While I put the finishing touches on some of the more in-depth articles about the status quo of the OLPC efforts here in Uruguay I thought I'd publish some impressions from an exhibition called eXpO fotos which I visited on Thursday.

The cool thing is that all of the photos were taken by pupils from four different schools here in Montevideo. The pupils had participated in a workshop organized by a museum which focused on how to use their XOs to capture impressions from their lives and environment. (If you're interested in more information of how these workshops and the exhibition came about then these photos of the accompanying introductory texts - in Spanish - will give you all the details: #1 / #2)

In total the exhibition featured approximately 60 exhibits which ranged from photos taken on school yards, on busses, in gardens and on the street.

When first heard about the exhibition I was admittedly a little skeptical about the quality of the print-outs. Because even though the XO's camera is actually quite good the quality of the saved images leaves something to be desired. However after actually seeing the photos I have to say that the quality isn't distracting at all, in fact it's actually part of the charm of the whole thing (reminding me of scanner photography in many ways).

So in many ways the exhibition served as a reminder of how versatile the XO is. Yes, it's an educational tool but at the same time it definitely also has a lot of potential as an artistic tool.

If I had some spare time on my hands or were in command of a handful of software developers I'd definitely look into writing activities for that kind of usage. The FotoToon activity written by Gonzalo Odiard is a great first step in this area, enhancing Record to offer various distortions, effects and filters has also been discussed many times and I'm sure everyone here can quickly come up with a list of cool ideas that could be developed in this space.

Last but not least, looking at the collection of photos that showed the children working on the project it definitely seems like they had fun. I know I would have enjoyed a workshop like this when I was at school.

If you happen to be in Montevideo then I'd really recommend you to check out the exhibition which is shown at "Punto de Encuentro" at San Jose 1116 and runs until July 29.