Imagewiki: A visual search engine for the iphone

The ImageWiki is a visual search tool for mobile devices. It allows for the freeform ability to turn images into physical hyperlinks, conflating visual cultures implicit power/ownership relationships with a community-editable universal namespace for images. Using the ImageWiki a person takes a picture of something with their cameraphone and then adds a description for the image. For example, I take a photograph of graffiti at a bus stop, I add the name of the artist and where he/she is from, list where else you can find work by that artist. When other people perform a visual search using the ImageWiki tool they discover the description I added to the image. They can edit my description and add content and links to the image. This collaborative editing of the images meaning/value creates a dynamic, evolutionary process of understanding the direct affect of visual culture in situ with the images themselves. Through this we question the value/ownership of images, how images affect us.

Our culture is complicated by layers of visual and image based representations of meaning. Images accrue value through their culturally assigned meaning and this meaning has value. Corporations often create brand associations between images and their products. Photographers and artists often protect an ownership over their images. Appropriation, mis-representation and theft of imagery is common. Many images/icons have meaning for cultures, communities and religion. Images are both taboo and totemic. Through our experiences as visual artists while working in technology, we have discerned a need for a commonwealth approach to the medium. We have gathered a small team of software developers and image recognition experts to create an altruistic open database for image meta-data that we call the ImageWiki.