Notes — Steve Reich / NASA / Flickr / Metadata
Ran into some artists in the park today and one of them randomly told me to look into Steve Reich and also the NASA Moon archive/Flickr metadata thing in relationship to what I’m building with FLUX.
Just leaving notes for myself here.
Steve Reich
Apparently Steve Reich is a minimalist composer whose work revolves around:
- repetition
- loops
- gradual shifts over time
- systems/processes
- accumulation
Simple structures repeated over and over until they slowly evolve into something larger.
The artist said this reminded him of FLUX because of:
- daily walking
- repetitive photographic practice
- sequencing
- chronology
- accumulation over years
- process over perfection
Interesting thought.
Especially because FLUX isn’t really built around isolated “masterpiece” images as much as continuous movement and publishing over time.
Need to look more into:
- phase music
- tape loops
- process art
- minimalism
- Steve Reich interviews
NASA / Flickr / Metadata
The other thing mentioned was that NASA has apparently been using Flickr heavily for recent Moon mission archival distribution.
What’s interesting is not just the photographs themselves but the metadata attached to them:
- timestamps
- mission information
- camera data
- sequencing
- geolocation
- archival structure
- contextual information
The idea being that the image itself is only one layer.
The metadata becomes part of the historical object.
This feels strangely connected to where FLUX is unintentionally heading:
- issue numbers
- photographer attribution
- exact timestamps
- GPS
- QR codes
- downloadable originals
- cryptographic verification
- public archives
- searchable systems
- long-term preservation
The idea of the photograph as an archival object instead of merely “content.”
Flickr
Also interesting to think about how early Flickr functioned almost like a public visual memory system:
- searchable archives
- visible EXIF data
- geotagging
- chronological uploads
- camera metadata
- tagging systems
Feels very different from modern algorithmic social media.
More archival.
More informational.
More chronological.
Less feed.
More library.
Just notes.
Need to research further.