New For iPad – MotionPhone HD
California based Scott Snibbe Studio today introduces MotionPhone HD 1.1, his new entertainment app for iPad devices. MotionPhone enables a unique form of visual communication, allowing people to create animations together over the Internet. The app, created by Scott Snibbe Studio, is the company’s first release since producing Bjork’s groundbreaking Biophilia App Album last year, and is a similarly innovative combination of interactive visuals with music.
This app retails for $4.99/£2.99 and you can download it here.
In MotionPhone, fingers’ movements become colorful dancing abstract shapes whose personality comes directly from the way one moves. "Each person moves differently and naturally creates their own original style of animation." said Scott Snibbe, the app’s creator, "Each of our movements are as original and recognizable as our face or the way we walk, and with MotionPhone, it’s the first time we get to see these traces of movement."
As its name suggests, MotionPhone is more than an animation program. Using Apple’s Game Center Technology, the app lets people connect to one another remotely so that two, three, or four people can have a ‘visual conversation,’ creating animation together on an infinite two-dimensional plane. The resulting collaborative animations, reminiscent of 1980s animated music videos, or experimental films from the 1930s, can be cacophonous or sublime. Snibbe calls the process ‘Visual Music’ and with the networking component, ‘Visual Jamming."
The app was originally an interactive artwork that Snibbe says evolved from his days in college studying animation and computer science. Working late in research labs while listening to classic jazz albums like Mingus Ah Um, he created a networked animation program that allows people to improvise animation in the same way that jazz artists improvise music.
The program eventually found the attention of art curators in the 1990s, winning a Prix Ars Electronica prize – sometimes referred to as the ‘Academy Awards’ of interactive art. However, Snibbe always wanted MotionPhone to be distributed widely, at a low cost, so that the program could be enjoyed by everyone. As Snibbe notes, "Now apps like Motion Phone can be sold for the cost of a video rental, instead of the price of a car."
MotionPhone takes the same social gaming technology that lets you play Doodle Jump with your friends – Apple’s Game Center – and uses the system for collaborative play and communication, much like parlor games of the 19th century. Snibbe believes MotionPhone, despite being almost twenty years old, is the first commercially available networked animation program.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photography journalist, editor, curator, and the founder of *TheAppWhisperer.com*, one of the world’s leading platforms dedicated to mobile photography and art. Since its launch in 2009, TheAppWhisperer has become an international hub for artists of all levels to discover, learn, exhibit, and engage with contemporary photographic practice.Built on principles of inclusivity, accessibility, and artistic excellence, Joanne has spent almost two decades championing mobile photography as a serious artistic medium. Through interviews, critical essays, exhibitions, competitions, and education, she has helped shape and document the evolution of mobile art on a global scale.Her work has taken her internationally, lecturing on photography and mobile art at institutions and events including the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea, alongside appearances in the UK and Europe. She has served as a juror for international photography and mobile art awards across Portugal, Canada, the United States, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.Joanne is also the founder of *TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com*, one of the first online galleries dedicated exclusively to collectible mobile art, connecting artists with collectors across Europe, the United States, and Asia.Before founding TheAppWhisperer, Joanne worked extensively in print journalism and photographic publishing, including roles at a paparazzi photo agency and as deputy editor of a leading photography magazine. Her freelance journalism, criticism, and commentary have been published widely in both the UK and the US, with bylines in *The Times*, *The Sunday Times*, *The Guardian*, *Popular Photography*, *NikonPro*, *DPReview*, *Which?*, *Vogue Italia*, *LensCulture*, the *BBC*, and more recently, the *Financial Times*, where her published letters on photography continue to contribute to wider conversations around the medium.Alongside her editorial and curatorial work, Joanne’s own photographic practice has been exhibited internationally across the UK, Europe, South Korea, and the United States. Her work increasingly explores themes of grief, loss, death, memory, and the body.Her current research interests centre on grief, death, and poverty, with forthcoming postgraduate study leading towards doctoral research in these areas.Joanne is currently developing new long-form writing and photographic projects and is available for commissions, editorial projects, speaking engagements, and collaborations.Contact: joannetheappwhisperer@gmail.com)
