The most up-to-date versions of cellphones, gaming consoles, music players, and of course computers, have such a brief shelf life these days that products are continuously being thrown by the wayside in favor of their sleeker and sparklier successors. With the release of the latest iPhone (in white) last Thursday, we were tempted to chuck our perfectly good iPhone4, itself not even a year old, in favor of the latest and greatest iteration. Actually, no, not really. But we were inspired to collect some of the most innovative projects that give these forsaken hunks of plastic a new life, or perhaps a technological facelift that spares them from their fate in a landfill.Ishac Bertran: Flow/erGenerative photographer and inventor of the Pas A Pas, Ishac Bertran was digging through the trash trying to find a flat screen for his latest project when he came across a machine he thought would work. The computer he selected ended up having a broken VGA connector and a cracked screen, but Bertran decided to crack the screen a bit more, pushing the liquid crystal along the cracks with a screwdriver to produce some beautiful images highlighted in the video above.BRC Designs: Binary Chair
The understructure of this functional chair from BRC Designs is made from an outdated industrial printer, and the electronic arms and feet of the chair are made from a conglomeration of motherboards, computer chips, LCD screens and hard drive disks. Though the tech is inactive, the hard drive disks can be spun, the buttons pressed, and the antennae raised and adjusted. You can even look into the technological abyss by removing the back seat cushion and peering into the innards of deceased computers.Sara Bergando in collaboration with Giuseppe Arciresi: Light RibbonThis alternative lighting source crafted by Sara Bergando and Giuseppe Arciresi makes use of scraps of felt bumper pads and an old mobile phone’s battery charger. Combined with a circuit of 50 low-power LEDs, it becomes a mobile and flexible wall hanging or lamp.Sarah Frost: Debris, QwertySarah Frost could be called the grim reaper of keyboards. She uses thousands of discarded computer keys to create her large-scale mosaic grids. See detailed shots of the installation here.Nils Voelker: One Hundred and EightNils Voelker‘s reactive wall installation is made from discarded garbage bags and a microcontroller that inflates and deflates old plastic bags. As long as a person is in the vicinity of the installation, it will react to the observer’s movements, falling back into its own momentum once it detects that it’s alone.L017.org: Through The BarricadesAngelo Bramanti and Giuseppe Siracusa of creative laboratory L017.org prefer to use waste material and recycled objects in their various paintings, installations, and sculptures. In Through The Barricades, they warp records to emulate the artist at hand… reminding us of a contemporary take on Mount Rushmore.8-bit Memory: Upcycled External Hard DrivesEtsy seller 8-bit Memory transforms classic game cartridges and consoles into external storage drives whose memories can hold up to 1 terabyte. Don’t see your favorite video game? 8-bit Memory will find it for you.Dan Riordan: Polaroid Camera Turned LED LampChicago-based designer Dan Riordan found a way to turn his old Polaroid Land Camera 95A into a handmade LED-powered lamp with an adjustable dimmer. The bulbs last for up to 50,000 hours and you can be put on the waiting list for your very own here.
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