Transforming Trash into Treasure: E-Waste as Treasured Art
Creations from our electronic waste and digital traces question our relationship with computers and smartphones. Or how the precious emerges from our usage.
Tuesday evening, new edition! The guide to the main articles and the press section have been updated. You can also read this post in French.
Jewelry brands like Emblème offer an original approach to creating jewelry: each gram of gold comes from electronic components found in computers or other smartphones, sourced within an hour from Paris.
A virtuous approach that stems from a disconcerting observation: according to UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research), a human generated more than 7.8 kg of electronic waste per year in 2022, a statistic that has increased by 82% since 2010.
And less than a quarter of this “e-waste” is recycled.
A “make-it-yourself” culture.
Initiatives are multiplying around the world. The Formula E Envision Racing team launched a competition in 2023 for school students to build race cars from electronic waste. Not only a way to better understand how everyday objects are made but also the desire to create a “make-it-yourself” culture.
Beyond providing kits, it's a whole series of initiatives that invite people to push their imagination to create increasingly personal, increasingly exclusive objects, while offering early solutions for the planet.
Gomi recently launched a speaker made from theoretically non-recyclable plastic bags and lithium from batteries recovered from electric bikes. The result is unique patterns, freezing in time what could have been just a heap of waste into a beautiful object.
From waste to memories: transforming memorial e-waste into objects.
In 2012, Meshu (launched by Sha Hwang and Rachel Binx) started with a brilliant intuition: the journeys we take each day can have a personal meaning for us. Each time we “check-in” at a place, a part of our lives is documented and narrated. The favorite restaurant, the shop we love, the longer path that takes us past a mural: our fragments of emotions recorded somewhere in hard drives.
Yet, returning to our archives is not so easy, especially as the number of social networks or applications we have accounts on explodes.
Meshu proposed to retrieve user data from Foursquare (ultra-popular at the time) or through a mapping tool. By triangulating the coordinates, shapes were created, which could then be transformed into jewelry.
One of the uses of Meshu was to allow lovers to give jewelry that recalled their first meetings, the cafes they frequented, etc.
Even at the time, it was proof of the liveness of our digital traces—the quality and state of being alive—that Meshu captured in time through an object, which can last beyond the longevity of a platform.
The liveness of code
It’s a human truth: beyond the flow and the instantaneous, we want solid, tangible markers to better remember an era.
But how to show live what we instinctively feel in our digital uses, namely this disconcerting impression of life?
It is at the forefront of art that the demonstration takes place. The duo behind 404.zero—who “paint with mathematics and code”—launched a project titled In Noise We Trust (INWT), the first true real-time generative audio-visual digital art project entirely on the blockchain. Each INWT is like a live performance of the code and not a video recording of the performance. Part of the information present in the code is somehow materialized visually and sonically. Navigating the platform gives the impression of diving into the essence of obscure codes; and like an intern surgeon, seeing beyond the physical envelope what makes our interfaces vibrate.
Code made of flesh and bones, in a way.
The number of the week: +13%
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, CD and vinyl revenues grew to $5.1 billion last year, a 13% increase between 2022 and 2023. Simple, basic, tangible.
Amazing links
Mission Out of Phone, what is it? Read on TikTok
The Ipsos Global Happiness Report is out
For Yann LeCun, regarding AI, “realism comes at the cost of coverage.” Read on LinkedIn
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