FlickrFrame

Imagine a flat panel wall-mounted screen with a very slowly alternating selection from Flickr. The FlickrFrame could come with a remote control that lets you fast forward, pause, and navigate through friends, interesting photos, themes.

flight of the rainbow, Originally uploaded by linny.

Traditional art selection is a commitment. Unless you are wealthy enough to rotate a collection, you get a photo framed or buy a piece of art and live with it for years. The FlickrFrame would provide visual variety without Martha Stewart’s budget.
There are images that are emotional or loud, that I’d want to look at sometime, but not everyday all year long. The FlickrFrame would allow the viewing of jagged and soothing images, without being locked into states of permanent angst or tranquility.
Looking at the Flickr API docs, someone has done a little bit of this with a hack that lets you display Flickr photos on a TIVO. “You can choose to display pictures searching by tags, groups, sets, users or just the most recent photos. This is configured by a GUI on the PC, or command line options for the adventurous.” It doesn’t have the very-slow-rotation feature, and it requires a Tivo.
The idea of transient art is implemented in 3d by the Canvas Gallery, a cafe and gallery in San Franciso that has art for sale or rent. I haven’t seen the model in other places, not sure why. If there is furniture rental, surely there should be art rental.

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