Mobile Image and Self-Portraiture: Peculiaris.net

Peculiaris.net is a collaborative moblog that questions identity and self-representation. It is based on identity, mobility, modification and ephemeral concepts. As the time goes by, we change our personality, character, way of thinking, ultimately, our identity. In Peculiaris.net this mutant and constant questionable identity is shown, and it is represented by photo self-portraiture. Peculiaris.net is a collaborative moblog that has the intention of collecting assorted "identity photos". In his book Identity, Zgymunt Bauman referes the theory of Beata Frydryczak to to make the point that the hero of modernity lives the moment, the "here and now", it couldn't be a collector, unless he/she would be a collector of sensations, emotions, Erlebnisse. Accordingly, peculiaris is a project to collect these ephemeral end fragile emotions. Generally the photos taken with mobile camera are reproductions and attempts to strain the time of theses Erlebnisse (experiences). Mobile phones have changed with time, they are not a mere wireless telephone anymore, in addition they have become powerful devices for communication. Nowadays a mobile phone can be an instrument to produce media, with them we can record audio, video, take photos, write text, send and receive emails, navigate on the web, and so on and so forth. The project Peculiaris.net decided to experiment with one of these features of the new mobile phones: the still photographic image.