As I was reading the latest edition of “THE MAGAZINE”, I stumbled into an article about The Impossible Project – the only company producing instant film for original Polaroid cameras. Integrating tech savvy consumers and the ongoing iPhone trend, they launched the Impossible Instant Lab – “a tool that turns digital iPhone images into real analog instant photos on Impossible film, using an accompanying Impossible iPhone app”. The Impossible Project took advantage of a declining, almost inactive trend and a growing powerful trend, both meeting at a common place: creating durable images.
What first seemed like satire for me, I went into their webpage and started researching more about the product, and started thinking who would actually buy their product? First of all, it’s a bulky add-on for the iPhone which I can’t imagine someone carrying around on a daily basis. Then I though it could serve the purpose of a printer, and this made more sense to me. So back to my question, who would buy this “Impossible” invention?
Definitely this product is directed to tech savvy consumers, engaged in the iPhone fever who want to also be part of the antecedent Polaroid trend; a passion for the digital and analog photography world. Sounds very captivating, right?
However, the idea of the Polaroid was to instantly have a unique physical print of the moment you captured, whereas the iPhone stores all the photos you capture in a digital cloud, available to create many copies and sync them with all your devices. So this innovation definitely seems like an impossible blend of two very distinct ideas – unless you are willing to carry around the Impossible Instant Lab, and instantly create a not-so-unique copy of a moment which is also being stored in a digital cloud.
Check their video for more information!
References:
http://www.the-impossible-project.com/projects/camera/iil
“The Magazine”, Issue 12. Instant Memories