Category: Field note

  • Motherboard aesthetic

    Motherboard aesthetic

    A recent aesthetic with crafted objects: the re-use of computer motherboard by artisans. I ran across this little cow in a chalet in Solalex, in the Swiss Alps and found it interesting with regards to the sort of contrast it has with the general atmosphere of the place made of wooden furnitures, dimmed light and…

  • NO SCHOOL Nevers

    NO SCHOOL Nevers

    Anaïs is off to the NO SCHOOL in Nevers to give a presentation about digital repair practices (our previous project). It’s also a great opportunity to visit and conduct observation during this two-week summer school initiated 4 years ago by artists Benjamin Gaulon & Dasha Illina. This alternative school model brings together around forty people…

  • ENIAROF in Marseille

    ENIAROF in Marseille

    On Saturday April 30 and Sunday May 1, 2022, I’m attending the 32nd ENIAROF at the Pillard factory in Marseille. THE HYDRA MONSTER FUNFAIR, as mentioned on their website, is a popular digital Eniarof festival celebrating DIY and digital tinkering. ENIAROF is “Foraine” (funfair) spelled backwards. The “Pillard factory” is a former internal combustion engine…

  • Chimeras

    As part of a workshop given by artists Anne-Lise Tacheron and Daphnée Gharaee to various classes in the City of Lausanne, recycled toys are made available for modification and transformation. These workshops have given rise to the Chimère exhibition at the Forum de l’Hôtel de Ville, which I’m visiting in March 2022. It’s a workshop…

  • Different levels of interventions

    Different levels of interventions

    “Hacking” electronic toys isn’t homogeneous, as attested by these two examples, taken from (1) Game Boy Modding (a boo about to modify GameBoys) by Greg Farrell, (2) A fanzine by T.A.C.O. Team about toys hacking. While the formats of the two documents are close (using drawings and informal ways of describing things), there is a…

  • Cosmodule, Lyon

    Cosmodule, Lyon

    Had a chance to visit the Cosmodule Art R&D Lab in Lyon yesterday. Not strictly focused on recycling electronics, but still highly interesting in the way some of their projects deal with old consoles, use video game spare parts (such as buttons, lights and motherboards) – both as an inspiration for creative projects, and as…

  • Note from the flea market #1

    Why blogging this? The flea market is an important site in this project. We try to visit it as much as possible, observing which digital objects are sold, their conditions, the price given by the seller, the discussions around them, and sometimes the body posture of the potential buyers. Two examples here from yesterday in…

  • Digital media debris #1

    Why blogging this? This street scene is from 2009 in Geneva. I am used to keep track of discarded digital technologies… I’ve been observing this kind of scene for more than twenty years. I realize I do have colleagues also working on this topic. Media Debris is a research project conducted by Katharina Niemeyer and…

  • “it’s just an iPhone 10”

    Last year I spent few days at Nø School Nevers, a summer school about “critical research around the social and environmental impacts of information and communication technologies”. This was the occasion to spend some time participating in various activities and discover the work of Gambiologia… a collective that “exploram peculiaridades da cultura brasileira no contexto…

  • Hello world!

    One of the many souvenirs of a repurposed digital device (The SEGA Master System II, a cost-reduced version of the Master System released in 1990) that we ran across few years ago. Certainly a good illustration of what we want to investigate in this project.