A photographic exquisite corpse?

Olympus 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 Zuiko Digital ED

12/19/2007 06:27:35 AM · #1

Okay, so instead of sitting and writing my thesis, I was wiki-surfing and came across this. I'm sure everyone is aware of the game, where you draw the head of a person, fold the paper over and pass it to someone else who draws the body without seeing what you drew, and so on; but I didn't know it was called an exquisite corpse.

Anyway,
It got me thinking: is anyone aware of a similar thing done with photographs, and would anyone maybe like to give it a try.

I haven't thought about exactly how it would work, but perhaps do it panorama style:
-First person takes a photo and crops to a specific dimension.
-They don't show it to anybody, but send a strip of their image, say the right hand 100 pixels on to the next person.
-The next person gets the strip and takes a photograph that follows on from the strip they received, liberal photoshopping allowed to blend the two images.
-They then send on the right hand 100 pixels to another person and so on.
-At the end the seperate images, and blended strips, are all combined into one image.

What do you reckon, is it doable? Any other suggestions? It would definitely require some reasonable PS skills for the blending but I would have though it could work.

Fromac

Nikon D7000

12/19/2007 07:50:09 AM · #2

I bet this is doable, technically. I'm sure the results would be pretty amazing, and I know that my editing skills aren't up to the challenge.

There are many excellent photogs here that would make this work really well though.

pix-al

Canon EOS-5D

Tamron AF 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di LD Aspherical IF for Canon

12/19/2007 07:57:05 AM · #3

Interesting idea. I think it would take some time and maybe a couple of goes, but I would sure like to see the results!

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

12/19/2007 12:06:05 PM · #4

A wee bump for those that might be awake by now at the other side of the ocean.

Gordon

RIM BlackBerry Curve

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

12/19/2007 12:26:02 PM · #5

I'd like to see an automated version of this - shoot a project with a variety of people, but against a consistent background and with as much as possible registration between body parts. Chop them up and randomly reassemble. Have a page that serves up a different shuffle each time you reload.

Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

12/19/2007 01:55:51 PM · #6

FWIW, the "Exquisite Corpse" was actually invented by Surrealist writers in 1925, and then adapted to images not too long after that. You'd write a sentence following a certain structure, then fold the page and the next person would add his/her sentence, fold and pass.

I think this is an interesting idea for a photography project, no kidding.

R.

notesinstones

Nikon D200

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D

12/19/2007 02:19:50 PM · #7

I took part in a Photoshop one a few years back, where we got a 100pixel strip of the previous photo to work from. The results were fantastic. We based everything off of a website that was showcasing a group of artists doing the same thing. I'll see if I can find it.

I'd love to play!

Edit to add some links:

Mechapixel
Exquisite Corpse Journals

The website I was looking for seems to be down, but the ones done by Parke, Walters and Yow seem close to what we were creating style wise.

Message edited by author 2007-12-19 14:31:32.

jhess77

Nikon D700

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D

12/19/2007 02:27:11 PM · #8

Great idea and an unique challenge. Just need someone to get the ball rolling....

Nikon AF-S Nikkor 16-35 f/4 ED VR

12/19/2007 02:47:09 PM · #9

Those links are pretty good. I daresay it would take a bit of thought to get a reasonable flow from one to the other and still keep it fairly photographic (without becoming too much of a photoshop project) but its surely worth a try.

Hmmm... what to start with :)

darnok

Nikon D850

12/19/2007 02:54:57 PM · #10

Originally posted by latentflip:

A theme might help keep it 'photographic', such as a panoramic landscape.

jhess77

Nikon D700

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D

12/19/2007 04:23:08 PM · #11

Anyone have a good image to start with?