Link: Instagram, Emotional Metadata & Ubiquitous Sharing

Instagram, Emotional Metadata & Ubiquitous Sharing

We’ve got a pretty comprehensive range of metadata that gets attached to our photos nowadays. Location, timestamp, people we’re with, gear setup. Up until now, though, we’ve lacked a really clear way to digitally or non-verbally share the fluffier experiential and emotional metadata that shines through when we talk about our images.

That’s where Instagram steps in. Like a regular photograph, the base data is visual data. However, unlike a traditional photograph, Instagram captures all of the regular metadata and then goes one step further, giving people the opportunity to assign emotional metadata about their experiences, in the form of its seventeen different filters.

The filters are visual representations of all of the other sensory and emotional data that gets connected with the images in our minds.

It’s an interesting point of view. While I feel there is some truth in it, I can’t help feeling that the view tries to introduce a level of intent which is often just not there. It feels a bit like when literary criticism goes off the rails, reading just way too far between the lines of a text.