Brendan Dawes
The Art of Form and Code

Snow Globe Memories

A physical interface to past memories

We often surround ourselves with objects from our past—souvenirs from trips we've been on, photographs of places we've been and people we've met. These things often make a house into a home and allow us to create physical and visual signposts of who we are not only for visitors but equally for ourselves. Yet more and more these time based artefacts are becoming digital, buried in the cloud or on huge faceless harddrives. What are we losing by digitising so many of our memories that used to be so easy to lay out on the sideboard, or do the benefits of digital storage and transmission outway the need for physical ornaments?

Maybe there could be a way to bring the two together and create physical representations of digital memories. In this proof of concept, shaking a snow globe of New York reveals digital images taken on a trip to the big apple. You could imagine this idea would be better realised with cheap RFID tags and a custom made shelf with a built in screen which could be linked to your flickr account or twitter stream.