Showing off in the home is getting harder

(Photo courtesy patandkat.com)
Maybe you had one of these. Maybe you had to pack everything up and move it periodically. Maybe you remember the tedious process of opening the case, popping the CD into the player, and queuing up the song you wanted to hear. I had one of these too, once. The CD rack is long gone, and the jewel cases are boxed up in a spare closet. Overall, it's much easier to find, mix, and play music from my laptop.

But what is lost?

The CD rack, in many ways, shares much with our bookshelves, the posters and art on our walls, the magazines spread out on our coffee tables, and our framed travel photos. They are a tangible, observable reflection of our interests, the things we show off that can quickly let visitors get to know us better, or find things we have in common. Depending on how seriously you take your music, or books, or art, it may be seen as a reflection of your identity, or even the person you would like others to think you are.

But now the CD rack is gone and all of those album/artist pairs are now a series of virtual album covers in iTunes. Photos are shared in online albums. Newspapers and periodicals are struggling to stay relevant. E-books promise to replace th e calendered, sized, and bound pages we love so much, but this transition has yet to play out the way Amazon would have us believe.
In most cases, these digital conversions translate to digital means of showing off. You can see my favorite artists on last.fm, my recent reads on Facebook using Visual Bookshelf, and my photos on Flickr. Not only that, you can dig into much more detail: What do I listen to from week to week? How did I rate and review that last book? Which of my photos had my parents in them? Not that you'd necessarily want to, but there's plenty of functionality to play with.

What, then, becomes of the home? With our racks bare of media, what will take their place? From a design perspective, I think we face a bit of a crisis in the ways in which we show off ourselves to those we invite into our homes. With many of the things that give us a basis for both uniqueness as well as kinship with others absent, I feel we must find a way to reincorporate them into our living spaces. A simple early entrant would be the digital picture frame, a digital music hub such as the Roku SoundBridge, or any of a variety of ways in which we can have recommended news articles and weather forecasts displayed on TVs, PCs, or internet appliances.

But the same properties that allow us to see our interests from so many different angles on our favorite web applications give us new possibilities for displaying our interests in the home. We can potentially do more than digitally replicating the traditional framed photo or artist/album/label on the spine of a jewel box. What about a more abstract, aesthetically pleasing view of our music tastes a la last.fm extra stats? Projections of our Flickr tag clouds? There is a lot of potential here, and I look forward to the solutions that will be designed in the coming years as our empty CD racks wait on the curb for their trip to the incinerator.

Comments

[Jenn]

As our souls (and personalities) are sucked into drones of silver macbook pros, what then is there to reflect our home?

Chris has a huge collection of dvds and video games. And despite the increasing hard drive space, he is unwilling to part with tangible items. With tangible items, there is an immediate sense of volume, perhaps even wealth.

I wonder what may happen in several years—what will replace the tangible items. Are projections of cover art, graphs of usage enough? Will they look alike from home to home? How can such systems incorporate personalization from the unique dvd box (like the Transformers box that can transform) to the personally autographed box? Maybe personalized sound, colors, avatars...but something more unique.

[Jim Davies]

Where did you get those awesome shelves? I want them!

I love having my CDs out, not only for others to see, but because I like being able to look over at them when sitting in my dining room and living room areas. I expect it will be several years before I go completely digital.

However, I think bookshelves and CD cases are not all that intrinsically attractive. Looking at your picture, I can't tell what the CDs are. It's just a CD texture gradient.

You ask a good question-- how do we show who we are, how do we show off in our house without them?

My answer: art. Your walls need decoration. Cover them with art that reflects you and your sensibilities. Have a shelf of sculpture if that's your thing.

You are more than your interests.

[Joe T.]

Jim: not my shelves, random internet pic.

As far as art goes, I would argue that our DVDs, books, and especially music represent art that reflects our sensibilities, but their display doesn't necessarily constitute the most attractive objects in our homes.
You raise a good point - I wonder how all the digital information about the art we enjoy can be used to suggest new pieces. For example, what sculpture would I connect with based on my music interests? Could we even be creators (or at least contributors) of our own visual creations that use this information as a starting point?