Even though the Saatchi Gallery, a contemporary art institution nearing thirty, made its home in the chic and somewhat stuffy London neighborhood of Chelsea, that hasn’t stopped it embracing technology and the eccentricities of the web. In 2005, the Saatchi launched an online gallery where artists—and, starting in 2006, students—across the world could create a profile, upload their work and interact with each other. It served as a kind of arty cousin to traditional social networks.
This month, the Saatchi Gallery has joined forces with Google to host a motion photography contest. Fans of animated gifs—image files containing multiple frames which “play” in a constant loop—will have a field day. Google’s social network, Google+, is far behind Facebook with only 540 million members, but it claims to be the only platform that can transform photographs into animated gifs with its “Auto Awesome” function, available on the application’s mobile version. Select a photograph on your phone, add a vintage filter here, a jazzy soundtrack there, and Google+ will turn it into a short video.
From February 5th to April 1st, six competitions will be held, each with a different category. The first competition ends February 25th. The theme is “landscape.” Members of the Motion Photography Prize jury include director Baz Luhrmann (The Great Gatsby) and photographer Cindy Sherman. Winners will see their work exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London starting April 16, 2014.
Better yet, according to the press release, they’ll have the opportunity to take the “trip of a lifetime” with the film director or photographer of their choice. Despite our inquiries, L’Oeil de la Photographie was unable to obtain more information about the possibility of taking a trip with Martin Scorsese or Andreas Gursky.
http://www.saatchigallery.com/mpp/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cj3jnug84pit375q2kda10gv51c
