*Another remarkably interesting Fastcodesign link today. Don't think that hard work goes unappreciated, Fastco guys.
*There's something really contemporary and even beautiful about the way this provocative "concept camera" is packaged and rolled out. First, there's the way cameras are re-imagined "after the death of cameras" – actually, they're imagined as if there had never been any cameras, as if cameras had always been component-based platforms and operating systems mashed-up through APIs.
*And then the article itself, or the WVIL provocation, behaves as if there had never been camera companies. No economies of scale, no mass-production muscle... just an atelier shaping the tech conversation while vaguely threatening to find a production method somewhere-or-other. It's a provocation, but it's also a disruption. There's something very of-the-moment about this. It's like the camera-biz equivalent of BitCoin.
*I also think the argument makes good sense. Of course it's technically possible to dis-integrate analog camera components and unite them wirelessly. I'd go farther than that – if you've got sensors on a properly shaped surface, you can probably dispose of the lenses. You can "simply" calculate the scene, like a Lytro camera on steroids.
*Yesterday's world gets re-manufactured based on the capacities of the Cloud.
(...)
"Artefact began the WVIL project by imagining what they – all aspiring "prosumer" photographers who'd outgrown their point-and-shoots but didn't want a bag full of expensive gear – would want in a camera. "These kinds of aspiring photographers aren't interested in buying 30 lenses and memorizing all the buttons on their camera," says Olen Ronning, lead UX designer on the WVIL. "They care about capturing and reliving their memories with great quality and control, beyond what a point-and-shoot can deliver."
"With that design principle in mind, the Artefact team rethought the digital camera as "a camera operating system" in which interchangeable, high quality lenses (each with the imaging sensor, battery, and storage built in) could be controlled from a touchscreen-based viewfinder, either as a physically integrated package (like a normal camera) or as a wirelessly connected "platform." Given the entirely new world of creative possibilities opened up by the latter scenario, Artefact claims that the WVIL concept is less about redesigning the digital camera as it is about redesigning digital photography itself.
"It's about defining a platform for innovation in both hardware and software – a camera operating system," Ronning says. "We've seen the effect that iOS had on phones. Now think of what effect a camera OS could have for photography."...
(((And as a final twist, the concept is trotted out with beautifully realized and highly viral design-fictions. That is just so 2011.)))
