ars ex machina

May 5, 2016 11:11 AM

I have been to the future and have brought back art.

"ReTech was born of a desire to translate discarded tech into artistic pieces."
The FAQ explains it better than I can.
posted by cjorgensen (11 comments total)

I love this one
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:15 AM on May 5, 2016

The artist is totally missing the boat with this stuff. If the art were changed just a bit and marketed to audiophiles as "advanced digital to analog power smoothing devices" or some such, they'd fly off the shelves.
posted by ensign_ricky at 11:38 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Part of me thinks this is great, and part of me thinks that I need to take all the junk I hot-glued together for my recent set dressing gig for a steampunk production of "Frankenstein" and sell that, because a lot of my "works" from that look very much like this.
posted by xingcat at 11:53 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sure, but it looks like in these the lights flash, and the speakers emit sound, and the video screens roll video and etc. Unlike a lot of that steampunk stuff you see that's strictly decoration.
posted by notyou at 12:45 PM on May 5, 2016

So this is like junk art?
posted by BlueHorse at 3:09 PM on May 5, 2016

Disclaimer: I know the guy behind Retech personally, as an internet friend. That said, I think "junk art" is a little dismissive -- maybe the aesthetic isn't to your taste, but that doesn't mean it's without value or appeal. I find his work very interesting as an exploration of retro-cyberpunk possibilities.
posted by sonyaellenmann at 3:56 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

"junk art" is a genre name
posted by LogicalDash at 4:53 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

But...I was in there first! :-/
posted by deus ex machina at 6:19 PM on May 5, 2016

Very "Brazil."
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:47 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

These are great, thanks. I think the lamps are particularly wonderful, probably because they do more with less (and don't use eyeballs so much) but I love this aesthetic and this artist does it well.
posted by mediareport at 3:21 AM on May 6, 2016

I like that they do live video or piped video feeds. So while they look cool, they are also functional.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:34 AM on May 6, 2016