Out in the open: locating new vernacular practices with smartphone cameras

ABSTRACT We are living in a moment where new types of visuality and vernaculars are emerging. For many of us sharing of objects such as photos and video has become a part of our daily routines. The sheer volume of videos and photos uploaded to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram provide ample evidence of our desire to document and share our most ordinary moments. Details of our lives are out in the open through the entangled zones of smartphones, networks and geography. In this paper, I explore some of the entanglements of video and photography have with life our lives, both physically and through social media, and how these might be understood within a broader context of emplaced visualities through a short and sharp digital ethnography of how creative practitioners who participate in social media groups use photographs and video.

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