So there are I guess a number of stages to this project.

1. Define and create a platform that allows people to upload and destroy data (what files will we allow / accept?). I'm assuming that on this same platform we would have the 'output'. We also need to define this - is it simply a web cam showing the plant and the way it's lit? How quickly does the information people are feeding in to destroy show in 'real life' - i.e. if I destroy 50mb of data will I see the light go brighter in almost real time? (on this - tungsten light + webcam generally leads to over exposed mess! How do we ensure this looks aesthetically pleasing)

2. Once someone has uploaded the file how do extract data from it and what data are we interested in? So are we only interested in size or other metadata? There's an interesting tool at GNU.org that is free to use / modify etc that extracts metadata from all sorts of files.It's been applied here: http://www.extractmetadata.com/about.html

3. Once we have the data we want we need to convert it into something that will alter the analogue outputs of the arduino. Kiers sent me a link to this: http://www.sensemote.com:8081/lamptutorial.html

This is by no means exhaustive but thought I should get some thoughts down seen as I won't be at the chat Monday as I'm on holiday.

ben

ALSO: totally unrelated to this project but I'm sure a lot of you have seen this but just in case! https://www.edx.org I signed up to one of the computer science courses!

Geocities was shut down by Yahoo! permanently destroying not only data, but a timeslice of the internet's early history. These artists 'saved' 1tb of data from Geocities and are sorting through it. Such an amazing project

As far as movies are concerned, digital, like diamonds, was supposed to be forever. No more dyes to fade, no more film stocks to decay or catch fire. Just pristine digital data, preserved for all time, and release prints as clear and sharp as the images caught by the camera..

An interesting argument - that by understanding more about consumers habits through a marketing based CRM companies are able to adapt supply to demand reducing waste.

Jon Ippolito - if you go to Readings there's a paper called Permanence Through Change. It's a series of papers / lectures given by different interest groups from conservationists to practitioners about whether digital is accelerating at a rate to fast for conservation to keep up. It's a fairly old set of papers and it's interesting to look back on how these various people were attempting to create strategies for conserving work.(everything to DAT!) Ippolito's site is a perennial favourite of mine!