Digital Waste Ecosystem

How to best live our lives in a world where digital media records everything and forgets nothing? This endless digital memory is made possible by enhanced computer power: mega-storage is readily available everywhere in digital domain at low cost. With powerful digital storage, there is no need for us to save data selectively anymore. We keep producing and accumulating digital data. Before we know it, we’re hoarding. We’re cluttering our desktops and filling our hard drives with unwanted files we are unlikely to ever look at again. Without sounding too harsh, I would term digital files of this nature as Digital Waste, or even Digital Trash.

Considering this issue in a similar paradigm, Mayer-Schönberger, a professor at Oxford University, comes up with an intriguing concept - An Expiration Date for information. It may bring unexpected values to the age of information explosion. Linking digital memory with time in the same way that memory mechanism of our brain works could be an efficient way to avoid and reduce digital waste.

However, our efforts should not stop here. I would love to push this idea a lot further: rather than simply erasing digital information from our hard drive, why don’t we create a digital recycling system to manage our digital waste just as we have been doing with physical waste? In this project, a preliminary Digital Ecosystem will be introduced. At the heart of this Ecosystem, I will create a virtual platform for users to share and recycle their digital waste for an aesthetic purpose. It aims to extend the lifecycle of digital waste and bring out their potential artistic as well as social values. On top of that, ‘A forgotten Image’ comes out of this Ecosystem as an artistic work that invite you to experience this system in a digital as well as physical fashion. In this Digital Ecosystem, one man’s trash will become another man’s treasure! 

Waste Exchange System

This is a virtual platform for users to share and recycle their digital waste. Instead of simply erasing them from your hard drive, you can upload your digital waste to this platform where what you deem to be unwanted may be found useful by others. All digital files uploaded onto this platform will be given a copyright, a tracking number and a seven-day shelf life. Within these seven days, other users can download whatever available on the platform that they find useful. But if you have changed your mind, you can feel free to take back those files that once belonged to you. After seven days, those left unpicked will be moved to Waste Reuse System.

Waste Reuse System

The digital materials end up in the Waste Reuse System will be transformed by professional artists into artistic works. This whole process of artistic transformation and creation will be visualized online. You will be able to trace the journey of your digital waste and share the copyright of the final product. The Waste Exchange System and Waste Reuse System together will bring out the social as well as artistic value of any digital waste that otherwise would have been hidden.