the disposable memory project

Camera 88 has returned home, and the images are now available to see online.
The camera was originally dropped in Austin, Texas USA by Mark S. back in April 2009. It was quickly picked up by Dan A. and friends, and taken on to the Eeyore birthday party, where it was handed over to Cassie F, who kindly developed the images for us.

Check out the Camera 88 page for the full details on its journey, and please comment if you know anything more about the people and places in the images.

NB. The images are currently fairly low-res, but we’ll be rescanning the negatives when they arrive for higher quality.

We’ve recently welcomed Jon C. to the Disposable Memory Project curation team. Jon is one of our earliest supporters, and he’s on board to help out responding to people’s questions, updating the site, and generally being super useful. We’ve asked him to introduce himself below.

Hi I’m Jon. I’ve been asked by Matthew to become a community admin for the project.

I’ve been following the Disposable Memory Project right from the very beginning when Matthew announced he was starting it on Twitter. I really liked the idea that pictures can tell a story, and with the project, one camera can tell a few stories.

I asked Matthew if there was the possibility to get involved as someone who dropped cameras. I have to admit that after asking it took me a year to make my first drops but once I started that was it. I made some drops in Paris while on Holiday and when I got back give some cameras to friends in Glasgow to pass around their respective companies.

Since then I dropped Camera 99 at Developer! Developer! Developer! Scotland, a Developers (If you’d not guessed!) Conference in Scotland. I wanted to do something a little different with this camera so I asked the guys at the conference to pass it about and finish it during the day. I received the camera back at about 9pm and sent it back in to the project..

More recently I have passed cameras on to friends to start as well as drop. Dave C took some cameras over to Bali with him and Zev has just received Camera 186 just before he leaves for a tour in West Bali.

I love the project because of it’s random nature. Everyone sees the camera as a part of life but I rarely give my camera to someone else for them to take pictures with. With the Disposable Memory Project I get to connect myself to other people and places and seeing the updates I feel like I’m travelling with the camera.

You can reach Jon at hello@disposablememoryproject.org

Camera 160 and Camera 162, two of the cameras taken to Greenland with Sally R. have returned home this weekend. Sally R. took them to the Science Centre near Kangerlussuaq whilst she was working out there, and handed them out to the teams going out on the icesheets. Collecting two of them before she left, the images show amazing snowy lands and the work being done out there. Two other cameras are still in Greeland, one has been picked up, and the other is still at the KISS Centre.

Thanks for Sally and everyone who took part in the camera.

Sally R. emailed us a couple of days ago to tell us about some of the cameras we sent to Greenland:

Back safe and sound with two of the cameras, both of which are full of photos. As you already know I have passed one camera on to Sam d who was in our field party. He is waiting in Kangerlussuaq to find out where his travels will take him next……..

I also left one of the cameras at the research station KISS, let’s see if someone picks it up or not!!

I was asked to talk last night about the Disposable Memory Project at an event held by the IPA in London. The videos of the talk should be online within the next week, but in the meantime, the slides are available here and on slideshare.

Update: Chris from Vizeum wrote about the event here for an overview of what was spoken about.

Camera 84 has returned home after a journey of 82 days and 5300 miles.

Starting in London with Matt L, the camera immediately hit the party scene, going for dinner at Soho House:

“I took it to a dinner I organised for Michael Johnson at Soho house, where lots of people – russell davies, matt jones, matt webb, alice taylor, et al – took pictures, before we gave it to Michael to take back to SF.”

The camera then hopped across the pond with Michael J, and the roll was finished off in Oakland, California.

This was also the first camera to use our increasing global team of Project Helpers to get the camera back to the UK for developing and uploading. Karen B, our East Coast USA local representative helped the camera on its way home.

If you took part in this camera, recognise the locations, feature in any of the images, or just want to comment on the journey and images – please add a comment by hitting the ‘Comments’ tab on the Camera 84 page, we’d love to hear from you!

Michael N has very kindly translated the instruction cards for the back of cameras into Japanese and Chinese, in case other people want to create cameras in those countries. We’ll be adding these to the site somewhere so people creating cameras can access the translations as needed, and we’ll try and do the same for more languages.

We also need help to translate our ‘found a camera’ page into other languages, so people who stumble across the cameras are able to understand more about the project. We have German and Spanish already, and Japanese and Chinese in the works. If you can help out translating the site into other languages, please let us know.

Camera 166 has very kindly learned how to type, and told us of its whereabouts today, via Jenniefer D’s email account:

Hi Cam166 here, Jenniefer D has given me permission to use her email address to let you know what I’ve been up to…

Well, I was born in Rhodes Harbour, Greece and promptly got on a ferry to Symi. Beautiful place it is too. Here are a few snaps of where I’ve been…I even made friends with a snorkelling cat, although she seemed half asleep so not much conversation had there. Anyway, I managed to escape from my owner and am now with another lovely lady called Gabby at a hotel called ‘iapetos village’. Gabby has promised me that she will be sending me to America!! (that’s me in the bag with Gabby – much too hot for that kind of treatment…) I do hope I get there…always wanted to see the Big Apple. Hope you like my attempt at artistic shots?

Thanks to Camera 166, follow its continuing journey over at the camera tracker page.

Sally R. has four our of cameras, and is today starting her journey to Greenland to spend a few weeks out on the ice sheets doing hydrological research. We’re going to be following her journey as far as possible, and letting you know about the cameras which get handed out.

Sally says:

I have attached a Google Earth image of our trip, we are being picked up in Kangerlussuaq, and are camping out in the middle of the white bit next to a blue bit :)

We’ve added the cameras all starting in Swansea today so you can follow the journey, and as we know more about each one, we’ll post them to the site.

Camera 159
Camera 160
Camera 161
Camera 162

You can also keep track on the blog and twitter.

Metro article about The Disposable Memory Project, originally uploaded by webponce.

Apologies for taking our time in posting this – but here is the article which recently featured in the UK newspaper The Metro. You can click through the image above and read the full version at flickr.

We’ve had a great response from people who’ve seen the article in the Metro from all around the UK, and the article featured one of the images from Camera 47.

You can see the article online also at http://theridiculant.metro.co.uk/2009/05/lose-your-camera-and-watch-it-travel-the-world.html