Custodisco (or just custo) is a kiosk for fostering and documenting the relationships between people and things





The thesis is that items with a documented history are less likely to meet an untimely end of life.




click for a bigger 25mb version of this gif



The custo kiosk allows users to design their own custom fabric or sticker tags to affix to items. A common component of a tag is the owner's contact info in case the item is lost. A QR code is printed on the tag with a unique item ID. With the right software anyone can update stories, history and meta-data about the item using this unique ID.

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Say you're walking down the road and you see a sweater laying in the mud. Normally your gut would tell you to just leave it to rot but you pick it up. It turns out there's a tag in it. You take the sweater to the library and scan the QR code on the custo kiosk. 50 years of stories appear on-screen: photos of previous owners in foreign countries, details of times it was mended. Scrolling back you see the photos of the person who originally knit it. Suddenly this sweater feels important to return to its owner or wash and continue to record stories of.





the kiosk

This project was intentionally developed as a public infrastructural kiosk. Kiosks like phone booths, vending machines, or the haves/needs kiosk in the book Always Coming Home democratize access to technology. The interaction is more embodied, you have to physically go to the machine. It's shared, like the public library. There is an elegance to this way of computing.

The kiosk is equiped with:


the tagging ritual

By tagging an item one acknowledges the relationship with the item and enters into a spiritual agreement to take care of it. You're saying, 'I am a custodian, I am your custodian, I will take care of you'. Items and people live a long time and we both take care of eachother while we're alive. This acknowledges that oft-forgot reality.




tags

There are tags on objects all around us. When considering a tag it's important to be critical of the motives of the creators by asking:
- what values does this tag impute?
- who gets to make this mark?
- who gets to update the meaning or meta-data behind this mark/tag?
- who does this tag uplift?
- what does the mark convey?
- what stories are behind this mark?


I don't care who made a thing, I don't need to see the logo on the thing. I want the logo of the person who's maintaining it. ... I want to know who is preventing this thing from ending up in a landfill, not who designed it to.

--@trav@sunbeam.city July 9, 2023


some pleasing types of tags

Names in clothing! Robb gave me his shirt.


Institutional chairs.


My house from 1914


bike shop stickers


ex-libris


perhaps highway maintenance could be seen as an externality of the automobile industry though I do like how these tags uplift maintenance workers.


I also apprecitae these maintenance workers tags on Amtrak cars


Other interesting tags/systems:

- Long-term nuclear waste warning messages
- tomb stones
- asset tags
- Where's George
- car fax
- bike registries
- library borrowing cards



maintenance

custo is intended as a piece of Maintenance Art. The idea of Maintenance Art was coined by Merle Lederman Ukeles, seen here involved in her work Touch Sanitation,

The multifaceted performance included Handshake and Thanking Ritual, in which Ukeles shook the hand of all 8,500 Sanitation employees, saying to each “Thank you for keeping New York City alive.”
—the Sanitation Foundation

a screenshot from the film The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

I am generally of the perspective that graffitti removal is destruction of art however I adore the film's half-joke thesis that graffiti removal workers are artists doing their own art. From the perspective of a steward of the infrastructural object, the object has suffered damage and needs repair.
compare the graffiti removal to Celia Pym's sweater and my backpack.



custo

The word custodisco (custodire) is the verb form of the word custodian in Italian, "I watch something with care, so that it does not suffer damage and is kept intact." This is where custo gets its name. The 3 o's in the custo logo are both instructions on how to pronounce it (coosto, not cUSto), a vague reference to Object-oriented ontology and a diagram showing how custo is peer-to-peer, thus avoiding a middle-man.

Scuttlebutt

The characteristics I sought in creating a collections management and tagging system were:
- aesthetics
- uplifting maintenance
- independance & resilience

Aesthetics is achieved by allowing users to draw their own tags with a stylus. Uplifting maintenance is achieved with instruction in the maintenance ritual during the custo workshop. Independance & resilience are achieved with Scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt is a decentralized social network that doesn't rely on the internet. By utilizing Scuttlebutt, custo is able to generate unique and cryptographically verifiable IDs for each item, independent of any central authority. Storing the information about each item on many computers all over the world it's the most resilient backend system I can think of. Technically each item tagged with custo is an NFT.

The Custodisco kiosk is on Scuttlebutt at: 
@FEvUwv3A721fT0DWzANJqPa48iD57xv/ZnfQvKxPd2g=.ed25519



free sha voca do

Some items in the free sha voca do free store are being tagged with custo tags. It is asked that whoever takes possession of an item from the free store does not sell it for money or destroy it and in fact must mend any damage and keep it in good working order to the best of their ability. This license is intended to be perpetual for the life of the item for any future stewards. The custo tag is a reminder of this. It also indicates the item's provenance coming from the free store.

Free store tems are being posted by this Scuttlebutt account: 
@cpie7fpNg7u1ybjsju+iNJ5/HXxSEXc9wvjPLFlF2fw=.ed25519



take-aways/future/etc/faq

The custo project has been presented in 4 countries and I will keep on presenting it whenever given the opportunity. I continue to apply to arts and tech grants to help further this research.

People are invited to connect with the project during scheduled workshops. Workshops take around 2 hours and consist of:
- an introduction to the project and the philosophy behind it
- participants are invited to engage in the tagging ritual
- the kiosk is available for printing tags and looking up information about items
- there will be time to mend items and connect with peers

if you are interested in attending a workshop please join the workshop email list.

The ability to manage large collections of items is necessary and on the roadmap. I will be expanding on the custo project as part of the Vermont Certificate of Public Librarianship that I am enrolled in.

The code is open source by request :)



thanks!!!!



This is all made by trav!!!