Thesis Archive
Archive Sections
Description/Abstract - For the show website and your project wall text (300 words max).
Thesis Statement - Sum up your project in one powerful, concise sentence (60 words max)
Technical Details
How will people engage with your project?
Research/Context - Fill us in on the background
Further Reading - Give credit where credit is due
Best Practices
60 word pitch
It is a X that X for X.
Deadlines
Submission is April 26th.
April 27th Thesis Archive goes public.
May 31st (last chance to edit Thesis Archive)
Description
Endangered Knowledge Charms is a small network of jewelry-scale electronic devices that function as portable, human-curated libraries. Each charm, worn as a pendant, pin, or bag accessory - stores a deliberate collection of source materials: essays, PDFs, images, and the kind of "pre-loved" internet artifacts that shaped how someone thinks. Content lives on bodies and objects, not on corporate servers. The project responds to a specific cultural moment: an internet increasingly saturated with AI-generated content, SEO-optimized noise, and platform-mediated knowledge. As generative AI floods the web with text that mimics authority without grounding, the original source materials that actually form human thought - the annotated essay, the scanned archive, the obscure reference - are quietly disappearing. This project treats that disappearance as a design problem. Each charm operates as a single-purpose device: it holds a small, carefully edited library, and shares it only through physical, proximate encounters. Two wearers who choose to exchange bring their charms together - through touch, proximity, or gesture - and the devices trade selected materials in a brief, legible ritual signaled by light or haptics. There is no cloud intermediary. No algorithm decides what you receive. Only another person's curation does.
About Project
Network of jewelry devices that exchange source material (research papers, banned books, favorite internet artifacts) in person only and offline.
Technical Description
ESP32, Bluetooth and Wifi protocols for data transfer, Haptic Driver, LiPo Battery.
User Scenario
By wearing it and holding it near each other.
Background (Research / Context)
The interaction logic is influenced by several personal reference points: Little Free Libraries and their logic of the pre-loved object passing between strangers; Pokémon GO's insistence that the map must be physically traveled to unlock meaning; coretos in Portuguese public squares as civic anchors for free, unmediated exchange. The charm-to-charm trade also references the material culture of mix tapes, annotated books, and passed notes — acts of curation that carry the person who made them.