Discarded Digital: investigating the amateur re-use of digital rubbishes
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“Design for Obsolete Devices” by Anaëlle Beignon
Anaëlle’s thesis addresses “the obsolescence of technology through the lens of accessibility to public services”. Her design work explores “the ageing processes of electronic devices in regards to a technological normativity that marginalizes owners of obsolete devices.” Check the PDF here.
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The NYT on retrocomputing
The NYT had a short piece last week about retrocomputing. Nothing super deep here but it’s interesting to see this relationship with skills and learning how to rebuild machines: While modern, ever more efficient computers are selling better than they have in years, vintage computers — impractical old devices in need of repairs and out-of-production…
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“épaves” (shipwreck)
The French term “épaves” (shipwreck) is often used out of the marine context, like here, in this box I found at at photographers’ shop in Geneva. A box in which you can find camera junk.
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Collapse informatics/Computing with limits
Why blogging this? Bill Tomlinson describes here two stimulating concepts about novel forms of computing that might allow us as a civilization to more effectively engage with more durable ways of living: For example, Collapse Informatics was focusing on building systems in the abundant present for use in the future of scarcity. And Computing Within…
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Les déchets numériques en littérature
Cette courte description, dans le dernier livre de Pierre Ducrozet’s, “Le Grand Vertige“: … qui m’a rappelée cette autre mention d’un tel sujet, par Guillaume Poix (dans son “Les fils conducteurs“) situé dans la décharge d’Agbogbloshie, à Accra (Ghana) : “T’as tout le cimetière numérique, t’as tout l’obsolète qui se trouve un coin pour s’aplatir…
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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…
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“Why using old cartdriges?”
Seen on the website of Iodine Dynamics, which recently “What Remains”, an 8-bit game for the NES console (released in 1985) that blends visual novel and adventure elements: Why blogging this? An interesting project that illustrates the kind of practices we are interested in here. Designing a game in 2019 on a console released thirty…
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“it’s the debris”
A tweet we ran across yesterday: Why blogging this? Well, this is precisely the literary equivalent to what we are interested in here.
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Détournement
“Détournement: s’emploie par abréviation de la formule : détournement d’éléments esthétiques préfabriqués. Intégration de productions actuelles ou passées des arts dans une construction supérieure du milieu. Dans ce sens il ne peut y avoir de peinture ou de musique situationniste, mais un usage situationniste de ces moyens. Dans un sens plus primitif, le détournement à…
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On “critical jugaad”
An interesting interview of Deepa Butoliya by James Auger at Speculative dot edu. Based on a recent CHI workshop paper she wrote about non-western maker and DIY cultures, Butoliya describes the notion of “critical jugaad”: Critical Jugaad is jugaad done as an act of everyday resistance and survival. Critical Jugaad is a term I have…