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A Different Way To Recycle Old PCs
Anonymous Coward writes "Glasgow based artist Sandy Smith has some slightly different suggestions for what to do with those outdated PCs and Apple Macs -- build your home out of them! Photographs of his work; rooms and structures made out of up to 100 (switched-on) computers and other equipment can be seen at computersforart.org/create/;
these should be of interest to anyone who has a habit of collecting old (working)
computers, or just hates the thought of throwing out their old 486 friend."
After looking at the "Untitled (The Sky is Blue)" pictures, I have this strange urge to watch Lain again.... For artwork it's pretty neat, but I can't help thinking "mmmm, radiation".
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This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
Funny as it may be, the parent as a point, with the worlds store of oil depleading, and the ozone layer getting worse by the day, projects like this aren't helping the problem. This may only be one case, however many more people keep old, old computers running for no reason, using up alot of electricity that doesn't need to be used.
I wonder how he wired his bathroom to avoid execution when taking a shower.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
The arch seems quite interesting, but I'd build it into spherical shape, like an igloo... then place an egg in the middle... switch them all on to display white screen... leave it on for 3 days... then switch everything off, and watch the egg shine in the darkness. Nice x-ray furnace, I'd say :)
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I think what constitutes Art is something that conveys emotions or a new perception to the observer / listener / participant.
A lot of "modern" art may mean something profound to the creator (they claim) but it singularly fails to convey anything to the observer - at least not without reading a two page explanation of the work, at which point an intellectual understanding of the meaning may be grasped, but nothing that really stirs the emotions or the mind.
Of course, my definition could conceivably rule out some very good traditional artists who are technically good, but emotionally boring. That's okay with me, although I recognize the skill.
I feel this is particularly true with a lot of modern photography, but that just may be my particular axe.
As far as this PC house - I don't consider it Art. What did the artist intend to make me feel or think? I can't tell. There might be people out there who are stirred by this, but it's more likely due to some deeply personal reasons than skill on the artist's part. Say, maybe their parents were crushed in a freak avalanche of badly stacked 486 base units or something...
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Say, one of those pix reminded me of a cubicle (or is it circumacle). If you aimed all the monitors toward the center and sat there at another, you should definitly be able to establish if those monitors have harmful radiation!
Fire
Hazard.
Here in (also cold) Canada, I visited a customer recently to discuss a thin-client solution. One of their comments was that when all those PCs would disappear from the desktop they could be having a heating problem. They had a rather new building and when the heating system for that office was dimensioned, the amount of heat produced by the PCs was calculated in. Which resulted in a smaller furnice.
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Wow, its like I'm back in art school again! :-)
I think you are very close to dead on here: art is essentially something that someone calls art. But there is one thing that is being left out. In order to be art there has to be human intervention at some point. Art must be (to at least some extent) man made. Even in the case of those damn painting cats (too lazy to find a link), someone at least had to dip the cat in paint and throw it on a canvas.
Ultimately the difficulty is not qualifying something as "art" because the term "art" carries with it no inherent value judgment:
"Look I pooped on the floor, its art!"; "Look I spent the last two years slaving away, painting a masterpiece" --both statements are equally true. The difficulty is organizing art into hierarchies of content and value (both monetary and cultural). The process is very subjective, but in practice it comes down to the fact that the worth of art is determined by persons well placed in the art industry. Essentially, if art makes it into the Met or Matthew Marks Gallery or Mary Boone Gallery, it is expensive and therefor valuable.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
I have some old DOS "slideshow" programs.
I load up an old hard drive with DOS, the slideshow program, and a diskful of .jpg's and let it fly.
These go in minimal security places, like shopping malls. Ok, if someone gets malicious and vandalizes or steals the whole shebang, its not really any worse than if the trashman did it.
I mean, what he got was an old '286 with a 40MB 5.25" MFM HD and an old VGA monitor. Good enough to show photos of what's in the food court.
I just arrange things so that the still operational machines continue to work as designed until the bitter end.
I still have a couple of crates of old 40MB 5.25" MFM HD's and a couple dozen controllers still laying around I am slowly getting rid of this way.
I may get into designing a driver board for those large incandescent bulb-matrix displays one sees in front of many businesses, as I constantly see them not working proprely... it kinda pains me to see so much expensive hardware out there that does not function properly because the latest state-of-the-art computer systems don't run all that long before hanging up on something or other.
Its not at all like those old days I went through when I would get an embedded system going and expect it to go for years without any deviation at all. Much as one would design a motor and expect the same. There's nothing magic about sequencing the bulbs on a sign so they spell text, just as there is nothing magic about designing rotating magnetic fields in a motor so the shaft turns. We don't have to constantly maintain our fans either, unless they made them with badly designed bearings.
I still enjoy the breeze from 20 year old fans.
Why is it that the output of older computers is so neglected? Its paid for, and will continue to work for you as long as you give it some power.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]