The ever updating digital culture keeps exponentially producing hardware, software, and data, tapping into raw resources, feeding on energy, taking some space. Often they go very fast from valuable to being considered as disposable becoming waste. Then what should happen to them ? Benjamin Gaulon’s take on Media archeology suggests that hardware and data can be recycled and repurposed, but at some point it is not possible to extend their life anymore. The only thing left is their brutal materiality.

Digitalrecycling addresses the accumulation of unused data and digital trash sharing. With Bit by Bit (BbB) each file produces a final glimmer before disappearing for good. BbB reduces the data accumulated on the internet, bit by bit.

Stemming from the idea of tech mining Ultimate Waste, Internet Compression and L'Essence Même by Benjamin Gaulon, transform devices into inert matter by shredding them. The resource takes the front stage, the design is abolished, the utility is gone, still, a plastic object is present in the form of ultimate waste. It takes some space, it can still leak pollutants, it is bland in the form, and in the color, this is what is left when we are done with hardware.

Please bring any broken/dead electronics (beyond repair, should not work, will be shredded) computers, screens, phones, etc…

Benjamin Gaulon is an artist, researcher, educator and cultural producer. He has previously released work under the name "recyclism". His research focuses on the limits and failures of information and communication technologies; planned obsolescence, consumerism and disposable society; ownership and privacy; through the exploration of détournement, hacking and recycling. His projects can be softwares, installations, pieces of hardware, web based projects, interactive works, street art interventions and are, when applicable, open source.

He is currently director of NØ SCHOOL, a non profit organisation whose mission is to support and promote emerging art and design research and practices that address the social and environmental impacts of information and communication technologies, in France and beyond. Co-organiser of NØ SCHOOL NEVERS 2019. And he is the CEO of IoDT the Internet of Dead Things Institute.

He has been associate professor at Parsons Paris, where he was the program director of the MFA Design + Technology and the BFA Art, Media and Technology, program that he has developed and launched in 2013. Before that he was lecturer at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, associate researcher at CTVR / the telecommunications research centre at Trinity College and director of DATA (Dublin Art and Technology Association) in Dublin.

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