One Hundred and Forty Characters

"You get these fleeting periods where people forget where they are, for a fraction of a second, and all pretence drains away."

A quote taken from the BBC article about photographer Chris Floyd who decided it was time to find out a bit more about his Twitter followers, and so 'One Hundred and Forty Characters' was born. A selection of followers were picked for the piece; a collection of black and white portraits, the subject image framed within a white box, much the same as the concept of the Twitter dialogue. Ah yes, this is the physical representation of the Twitterspeak concept that we have all been waiting for. I say 'waiting' in a very loose sense - but a clever concept on part of the photographer! And so the idea is to make a connection with these followers, to break the digital barrier of the cyberspace dialogue and to build a more tangible relationship. The work goes on show at Host Gallery in London this week - check it out.

"I began to realise that the digital revolution that had swept through my world of work, photography, had also killed off one of the aspects that made it so attractive in the first place. Namely, the sense of community that lab culture engendered in the days when we all shot on film and often spent hours at a time hanging out in professional labs with other photographers and art directors" - Chris Floyd.

One hundred and forty characters taken to a new level, each person representing a word in the Twitter dialogue. It's crazy how easy it is to lose physical contact in a society of digital communication, and this is a really good reminder about sustaining a real dialogue, to maintain a sense of tangibility and reality in a black and white world of digital characters. 140 characters: say something clever.