(W)E-waste: Creative Making with Wasted Computing Devices

Computing devices become waste for a variety of reasons. They breakdown, become obsolete, or are no longer trendy. These events are so common that currently, e-waste has become the largest consumer waste stream in the world. However, taking apart e-waste devices reveals how they often contain many useful parts and components that could be scrapped and creatively integrated into new forms. These include highly expressive materials like sensors, displays, micro-controllers, etc. This workshop will explore processes in creative making with e-waste, examining the unique materiality of e-waste and how its reuse differs and/or converges with other material reuse processes. To do so, our workshop will combine hands-on activities (tear downs, rapid prototyping, and tutorials) with discussion of the challenges and opportunities in this space. We aim to use these activities to explore how HCI can better support the creative acts of making with e-waste across a wide audience.