Week 4

 This week I went over Memogram, a project that is both digital and tangible. It is a "non-camera" created by Jamy Hermann at the  École Cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL).

It combines a 3D printed shell, wrapped in instructional paper, and contains a mini thermal printer connected to a custom PCB supported by Bluetooth and an Arduino nano. This is all powered by a rechargeable battery.

This camera works by printing taken photos as text descriptions, and allows users to discover those moments in a different context. These impressions, whether generated on paper or in the users mind, aim to awaken memories while probing ones connection to ownership, information, and records.

It is an attempt to save a "time capsule in the form of tickets", providing written clues to remind users of past memories. It disregards the now traditional method of storing images by using "instantaneous backups" (Jamy Hermann, 2022)

The application utilises HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and generates image descriptions using a variety of artificial intelligence and object recognition methods (coco.js, faceAPI, mobilenet and more). The time, date, and location of the taken image are shown on the ticket.

Bluetooth is used for serial communication between the application and the hardware. The data is then connected to a unique account for each user and kept in the cloud so that it can be accessed at a later time.

I found the concept of this project extremely intriguing, and the fact that such delicate hardware can be contained in such a small object is really impressive. I enjoy the idea of having physical objects that also fulfil a purpose digitally.