pictures of nothing

i doubt there are many people (if any) who understand my statement "here is a photo of nothing " but don't recognise 0

True enough, but I wonder if a slightly more dimensional symbol would enhance the recognition (unless you wanted to keep it minimalist).

The nurse knew what she was talking about, at least! I will argue that it's impossible to take a photo of nothing intentionally - at best you can set up a mockup by having a random shutter fire somehow. But the photographer in the pics in question is always taking a picture of something - a shape or color - that is nothing but decoration.

Transposing this to music takes me completely aback. I've survived as a street musician, and participated in other musical activities, much of it involving singing or playing in unison. The group aspect makes it a lot harder to distinguish something as nothing, and other senses of 'nothing' start to come in, like elevator music, also an anodyne background. Which come to think of it captures the nurse's perception of the pics hanging in the ward.

Take out Dubliners, and it reads like a description of Phobrain. Thanks, Julie! My hope is that someday with a significant portion of all photos taken going into it, it would really take on a collective consciousness that could relate to each individual personally.

These bits of pavement were diligently located or recreated, and placed in the Smithsonian because they were mentioned on photo.net, an early instance of a pre-quantum internet site, pursuant to Trump XXXiV's order that everything must be something.

(what she misses) you have to go into them

Or you could be missing what she's seeing, which might just be bad pictures.

Pictures of nothing may have some great potential but not all pictures of nothing will achieve the great potential some pictures of nothing have.

Transposing this to music takes me completely aback.

From the liner notes to Jeroen van Veen's recent Minimal Piano Collection Volume XXI-XXVIII (and yes, I have all volumes, this and the preceding set):

... "depending on which way you turn your head" ... A diptych turns my head (literally). A different or further diptych turns it again. Hello, Bill.

Since she said it about my pics (pre-diptych), you can be the judge too. I compare it to hearing Ivan Karp of OK Harris Gallery in NY, say "This is fine art photography" after going through a couple of my books, and cling to my illusions. :-)

You might like Phobrain even better Julie, if your head doesn't spin off :-) Latest head-turning technology has to do with the sequencing of the now ~20K curated pairs. When you click on the left pic, it associates at least one keyword between one of the current pics and one of the next pair, giving the chance for themes to emerge, sometimes giving the impression of statements or commentary. When you click on the right-hand pic, it mixes in strong, 4-way keyword matches with color-based matches among the pairs that are most weakly connected by keywords, using view time and mouse behavior to select which approach to take, which interactivity I liken to throwing a stone into a pond.

I like how my mind puts together the correspondence between the shadow plant and the real one, as if they are magnets and my neurons are iron filings following the field.

I thought the nurse was saying it about the ward's pictures. Sorry, I must have misread. I'm definitely not judging your photos. And, you aside, does someone calling photos "fine art photos" necessarily mean they think they're good? Maybe it does for many people, but I've certainly seen my share of fine art photos that I thought were pretty bad, again not meant personally about your stuff.

This brings up a pet peeve of mine, or something like a pet peeve, I guess. It's often assumed that art and fine art are quality judgments. I don't think they are, since I think there's lots of bad art. As a matter of fact, in another thread somewhere, I was talking about hobbyist photographers and someone assumed my referring to them as hobbyists as opposed to artists was a way of putting them down. I had to reassure them that when I use hobbyist it has nothing to do with quality and I think there are many hobbyists who are better and more interesting photographers than many artists.

"A nurse saw my photos and said, they are like the photos on the ward - they are all of nothing!"

True, they can be fine art and not good. Certainly mine weren't stellar enough for Karp to invite me to give a show - he said he was booked for 3 years or something. But it seemed like he saw what I was shooting for.

I agree that hobbyists can easily be more interesting than artists, and high school plays and musicals are usually more fun than professional versions for me (small sample size), so I'm going for interest rather than quality, those moments I feel like I'm seeing something completely new.

I'm going for interest rather than quality

It could even turn out that interest helps determine quality and quality helps make something interesting.

A degree of intimacy will often get my attention.