Yann Seznec 80% seminar

Discussant: Will Odom (Simon Fraser University)

Pure Perfect Sound Forever: Designing for digital impermanence
Modern computing technology is built on a cycle of promise and loss. This is particularly present in digital media, where we are offered systems that assure seemingly endless high quality recording, though the reality is beset with tension and frictions around storage and permanence. This thesis is a Research through Design inquiry into an alternative to some of the biases that guide the design of interactive media technology.

The papers included in the thesis describe the design of sound machines that resulted from this search. One set of devices explored destruction and loss, while another focused on a form of extreme reuse. The design, construction, use, and analysis of the devices provide the basis for a set of insights regarding the particularly unsustainable nature of personal digital media and reveal how the assumptions built into HCI practice reflect the broader tensions in sustainability discourse.
The artefacts presented in the thesis can be seen as emerging from the design space generated by focusing on instability and loss as a fundamental characteristic of digital media. The work therefore prefigures alternative methods for designing with and for digital impermanence.