(2008, RCA brief)

In 100 years will the YouTube archives be a valuable historical source? Will the ubiquitous video of our daily lives today be as valued as the scratchy moving images from 100 years ago?

The childhoods of today will be the most documented ever. As adults, when will they actually look at this massive family archive?

Digital media can be perfectly copied, but also manipulated and tampered with. Can digital images really be as authentic as film images?

Nanotechnology promises the control of matter at the atomic scale. This allows the creation of exotic new optical materials which exploit quantum effects to control light. Developed primarily for optical circuitry, uses on a macro scale have also been proposed, such as the creation of ‘invisibility cloaks’. These would be made of material which bends light around an object, making the object effectively transparent.

I propose another use, which would lead to a new form of ‘media’ as antidote to digital ubiquity – moving images that once ‘recorded’ can be viewed only once, at a specific time in the future, but which are totally authentic…

A metal casing holds a cylinder of a metamaterial that slows light almost to a standstill. Thus light entering one end takes years to pass through – exactly how long depends on the length of the tube.

A new tradition starts – a history lens with a length of 10 years is set up to capture the festivities. The tradition continues – every year the history lens is unpacked with the rest of the decorations.

10 years on, and the light from that first captured Christmas has finally passed through the lens. The family can marvel at themselves 10 years ago. At the same time the scene is being captured again, for 10 years hence.

A wife finds a 30 year history lens wrapped in brown paper in her husbands draw. She waits patiently for the viewing date…

…the day finally comes and this is what she sees.

Instituions like the Science Museum in London invest in coiled tubes a thousand years long. How valuable would light from the last millenium be?