The Pursuit of 'Appiness

My London Spring has been wrapped up in the "pursuit of 'appiness" - an ongoing, participatory inquiry into the culture of making and using iPhone (iPod) apps.

Obviously my Instagram research has been a MASSIVE inspiration for this line of inquiry, as well as a model for critically engaging with apps. It also represents a part of the project itself, as a foundation for what apps do, how they do it, and why they matter.

A New Digital Cultural Form
But Instagram is just the beginning. As an ongoing part of A New Day's Work, I've found myself considering the app as the ultimate embodiment of contemporary digital culture. Not just because its ubiquity and portability make it common, but because of its discrete nature and the fact that its emergent economic value has incentivized the (re)birth of TRUE indie software development.

The Shoreditch Creatives
The proof of this I've found in London, talking with the brothers of Johnny Two Shoes about their stunning, iOS game Plunderland. These brothers have been able to operate as an truly independent game company, with just themselves as employs, their Macbooks as assets, and their imaginations as resources. Talking with the gentleman of Papa Sangre revealed a much larger team, but an autonomy and creativity whose boldness was indie in style and vision.

Sword & Sworcery
Perhaps most iconically, the HUGELY indie Sword & Sworcery has utterly blown away video game critics (from any platform) and iOS app reviewers alike. It's artistic vision is so unique and idiosyncratic, it's hard to even explain its hybridity. A summary would describe the game as an indie electro-rock album, a pixel narrative dripping with nostalgia, an exercise in "mythopoetic pyschocosmology" (as "the guide" terms it), and an adventure game all bound so tightly together, its hard to separate them. Sword & Sworcery lets you tweet game events that form nodes in the narrative, and this alone is original and powerful, showcasing the game's hip-speak writing ("amirite?"). The game is a collaboration of the superbrothers - a Toronto design company, CAPY, a Canadian game developer, and Jim Gutherie, the musician who will sell you a sweet LP of the game's music for $30. On Vinyl. 

iPhoneography
Any good app is about making the iPhone's limitations charming rather than frustrating. At their best, iOS apps celebrate the special power of mobile computing, limited screen size, clever accelerometer controls, and reference to devices (such as the Polaroid Land Camera) whose own succinct technical abilities became mythic and powerful.

"iPhoneography" culture, with its insistence of exclusive use of the iPhone as both a capture device and an editing suite, is itself a validation of the iPhone as a enclosed media ecology, where production, sharing, and consumption are all equally co-determinious. Instagram has provided a channel/forum for this lifestyle, but it is Hipstamatic that originally shaped the aesthetic of the iPhoneographer and redeemed the limitations of the device by producing the pre-vintaged image to cover-over the device's lack of resolution.

There are many other "essential" iPhoneography apps, including Diptic to produce small frames, Camera+, the better camera, and HDR apps for producing "high dynamic range" photos. But these apps eventually become a series of interconnected stations rather than independent operators, and the iPhoneographer celebrates mastery of the apps as a complete palette in which unlikely image outcomes, produced from several apps in a unique sequence, cause an exceptional result.

And on and on
The inquiry continues. Apps are cheap, but less disposable than comics or candy bars. They linger on your device, even un-used. I have just received an Easter iTunes gift card, so I am digging deeper.

Apps of Note

 * Sword & Sworcery
 * Mashable Review
 * CAPY home
 * Website


 * Grimm
 * Not a great game, but indie and drawn to resemble Gorey. CLEARLY.
 * Robrox Studios