DigiDecay

DigiDecay is an interactive artwork exploring digital decay and organic lifespans. It follows the rhythm of the gradual decay of a bouquet of flowers to progressively delete a recording from an audio cassette.

The flowers are positioned inside a wooden box, with an ultrasonic sensor right above them. At the back of the box there are motors with magnets and a cassette player with a speaker, playing a recording of lists of obsolete media formats and software. The ultrasonic sensor and the servo motors are connected to a PCB especially designed for this project, which uses a Raspberry Pi Pico W. The ultrasonic sensor measures the distance between itself and the flowers, and as these start to decay and wilt (and the distance increases) it triggers the servo motors to change their position with increasing frequency.As the motors move over the tape, the magnets erase the content on the cassette, giving the recording a similar lifespan to that of the flowers.