Email receipts

At CDG, the email list was the primary way in which the group shared prototypes, discussed ideas, and documented projects.

This naturally led to a number of projects, of varying levels of seriousness, around physically representing the email archive itself.

The Research gallery (2015) represented key emails as sticky labels on a poster. The labels could be lasered to inspect the project.

Robert printed out all our emails as Email receipts (2015), and attempted to affix them to their subject matter.

Bret made a huge Email poster (2015).

Then the Email binder (2015).

The Email microservice (2016) allowed us to link to emails from other emails or from physical barcodes.

As the group cohered around Realtalk in 2017, the email list became less of a primary mode of communication. It resumed a primary role after the group fragmented due to COVID in 2020.

This very Dynamicland archive (2024) uses emails as “primary source” documentation.