The Archive Artifact
Prototype

The Archive Artifact Prototype (2025)
Raspberry Pi 5, TP-Link AC1300 WiFi dongle, open source software (Shareboxx), gifted communal experience

At the core of the Return to Dreamphone exhibition was an archive artifact; a digital repository, separate from the internet, preserving knowledge from workshops and discussions held during Nick’s residency. The object will travel with Nick, collecting gifted conversations and snippets of stories. A digital filter, sifting signal from noise.
The archive relies on communal responsibility and asks for immediate care. Anyone can access it, add to it, and take from it. Each participant becomes the caretaker and custodian of a growing archive and living manifesto, within this library of communal dreaming. By gifting knowledge and experience, the archive explores how the power of collective imagination can impact the politics of public space— welcoming past failures, dismantling structures and migrating between utopic borders.

The Archive Artifact Prototype is one part of Nick Murray’s solo show Return to Dreamphone, which was exhibited at ACAVA Barham Park (26-30 March) as the culmination of Nick Murray’s six month artist residency. The exhibition booklet can be read here.

I’ve been trying to make an ambient digital server that exists separate from the internet. I love the idea that people, in coming together to share stories, meals, creative acts, can gently leave traces for each other and for those who come next. These traces are site-sympathetic, and require a level of proximity that the wider internet doesn’t. While this could generally be seen as an inconvenience, I think there is something important in creating porous digital/physical boundaries that respond and rely on both the physical and digital sites equally.
I hope that, if this experiment works, I can carry this server with me through any projects I undertake. It can serve as an archive object that gains a solidity of context the longer it persists.
I tried making a playable interface for the Archive Artifact called The World Grid. It’s not quite there yet, but if you’re interested in this work, you can try it out at here.

Photography – Courtesy: ACAVA Artist’s Residency Programme. Image: Ben Deakin