"Techno Ecologies" Participants

ABSTRACT
Living and Dying with Obsolescence Planned obsolescence was introduced as a practice in the design of, for example, media devices in the 1930’s. As a consequence, devices would not be mendable but rather enforce continuous consumption, and we now live in the wake of this practice with enormous proliferations of e-waste. Through the art project UNRAVEL / REPEAT (http://misplay.se/upprepa), we argue that there is also, what we call, relational obsolescence and anticipated obsolescence. In brief: relational obsolescence is when something stops working in relation to other actors within a system, network, platform or infrastructure. For example, this incompatibility could take place when a mobile phone standard changes, but the phones themselves still work. Anticipated obsolescence suggests expectations of obsolescence that have consequences on when and how artefacts become discarded. For instance, on our travels we encountered a mining company that exchanges all 800 of their mobile phones at preset intervals to ensure security in the mines rather than waiting for the phones to break down. The examples that we draw on build on an artistic method of rag-and-boning, aimed at collecting discarded materials and stories. In this case discarded mobile phones in the far north of Sweden were collected and later used to write and distribute the SMS-novel, P.S. Sorry if I Woke You. Through this media artwork we not only reveal materiality, politics of temporality and the specificities of a location, but also perform obsolescence as a way of collectively re-presencing an ongoing living with entanglements of materiality, conceptualisations, performativity.

BIO

Kristina Lindström, School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University. Lindström is finishing her thesis in interaction design with the working title Patchworking Publics-in-the-making – moving engagement. She works since 2003 in a longterm research and art practice with Åsa Ståhl where they collaboratively explore materialities and meanings of information and communication technology. They also intervene in and reconfigure publics through crafting and making things together.

Recent publications include:
“Making private matters public in temporary assemblies” (2012), CODESIGN, 8 (1-2) 145-161
“Working Patches” (2012) STUDIES IN MATERIAL THINKING, 07, 1-19.
“P.S. Sorry if I woke you up” (2012) an SMS-novel at the Art Gallery in the North, Sweden.
“Publics-in-the-making” (forthcoming) as part of a volume edited by Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard. MIT Press.

Åsa Ståhl, School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University. Ståhl is finishing her thesis in media and communication studies with the working title Patchworking Publics-in-the-making – moving engagement. She works since 2003 in a longterm research and art practice with Kristina Lindström, where they explore materialities and meanings of information and communication technology. They also intervene in and reconfigure publics through crafting and making things together.

Recent publications include:
“Making private matters public in temporary assemblies” (2012), CODESIGN, 8 (1-2) 145-161
“Working Patches” (2012) STUDIES IN MATERIAL THINKING, 07, 1-19.
“P.S. Sorry if I woke you up” (2012) an SMS-novel at the Art Gallery in the North, Sweden.
“Publics-in-the-making” (forthcoming) as part of a volume edited by Ehn, Nilsson and Topgaard. MIT Press.

Eric Snodgrass, School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University.

Snodgrass is underway with a PhD under the research profile New media, public spheres and forms of expression. His current research explores a notion of “media ecologies”, how it is outlined via a range of theorists (old &

new) and as it can be seen to describe, inform or speculate upon forms of everyday and artistic/critical media practice.