Research Projects

Cultural industries are today massively turning to digital media as the primary medium for the production and distribution of their products, either through digitization of cultural artefacts, creation of new forms of cultural expressions (e.g., videogames), or reliance on digital tools in the creation process itself (film production). Yet, there are today no know solutions to the problem of preserving over time complex digital objects. The loss to our cultural heritage already promises to be significant, and will become worse if nothing is done. The issue has been difficult to solve because

• What is the "substance" of new digital forms has yet to stabilize through cultural and social conventions on authorship, authenticity, versions and performance;
• The preservation and re-enactment of a cultural work in digital form necessarily involves transformations, migrations, or emulations of the original, but there is not yet a stable consensus as to criteria for acceptable transformations;
• There is a theoretical gap (whether in archival science, information science, or museum curatorship), because the nature of digital media calls for new concepts and criteria for authencity and authorship in order to manage this problem.

Record/Replay, tools to enable the preservation and cultural appropriation of videogames (more information ...)

MUSTICA, a tool for the preservation of electro-acoustic music performances (more information ...)

Digital signatures are interesting, because they are mathematical objects which must achieve legal effects. As such, they must meet the standards of two very distinct cultures of proof, the mathematical and legal. (more information ...)

In certain legal systems, such as those of the Member States of the European Union, electronic signatures are almost exclusively understood to be inevitably based on public-key cryptography. Yet, several archival institutions (including the National Archives of Canada, Australia and the US) have expressed ambivalence at the prospect of preserving digitally signed records. (more information ...)

Cryptography, a mathematical science formerly devoted to providing confidentiality to diplomats and the military, has, in the last twenty-five years, evolved an ambitious research programme seeking to develop the mathematical tools required for securing a broad range of interactions over electronic networks, e.g., electronic signatures, anonymous and untraceable cash, voting systems, and intellectual property marking mechanisms. While cryptographers and regulators alike have repeatedly argued that the development of such tools will play an essential role in securing network-based social relations, that role has been much less obvious in practice ... (more information ...)

This policy project (in collaboration with Deborah Johnson) extends David Chaum's work on anonymity using the concept of social forgetfulness the idea that society selectively "forgets" in order to provide individuals with a "fresh start". (more information ...)