Reading: Digital Rubbish: A natural history of electronics

KairUs

Digital Rubbish: A natural history of electronics by Jennifer Gabrys in the digitalculturebooks series.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
one: Silicon Elephants
two: exchange at the interface
three: Shipping and Receiving
four: Museum of Failure
five: Media in the Dump
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Newspaper Articles
Archives and Museums
Index

 

This book is attached as an appendix to Jussi Parikkas Medianatures mentioned in a earlier post. Yet this is a book in it self and can be read online as well. And while I am currently reading the second chapter I think that this book really deserves a post of its own.

Reading: In the Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method

KairUs

Hertz G., Parikka J. 2012, In the Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an
Art Method, LEONARDO, Vol. 45, No. 5, pp. 424–430.

Abstract:
This text is an investigation into media culture, temporalities of media objects and planned obsolescence in the midst of ecological crisis and electronic waste. The authors approach the topic under the umbrella of media archaeology and aim to extend this historiographically oriented field of media theory into a methodology for contemporary artistic practice. Hence, media archaeology becomes not only a method for excavation of repressed and forgotten media discourses, but extends itself into an artistic method close to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, circuit bending, hardware hacking and other hacktivist exercises that are closely related to the political economy of information technology. The concept of dead media is discussed as “zombie media”—dead media revitalized, brought back to use, reworked.

Comment:
In this article Hertz and Parikka introduces the term zombie media as “media that is not only out of use, but resurrected to new uses, contexts and adaptations”. Even if the article is mostly concerned with circuit bending of consumer electronics it gives insights to think about our 22 hard-drives. The article describes how obsolete electronics are reused in new constructions in which “materials and ideas become zombies that carry with them histories but are also reminders of the non-human temporalities involved in technical media”. Gadgets and electronics are bought on flee markets or found while dumpster diving and repurposed in art works. Yet todays gadgets increasingly collect data of their prior owners. A blackbox that is broken (see figure 2 in the article) and abandoned will contain data of its prior owner. And if we continue the metaphor of the dead this data might be seen as a ghost that is now sealed in the gadget(hard drive) and can not be retrieved without expensive expert help. If this gadget was synchronised with other electronics or retrievable from the ever saving cloud the data is saved elsewhere and one might not make the effort to reanimate the machine thing just to delete traces of one self. Another scenario are all those old phones that sill function, but are somewhere in a shoebox now. During the spring cleaning it is for sure easy to drop them in recycling as dead shells while deleting personal contacts from it, would require to find the right charging cables which is of course lost. Though, as Hertz and Parikka argue, dead media is not always really dead:

Although arguments concerning death-of-media may be useful as a tactic to oppose dialog that only focuses on the newness of media, we believe that media never dies: it decays, rots, reforms, remixes, and gets historicized, reinterpreted and collected (see Fig. 5). It either stays in the soil as residue and in the air as concrete dead media, or is reappropriated through artistic, tinkering methodologies.

With the perspective of the hardware returning to be used in art pieces, likewise there is the chance that the media in the meaning of data resurfaces in the hands of artist or others. A haunting thought…

PS:
The Dead Media Lab (Garnet Hertz 2009) is also worth visiting. Here electronic waste finds the artist and dead media comes alive.

 

Reading: Medianatures

KairUs

A book on our reading list:
Medianatures
The Materiality of Information Technology and Electronic Waste
ISBN: 978-1-60785-261-2
edited by Jussi Parikka

It is divided into 4 topics: Materials, Energetics, Waste, Ecosophy. Here is a short description of each topic from Jussi Parikkas introduction:

This living book consists of three sections. The first, titled ‘Material’, engages with some of the processes and materials from which technical media is produced. This offers a new look at media materialism in a way that is slightly less McLuhanian (‘the medium is the message’) but that insists that the material is the message – or, as Fumikazu Yoshida has it: ‘the relationship between high-technology and environmental problems focuses on high-technology like microelectronics and new material, while biotechnology develops on the basis of new sorts of substances: this is contrary to the saying, ‘the message is more important than the material.’ These substances , even if they have little value in themselves, have long-term and combined effects on human health which are not yet sufficiently clear’ (1994: 105).

The second section, ‘Energetics’, focuses on energy consumption and includes various perspectives on hand-held mobile devices, data-grids and server economies. The key question is how such new forms of digital economy and energy use (on an abstract informatic level, computers are zero-entropy machines) relate to the old regimes of energy production, and, for instance, CO2 emissions.

Third, we focus on ‘Waste’ management – a growing part of literature on the materiality of electronic media and information technology cultures. It relates to the global distribution of electronic waste devices as well as the capitalist tendency to be able to recycle such uselessness (shit’) into economic value (Laporte, 2000). In spite of the increasing amount of international regulation since the 1990s, e-waste is still being exported to developing countries (to India and Pakistan, but still also to China). The process follows international labour trends: work in those countries is cheap. Or, as Pinto bluntly states, ‘The dumping of e-waste, particularly computer waste, into India from developed countries (‘green passport’ according to Gutierrez), because the latter find it convenient and economical to export waste, has further complicated the problems with waste management’ (2008). As work is becoming more expensive in China due to rising labour costs and wages, new countries will become the final address for the things which developed countries do not want any more.

The last section of the book is titled ‘Ecosophy’, following Félix Guattari’s (2000) concept. Ecosophy refers to the creative moment across the three ecological layers he identified as nature, the social and the human subjective ecology. As such, it refers to the creation of new practices and relations within and across ecologies, recognizing that the standard ‘environmental ecology’ perspective is in itself insufficient to tackle the links between capitalist modes of production and specific forms of living attached to that economy. This is why this particular section addresses some ethico-aesthetic perspectives that tap into ‘ecology’ and media in a different vein: it includes texts and links to projects talk about artistic, social science and media theoretical ways to rethink relations between materials, the environment and technologies.

