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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Coward writes "Glasgow based artist Sandy Smith has some slightly different suggestions for what to do with those outdated PCs and Apple Macs -- build your home out of them!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."
Glasgow based artist Sandy Smith has some slightly different suggestions for what to do with those outdated PCs and Apple Macs -- build your home out of them!
I'll have to ask my mom if I can build a house in her basement.
Aw, she says I have to bathe first.
BTW, Coral cache mirror, MirrorDot mirror
It looks like my basement.
...if you had a house built of running PCs.
That would be quite an electric bill, though.
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
.. or the study when something's cooking.
But seriously - what to people consider art ? This looks like someone who just piles computers up and plugs them in. Kind of like kindergarten but with stuff only adults can lift.
Looks at old 486... "And this is my living room"
My living room is a Packard-Bell. I'm not inclined to brag about it. How come something that never worked right in the first place refuses to die?
KFG
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".
(\(\
(^v^)
(")")
This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
basement-dwelling nerd who has saved every system he's owned since 1980. :)
n dy_smith_07.jpg
http://www.computersforart.org/create/blue/big/sa
Definitions of art:= define%3Aart
http://www.google.nl/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q
That's a lot of definitions. Art is art when 'articians' say it is so.
Authoritarial justification.
Even extreme things, like burning crosses or crossdressed foetusses can be considered art. And before modding me down for this: I do not agree with the examples I just gave.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I don't know if it's supposed to be pretty or scary.
Pictures like these remind me of how eery a society we live in. It's actually kind of depressing or even scary.
(In an I'm-in-front-of-my-computer-at-4:45AM kind of way)
My apartment already looks like this. My electric bill is about $700/mo. The neighbors complain about brownouts, and the insane fan noise scares away the women.
:D
So, if I call it "art" I can claim my pad is an art gallery, eh?
I don't know if it's supposed to be pretty or scary.
It's okay. Those things in the picture are called "girls". What you're feeling is natural.
In any case, you're posting on Slashdot at (apparently) 4:45 your time, so they're nothing you'll ever have to worry about.
It's okay. Those things in the picture are called "girls". What you're feeling is natural.
Pfft. Dude, I think I know what girls look like. I do see my mother every once in a while so she can cut my hair.
...a beowulf housing development...
Constructed from 16 monitors and 60 computers in a dimly lit round basement space, the circular structure of The Blackhouse faces outwards, yet allows the viewer to look over and into complicated interior.
It's the whole 'dimly lit round basement space' that gets me... I walked past this when it was built a few weeks ago, as I live 2 blocks from the Art School, and not only was it in the floorspace of an empty shop, but it was looking out onto a busy main road. To be perfectly honest, it looked like someone was bored and had arranged a pile of junk computers in a circle. Completely uninspiring and boring. I even told my girlfriend about the 'pile of crap in the shop' and that she shouldn't worry as I won't be asking for any of it. I'm sorry, but I can't see how this passes for 'art'...
Fire
Hazard.
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]