Photobox

Photo Box explores the value of combining the serendipity allowed by digital content with the material presence of physical artefact’s in order to recreate those small but valuable moments that come from unexpectedly stumbling across something forgotten but precious.

Every so often (Roughly every 1-2 months) the box searches it’s owners flickr account for photos that have been organized in some way and, picking one at random, prints the photo out internally using the small photo printer contained in the lid.
You are free to search the box whenever you like but there may or may not be a photo waiting, and no way of knowing what it will be.
If you do find a photograph and it’s one that you wish to share it can be put on display using the accompanying frame where it may eventually be replaced. If on the other hand the photograph is private or personal it can be kept hidden in the segmented compartment in the bottom of the box.

Photobox prototypes were deployed in a long term field study by Will Odom. You can see the resulting paper in the publications section.

This project is part of Excavating Digital Archives, a project conducted with the Socio Digital Systems group Microsoft Research Cambridge. It explores ways of excavating the increasingly vast digital archives that we are beginning to build throughout our lives. In particular, they are attempts to establish ways in which physical and digital technological artefacts might be made more emotionally and temporally enduring, and consequently how those archives might then be handed down to others over time.