Finding Inky :: Old Media Pockets

More historical pocket content was found at Pockets Full of Memories, a multimedia exhibition exploring memory, archives and emergence, held at the Centre Pompidou back around century's turn.

It's an oldie but a goldie. Firstly, it impresses and inspires by the sheer number of people that they persuaded to empty their pockets -- more than three thousand objects were scanned into and described in a database at its Centre Pompidou showing*! Now, if we here at MoD could somehow perfect that trick, it would really speed up the search for Inky.

It was also notable for its prescience. An early example of social software, the objects were tagged and annotated by their donors. These were organized by an algorithm that positioned objects of similar value near each other in a two-dimensional map. The map of objects was projected in the gallery space and also accessible online, where individuals in the gallery and at home could review the objects and add comments and stories to any of them. Okay, they were also selling this as the ‘self-organising emergent properties’ bit… but we all understand that marketing hype is everywhere.

The project home site >>
The web interface *#!@Warning – sadly most of the internal links have been lost…>>

* It was later, if memory serves me correctly, exhibited at >Ars Electronica in Linz 2003 where a certain >tiny_havoc owner contributed her antique domino bracelet to the mix.