Rethink Immaterial Property
Today we live in a registration society; one in which we have the possibility to record almost everything. From what we publish on the internet, to all the data we generate via our connected objects, we can save and store just about anything. Sensors can even transform intangible data such as dreams into binary values. Technologies today allow us to keep a massive memory alive, not only because of recording technologies, but also because of the capacity to store a large amount of documents. What are the challenges raised by these emerging technologies that make it possible to create an inexhaustible record of the world? What are the future uses of all this data?
Six research assistants investigated these ideas over the course of one semester during the MAS in Design Research for Digital Innovation at the EPFL+ECAL Lab. The project was led by Romain Collaud and Lara Défayes and engineering support was given by Delphine Ribes and Yves Kalberer. Pushing back the barriers of the definition of an intangible heritage, from Twitter posts to dreams, the six projects propose a reflection and exploration of different types of intangible heritage. Each student carried out his or her own exploratory work, resulting in 6 original proposals that try to rethink the way we envision the current or future use of immaterial property as heritage.