Geolocation: UK

Using publicly available embedded geotag information in Twitter updates, Larson & Shindelman track the locations of users through their GPS coordinates and make a photograph to mark the location in the real world.  Each of these photographs is taken on the site of the update and paired with the originating text.

Larson & Shindelman think of these photographs as historical monuments to small lived moments, selecting texts that reveal something about the personal nature of the users’ lives or the national climate of the United Kingdom.  It is also grounds the virtual reality of social networking data streams in their originating locations in the physical world while examining how the nature of one’s physical space may influence online presence.

Series commissioned by the Format International Photography Festival and supported by QUAD.

Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman's collaborative work focuses on the cultural understanding of distance as perceived in modern life and network culture.  Their GEOLOCATION project was recently featured on the APM radio program Marketplace Tech Report and in the New York Times Lens Blog, Utne Reader, the British Journal of Photography, BBC News Viewfinder, and the Washington Post, among others.  Their work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and they recently completed a commission of site-specific GEOLOCATION works for the Format International Photography Festival in Derby, IK.

Their collaborative work has been featured in solo exhibitions at United Photo Industries in Brooklyn; the Contemporary Arts Center Las Vegas; Marks Center for the Arts in California; and the New Gallery in Calgary.  Selections from their collaborations have been shown in the Athens Photo Festival in Greece; the Houston Center for Photography; Baltimore Museum of Art; the 2nd Moscow International Biennale; RAIQ in Montréal; Peloton in Sydney Australia; the Center on Contemporary Art Seattle; City Without Walls in New Jersey; and the Conflux Festival in NYC.

Larson & Shindelman have lectured on their work at the Format International Photography Festival, the Society for Photographic Education National Conference, Shawnee State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, the Alberta College of Art and Design, and Nerd Nite NYC.  They placed in the semi-finals in the 2008 annual WORLD TELEKINESIS COMPETITION hosted by artist collective Noxious Sector and emerged as the global champions in the 2009 event.

http://larson-shindelman.com

Nate Larson is faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Photographic Education.  He received his MFA from The Ohio State University in 2002.

http://www.natelarson.com

Marni Shindelman is associate professor of art and an associate of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester.  She received her MFA from the University of Florida in 2002.

http://marnishindelman.com