Joe Dragt's Circuit Board Series Turns Scrap Motherboards Into Paintings
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While some use technology to create digital works of art, others turn the tech itself into art.
Artist Joe Dragt, who hails from Arizona, has been hard at work on a painting series that reuses the discarded guts of old computers.
Earlier this year, Dragt decided to rescue over 30 computers from the scrap heap at his office. He disassembled the devices and saved the most striking parts from within, then sent the rest to recycling facilities.
“Seeing the stack of old computers, the idea just struck me…the motherboards can make for a really neat canvas," the artist writes on his website. "The complexity and patterns of all the circuits could make for stunning backgrounds. I asked if I could take one computer home for a trial run, and it just blossomed from there.”
His circuit board creations, both haunting and humorous, have been featured by the likes of Geekosystem, Gizmodo and will be featured in the September issue of Maximum PC.
Aside from the motherboards, Dragt has also saved other interesting, usually unseen computer parts to make sculptures.
While Dragt carefully pieces apart computers and selects the parts he wants to use, other artists take a rougher approach to creating work from tech. A series of photographs created in 2010 by Michael Tompert and Paul Fairchild, for example, featured destroyed Apple devices, such as the iPhone 4, iPad, iPod nano and MacBook Air. Tompert himself ruined the gadgets with "blowtorches, sledgehammers, handsaws and handguns," according to Cult of Mac.
You can see Dragt's entire collection of artwork--some of which is painted on traditional canvas--at his website, Tomorrow and Beyond. For more surreal artwork created by tech lovers, check out our slideshow of "melted" bridges spotted in Google Earth.
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The Huffington Post Catharine Smith First Posted: 08/04/11 03:47 PM ET Updated: 10/04/11 06:12 AM ET