E-waste as Art
Waste is a lack of imagination. We can win raw materials from electronic waste, but you can also recycle and upgrade it into art.
These artists show you there art from electronic waste in order for your awareness. Most of our electronics are replaced because there the market offers new stuff that’s better, more beautiful and faster.
As a consumer, you do have to ask yourself: is this product of no use any more for me?
Julia Christensen
For her project ‘burnouts’, Julia Christensen collected discarded iPhones. She places the iPhones 3D printed projectors to project forgotten constellations on the ceiling. Constellations we can’t see anymore because of all the light on Earth. The project is reflecting on the rapid consumption of products such as iPhones, and as a memory of something we lost because of all developments.
Gabriel Dishaw
Gabriel Dishaw designs shoes with discarded computers from the sixties and seventies. He uses circuit boards, typewriters, cables and gadgets.
To me, waste is just a lack of imagination
Peter McFarlane
Peter Shook
Creating awareness for sustainable use of electronics can also be combined with another aspect of sustainability. Peter Shook makes T-bones, steaks and chops out of electronic waste such as circuit boards and computer boards. He calls for attention to the strange ingredients in our food, while giving a new purpose to electronic castoffs.
Chris Jordan
Six thousand unwanted cell phones were used in this art project by Chris Jordan. His 32 square meter artwork was meant to encourage the public to start recycling.
Mary Hanson
Mary Hanson makes jewels of e-waste. She shows which (precious) metals are chemical elements are used making our products. In 2011 she started a research project at Sheffield Hallam University, trying to explore the relationship between man and machine.
Peter McFarlane
Peter McFarlane makes landscapes and fossils out of obsolete circuit boards. On his website he wrote he was shocked by the the short lifetime of computers. He wanted to extend it. His teaser is: “any material can be used for something.” His challenge is to find an appropriate role for the material.
Try something different
From iPhone projectors to led T-bone steaks of PCBs: our electronic waste doesn’t need to end up in Africa. Nor they have to be re-used in the same context. The boards in the steaks from Peter Shook and the shoes from Gabriel Dishaw have got an entirely different function. “Waste is just lack of imagination”
The idea that an object has only function, is obsolete.

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