Tiny Thumb Tom

28, June 2011  |  Published : Futur en Seine 2011  | 

Summary:

By strolling through the Web, we can see a certain number of more or less short-lived sites. The history keeps a track of them as long as they exist, and then they vanish. Tiny Thumb Tom offers a new kind of history: downloads become prints that design my stroll on the Web.

It is built in the browser and has two parts:

  • a downloading tool as simple as possible and independent from the file nature (video, text, picture or screenshot). It’s a kind of copy/paste that adapts the format (.avi, .jpeg, .mp4…). Moreover, it allows to downloads only a part of the file. Then, I’m able to watch just a excerpt of the video or to keep one person out of a picture.
  • He enable the user to watch its downloads in « lists » (and not by tags): they are attached to the motive of the download (« trip to Africa » or « searching for a flat » for example). Moreover, these items become a link to their source I can consult whenever I want.
This project has been implemented and presented from June 18th and 22nd at the espace Piazza during the DESIGN METADATA 1 & 2 conferences within the Futur en Seine Festival.
Description.
Strolling through the Web is also getting access to a lot of content. It is sometimes downloadable, easily or not. Thus copy/paste a text is very easy, but rip a video from Youtube is more complex. Sometimes, the record of data is the first reason why we browse: find a picture, a text and download it… These are tangible elements a track of which is kept in memory by our computer and are thus less short-lived than a mere page. Why couldn’t downloads design web-browsing?
In a way, this project imagines every content as a little stone I’ve sowed along my browsing. Unlike websites, they don’t move with time. When I watch it again, not only I see what interested me at the time I downloaded it, but also the course I followed back then, and the pages I visited if they still exist.
Designed and carried out during the Studio Expérimental IRI – ENSCI 2011 by Elsa Tarrago.
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