Im Höllenfeuer der Hightech-Welt

KairUs

Tausende Menschen in Ghanas Hauptstadt Accra leben vom westlichen Computerschrott. Sie riskieren Leben und Gesundheit. Eine SZ-Wissen-Reportage.

Von Michael Bitala

Was für ein elender Ort. Der Rauch hier ist so dicht und schwarz, dass man das Kind zunächst kaum erkennt. Je näher man ihm kommt, desto mehr tränen die Augen, desto mehr brennt es in der Nase, im Mund und im Rachen. Dann aber sieht man, dass der kleine Junge auf einer Müllkippe sitzt, auf einem Berg voller Glasscherben und Computertrümmern.

Er hustet, schaut kurz auf, dann greift er nach einem kinderkopfgroßen Stein und haut ihn auf den Monitor, der vor ihm liegt. Beim ersten Schlag splittert das Glas, beim zweiten bricht es ein. Und als er den Stein wieder zur Seite legt, fließt dickes, hellrotes Blut aus seiner rechten Hand.

Er wischt sie kurz über die dreckige Hose, dann bricht er die restlichen Scherben aus dem Gehäuse. Kwaku Prince Yeboah heißt der Junge mit der blutenden Hand und dem traurigstarren Blick. Er gehört auf der Mülldeponie hinter dem Agbogbloshie-Markt in Ghanas Hauptstadt Accra schon zu den älteren Kindern, er ist zehn Jahre alt, viele sind auch erst fünf oder sechs.

Blutende Hände sind das kleinste Problem

Anzeige

Sie zerschlagen Computerbildschirme mit Steinen. Schnittwunden haben sie alle, aber das ist das kleinste Problem. Der größte Elektroschrottplatz des westafrikanischen Lands ist eine gigantische Giftmüllhalde, eine, in der sich Konzentrationen von Blei, Kadmium, Barium, Quecksilber, Chrom, Arsen, Beryllium, bromhaltigen Flammschutzmitteln und anderer Giftstoffe wie polychlorierten Biphenylen oder Chlorbenzol finden lassen, die bis zu 100-fach die Normalwerte übersteigen.

Wie viele Kinder und Jugendliche schon erkrankt oder gestorben sind, weiß kein Mensch. Sicher aber ist, dass es diesen Ort nicht gäbe, wenn Exporteure in Europa und Amerika ihren giftigen Computerschrott nicht nach Ghana schicken würden.

Oft deklarieren sie ihre Profitgier als Entwicklungshilfe. Wenn nicht gerade der tiefschwarze Rauch ungezählter Feuerstellen alles verhüllt, dann sieht man die gewaltigen Ausmaße der Deponie. Tausende Menschen leben von ihr.

Ausgeweidete PC-Gehäuse und zersplitterte Bildschirme türmen sich bis zu vier Meter hoch. Der Boden besteht fast nur aus Asche. Überall liegen Kabel herum, zerbrochene Platinen, Tastaturen, Prozessoren, Transformatoren und Hunderte Kothaufen.

Auf Schlammlöchern und Tümpeln treiben Flecken, die grün, orangefarben oder blaumetallisch leuchten. Da die Ziegen- und Kuhherden auf der Müllhalde nichts anderes finden, saufen sie aus grell schimmernden Pfützen und fressen ascheverseuchtes Gras.

So sieht es also aus, wenn Europa und die USA vorgeben, die “digitale Kluft” zwischen der Ersten und der Dritten Welt schließen zu wollen. Rund drei Viertel der Desktops, Laptops, Drucker, Scanner und Kopierer, die als Secondhandware deklariert nach Afrika exportiert werden, sind schlichtweg Elektroschrott.

Jedes Jahr, so schätzt das UN-Umweltprogramm, fallen weltweit 50 Millionen Tonnen des giftigen Mülls an, allein in Deutschland sind es rund eine Million Tonnen. Und die Menge nimmt zu. Dafür sorgen schon die Hersteller mit immer schnelleren Prozessoren, noch größeren Flachbildschirmen und leistungsfähigeren Handys. Mit jeder technischen Neuerung wächst der Elektroschrottberg in Afrika, China und Indien.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/ghana-im-hoellenfeuer-der-hightech-welt-1.689901

Elektroschrott: Odyssee nach Afrika

KairUs

Was passiert eigentlich mit unserem Elektroschrott, zum Beispiel einem ausrangierten Fernseher? Er steht beispielhaft für den zivilisatorischen Müll unserer Zeit – und für das Thema “Müll: Das Geschäft mit dem Dreck“, mit dem wir uns in der kommenden makro-Sendung beschäftigen. Ausschlachten, kleinhächseln, verbrennen? Lohnt sich das Recycling der Innereien unserer Elektrogeräte?

Read more →

Story of Electronics

KairUs

The Story of Electronics, released in November 2011, employs the Story of Stuff style to explore the high-tech revolution’s collateral damage—25 million tons of e-waste and counting, poisoned workers and a public left holding the bill. Host Annie Leonard takes viewers from the mines and factories where our gadgets begin to the horrific backyard recycling shops in China where many end up. The film concludes with a call for a green ‘race to the top’ where designers compete to make long-lasting, toxic-free products that are fully and easily recyclable.

(from: http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-electronics/)