AfriGadget has a lovely post up for the new year featuring photos by photographer TMS Ruge of Project Diaspora. This is a car made out of an empty oil bottle with wheels cut from old flip flops.
Other charming evidence of resourcefulness can be found at the AfriGadget Flikr pool.
For those who did and those who did not attend trash day at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, here are links to the other sites I mentioned in my talk on Garblogging. All of the everydaytrash items cited can be found by searching the blog (see search box in the top, right corner) and checking out the various categories compiled in a drop-down menu to the right.
Many, many more garblogs and green blogs and be found on the side bar, to the right. Please peruse.
More to come on the other content of the day, which included a screening of Bill Kirkos’ film Trashed and a talk by Elizabeth Royte based on her books Garbage Land and Bottlemania.
I’ve been getting an eyeful of lingerie made of trash by keeping up with fellow garbloggers Little Shiva over at Visible Trash and Ruby Re-Usable of Olympia Dumpster Divers who each highlighted this recent Wall Street Journal article. Thought I’d share:
This image of a fabulous number in Tab tabs by eco-artist Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch was ripped from the WSJ article.
And Ruby herself constructed this wonderous wonder bra. For more on Ruby’s work, check out the Trashtastic Tuesday Q & A she graciously granted everydaytrash back in ’07.
For more on the fun and exciting world of garblogging, come check out my talk at the Princeton Public Library at 4pm today, part of the Princeton Environmental Film Festival. The trashy lineup includes my talk and a trashy film screening, all opening acts for that trailblazing trashie, Elizabeth Royte. Any readers out there from Jersey? Hope to see you at the library this afternoon. Everyone else stay tuned for the recap.
UPDATE: Tits and trash are in the air. Just found this pic of a brassiere planter to raise awareness of, you guessed it, breast cancer on Esther’s blog over at Je me recycle.
My friend Flex Unger has a small recording studio in Brooklyn full of broken toys and good intentions. A lover of to-do lists, Flex recently went around the studio taking pictures of the things he’d like to fix or convert in the coming months, which he posted on his blog along with short descriptions of the forthcoming projects.
Organ parts
[NOTE: This post has been updated to correct gross errors in my understanding of all things technical. Despite years of wood shop, metal shop, power shop, a class on bike repair and accelerated physics, I still don’t quite get how to take things apart or put them back together again. Apologies if you rushed out to try these projects at home between 5 and 11pm EST.]
My favorite of these resolutions is the master plan to deconstruct and recycle an old Viscount organ (shown above, in pieces) to make a portable drum machine and build an amplifier and a mini organ. Inspiration for extracting the organ’s drum machine came from the YouTube clip below; and from a primal calling to amass the world’s largest collection of portable beat-making devices. The hope is to use a 1/4 inch jack from the organ’s circuitry so that the device can be output into an amp.
Project #2 is an amplifier that will serve purposes equal parts form and function. Flex has an oven range—rescued from the trash!—attached to a wall that is supposed to reverberate for an echo effect. If I understand correctly, by extracting the organ’s speaker and its covering, he can a) preserve the attractive vintage fabric look of the Viscount and b) use it to build a makeshift PA that will carry sound over to the oven range.
Organ fabric
Project #2 has the added bonus of incorporating this rad-looking Zenith tube radio found on the streets of Brooklyn, which will serve as the amplifier.
Tube radio
For the third and final project, Flex plans to collect the remaining parts and put them back together in the form of a mini-organ.
Stay tuned for progress reports. And if, by chance, you’re in the market for a green recording studio for your next creative audio project, consider Clean and Humble, a trash and artist-friendly space.
Check it: some kids from Appalachian State University made a bike out of used plastic bottles as part of a Google-sponsored trash challenge. And won!
Here’s the YouTube of the “Green Machine” in action. Warning, the stilted narration may flash you back to seventh grade English class. All worth it, though. Congrats, guys.
Photo by Monte Mitchell for the Winston-Salem Journal
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