Looking at a photo with other people in real time

<p>I wonder if many people have a habit of looking at photos with other people? I normally look alone, but there are times when I feel that I'm seeing something so novel and compelling that the urge to share messes with my ability to look at another photo. That made me think that some people might be convivial photo/art viewers by nature, sharing pics in real time vs. via sites like this, where slower discussion is enjoyable. Recently I've been discussing photos in depth with another person, mostly on the phone, as we assign keywords and refine the keyword scheme (it's like scripting Sesame Street word-characters, and could make an interesting collaborative activity for pairs of photographers in general), and this has both illustrated for me why I have mostly looked alone, and brought me to new ways of looking. </p>

<p>This gave me the idea of having a photo-viewing chat room, with a photo under discussion that would change when enough people clicked 'Next' or discussion (scrolling under the photo) died down. I wonder if the idea of a live photo critique has come up for pnet? Maybe it would be too expensive to govern, unless maybe there was a system for people who already had connected socially to log in to their own group session. Would enough people be interested to make it worthwhile? Maybe people inclined to do this are already happily talking on the phone while looking at each other's pics on the web? If a sort of critique channel were implemented, I could offer the software for using discussion and ratings to pick the next photo, though having a session leader curate would be another necessary option.</p>

<p>Software aside, I wonder what other people's shared experiences are like, since I am having my happy solitude disrupted, and am curious if others have found solutions.</p><div></div>

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<p>That (the above) was a sample of a photo.net chat room post.</p>

<p>Sort of a John Cage, everybody reads what nobody's written kind of thing. </p>

i'd love to look at photos in another time with real people

<p>Another time is easy, real people is the hard part.</p>

<p>Do we get to share the fried chicken?</p>

<p>We're so close to that I can taste it.</p>

<p>Musicians improvising while showing my slides was a formative experience. Another idea is a room in a gallery with projectors on all walls and motion detectors feeding a photo selection algorithm.</p><div></div>

<p>My latest idea is to create a sort of ouija board on the photo, where multiple people drawing at once would be averaged to a common line everyone would see along with their own, which would map into image space for the next photo. I find that if I trace a feature of the photo in my solo implementation, I am much more invested in the response than if I just click something to get the next photo, so it'd be interesting to feel other people's hands on the wheel too. If the show included photos by the participants, choice might be biased at times toward the photos of participants closest or furthest from the average. In the left photo, note the angular line drawn that finds the photo on the right.</p><div></div>