Hidden Printers

The Hidden Printers are a series of cases that allow small photo printers to be easily hidden in places around the home. Once hidden they will print a photograph and wait until they are found. The intended locations are all places where members of the household might be searching for something else. When they find the printer, they can swap it’s case and hide it somewhere else, ready for the next person to find.

Images are printed at random,so although you can determine to some extent who will find the printer, you can’t predetermine what the gift will be.

One printer can be hooked under sofa cushion, so that photos are discovered down the back of the sofaAnother can be placed in the back of a drawer, so that photos can be discovered when searching for something else.Another can be stuck onto the window behind curtains or blinds. While another can hung on a coat hook, ready to be found when someone fetches their coat.

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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.