What do you get when you combine cheap digital memory cards, photography enthusiasts, and online voyeurism? Photochaining.
Photochaining is a new concept from Belgian blogger Renaud Dehareng, who describes it as “the art of leaving memory cards in public places to be picked up and used by others, who then do likewise.” The photos are then uploaded to the Photochaining blog for all to see. And it seems Canadians are getting in on the action. Two of the submissions so far are from Canucks: one from Toronto, and one from Kelowna.
This morning, I emailed Renaud with some questions:
Q. Where did the idea for Photochaining come from?
A. In fact, the photochaining project can be resumed as a mix between bookcrossing (I love this concept) and ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com (the creator is a canadian blogger). And I like experimenting new artistic and creative projects on the web, it’s why I launched Photochaining last week.
Q. This project bridges the virtual and real world, and includes elements of surprise and discovery. Many other projects seem to be exploring these themes — for example, PostSecret and i left this here for you to read. Why do you think this sort of thing is popular now?
A. I think our “voyeurist” tendencies are excited by such web projects. People are curious to know more about others. It’s in the human nature I think ! And internet favorises it!
Q. Which have been your favourite photos so far?
A. I like the horses and the girl dancing with the kid.
Q. Are you worried that memory cards will be stolen, instead of passed on?
A. It’s what makes the game funny and imprevisible: will people be honnest and fair play ? It’s one of the reasons why I ask people to use cheap memory cards….to avoid this problem.
Q. What do you hope participants get out of this project?
A. Fun. Photography is a wonderful hobby. If it can become a game too, well, why not? 
Want to try out Photochaining? Here are the instructions:
1. Take funny/original/humoristic/creative photos with your own camera (use a cheap memory card) .
2. Write a note in which:
- you explain in few words the PhotoChaining concept to the “finder”.
- you provide a name to the memory card (research on PhotoChaining to ensure that the designated memory card name has not already been allocated. If so, choose an other name).
3. Put the memory card and the note in a transparent plastic bag.
4. Leave the plastic bag in a public place (be sure people see the memory card in the bag).
[via Crunchgear]
Love this idea!! I've done the bookcrossing thing and played at "Where's Willy," and am currently on a photo-a-day kick (thanks, in part, to a previous Spark episode!) This project kind of intersects both of those. Fun!!
this is cool – neat digital take on something we've been doing for the last year at http://disposablememoryproject.org – i love any related sort of projects like this, the more projects where people are collaboratively getting involved in telling stories, the better!
I've got a little 16Mb SD card that came with one of my cameras… perhaps this would be a fun use for it.