Archive of Light
A reading interface for film stills
A research prototype for cataloging and reading still frames from a personal film archive. The work asks what a "library" feels like when its objects are moments rather than texts.
The brief
Most film catalogs treat a still as a thumbnail — a stand-in for the moving image. Archive of Light asked the opposite question: what if the still is the work, and the index is the encounter?
The prototype is a reader for a personal collection of [N] frames, drawn from [describe the source — a year of viewing, a genre study, a research thesis].
Process
One — Interviews
I ran [N] semi-structured interviews with film scholars, archivists, and casual viewers. The recurring tension: scholars wanted indexes; viewers wanted to wander. The product needed to support both.
Two — Sketches
[Brief description of three or four sketch directions you tried. What worked, what didn’t, and the move that pulled them together.]
“The thing about a frame is it’s already an opinion. Cataloging it is just agreeing or disagreeing with that opinion.”
— [Interviewee initials]
Three — The reader
The final prototype reads stills the way a book reads paragraphs — one at a time, with breath between them. Hover (or long-press on touch) to bring up [your interaction details]. The library is sortable by [axes].
What shipped
- A working prototype at [url] (private link).
- A short paper presented at [venue], [date].
- A zine, in print, of the first [N] entries.
What I learned
- [A genuine lesson about the work.]
- [A lesson about the process — something you’d do differently.]
- [A lesson about your own taste.]
Replace the placeholders. The shape — brief / process / outcome / lesson — is the bones of a good case study.