Thursday, January 18, 2007

The Ibiza Mosaic Project (IMP)


Ibiza has been along the centuries a mosaic of cultures. Every stone, every corner of this island owes from the heritage of ancient civilizations : the phoenicians, the romans, the visigots, catalans and many more. Nowadays the cultural transfer is fully alive with the millions of foreign visitors come every year on vacation. This cultural diversity is the real richness of the island. For many Ibiza has become a part of them or them have become a part of Ibiza, does not matter if a citizen of Alask or India. If you feel the spell of Ibiza then you are probably as well a citizen of Ibiza.
We are a group of people that really want to make a book of Ibiza and Formentera. Not another book. We want to make a large format book with huge quality photos that would sample all the corners of the island. Places and people that maybe you already know and some surprises you never imagined. We do not want a boring book with nice photos. We want an amazing book with photos composed like a mosaic with thousands of photographs and to make every small tile we would like a photo of you. One of those photos you keep from a visit to Ibiza, because the heart of this project is to turn Ibiza in you or that you turn into Ibiza, as you prefer. We ask your cooperation to send photos where you appear in any location of Ibiza or Formentera. It can be a landscape, a street of Dalt Vila or inside a club. Do not make any special effort to find a background that could be easily know as a location in Ibiza. Probably an effort like that would destroy your initiative to send a photo that you really like . Send a photo you like, that gives you a special feeling. If you tell us is a beach of Formentera or the Pacha club we are going to believe. First because we are not policemen and second because we find absurd to try to cheat us that would be indeed to cheat yourself. Even the photo can be about you elsewhere but you really want to be in this project and you really think one day you will come to Ibiza. We do not really mind either about the quality of the photo. We just want to see you enough clearly to reduce the photo - remember you will be a small tile - and not to make you a stain within a landscape. There are not closed topics. You can be at the seaside, in a club or restaurant, at the city, even at your house in London, Tokyo or Los Angeles. You can send any photo size with a reasonable limit of 10 MB, approximately. We would specially thanks that you would attach a short message together with the photo about when did you come to the island, who is at the photo, what did you do then and anything you would like to explain us. We accept some plain sentences up to feelings the island woke up in you. We also ask not to send any personal data (no address, no credit card number, remember this is a free project !). You can be anonymous but do not miss to drop some lines. With all the collected photos we will reproduce the original photo - a landscape, a shot of Dalt Vila, a club etc - but through a mosaic, a collage of all your photos. Your photo will be somewhere and we will let you find out where. We have developed a software that outputs very nice results really close to the original photo by making millions of calculations. The original photo and its mosaic will come with your comments and feelings as well as many more info about the islands. The book will have around 50 photographs treated like big sized mosaic - getting close you will find yourself with good quality and making a step back you will see the original photo and your photo will become part of a roof, the leave of a tree or the foam of a wave -. We want to print the book in spanish, english, catalan (the original language of Ibiza), french, italian and german but you can send your text in any language and any alphabet : we will reproduce the message as it comes unless you say otherwise. We promise to publish all the photos unless the quality is too poor or we would face some legal problems because suspect of copyright or be unrespectful with privacy.
The books will be edited if we collect enough money from sponsors and web ads. This is a very expensive project (above 50,000 USD) because the necessary size and quality of the photos and the expected development time (1 or 2 years). Everything about this book is really beyond the normal scope of any standard book. If we get enough money we will print the book and then send to everyone a copy of it completely free. Not even you will pay the delivery. At the end of the project we will write everyone asking if they want receive a copy and then will be the moment to give the data to send by snail mail. This is the most important part of the project. If you can not get the book the project will not be complete and all the effort a bit non sense.
It is no foreseen to sell the books at bookshops or Internet. At the end of the project and being the copy already delivered to every participant we will make a forum to decide altogether what do we do. If we agree to make an extra printing to sell the book - obviously if there is money enough for that - we would decide altogether once again to which charity organization would go the benefits. We do not want to trade the book like any good and we do not want either to get benefit for ourselves if we can not distribute between all of you. The right decission is to hand to a charity organization. If finally the physicial book could not be made then we should only send an electronic edition that would be probably distributed like PDF or similar. However we really want to do the best to get a real book in our hands.
Remember that this is a free project that with no other income that the one coming from sponsors or web ads. We would not accept any donation or money delivery from anyone. The situation of the project and the collected money so far will be displayed in this blog regularly. Here also you could publish your comments, suggestions, critics or questions. We can answer in spanish, english and catalan. Please send your photos to mailto:blog@grupo4g.com, we promise to answer one by one and thank any comment and/or photo sent.IMP

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