ReFunct Media | Benjamin Gaulon, Gijs Gieskes, Karl Klomp, Tom Verbruggen
ReFunct Media
installation since 2010
In the “Practice of Everyday Life” Michel de Certeau investigates the ways in which users-commonly assumed to be passive and guided by established rules-operate. He asserts:
“This goal will be achieved if everyday practices, “ways of operating” or doing things, no longer appear as merely obscure background of social activity, and if a body of theoretical questions, methods, categories, and perspectives, by penetrating this obscurity, make it possible to articulate them.”
“ReFunct Media” is a series of multimedia installations that (re)uses numerous “obsolete” electronic devices (digital and analogue media players and receivers). Those devices are hacked, misused and combined into a large and complex chain of elements. To use an ecological analogy they “interact” in different symbiotic relationships such as mutualism, parasitism and commensalism.
Voluntarily complex and unstable, “ReFunct Media” isn’t proposing answers to the questions raised by e-waste, planned obsolescence and sustainable design strategies. Rather, as an installation it experiments and explores unchallenged possibilities of ‘obsolete’ electronic and digital media technologies and our relationship with technologies and consumption.
BIO
Benjamin Gaulon
http://recyclism.com/
Benjamin Gaulon is an artist, researcher and art college lecturer. 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.
Gijs Gieskes
I am a industrial designer from the Netherlands specializing in the design of electronic devices, for audiovisual use. The devices are often sold as kits but also pre assembled.
Karl Klomp
http://karlklomp.nl/
Karl Klomp (’79 – NL), media artist – vj – theatre technician. His research focus on live audiovisual expressions and interfacing with a fascination for glitch-art, hyper kinetic audio visuals and glitch grabbing. Dealing with video circuit bending and hardware interfacing outof obsolete video devices. Together with Tom Verbruggen (Toktek) they play live av performance (toktek vs mnk) across the country.
Tom Verbruggen
http://www.toktek.org/Site/home.html
