One day many years ago at work§ I looked at a recently deceased disk drive and wondered “What’s inside?” Being curious and in possession of the appropriate tools, I disassembled the drive and was fascinated at what I found. Engineering, of course, but also a beauty of functionality. Then I thought, “I’ll bet I can do something interesting with this.”
To back up a bit – I have been the type to take things apart since my odometer was in the high single digits. Sometimes I got them back together and they still worked. A discarded but functional transistor radio my father brought home had a broken ear jack – I replaced it with one I salvaged from a non-functional radio. I wanted to record music off the radio with my new tape recorder so I added a headphone jack which didn’t turn off the speaker, so I could listen for that one song I wanted to capture. (Yes, that’s the level of technology we could afford, in fact it wasn’t even called technology in those days of darkness).
My father had a side business in television repair (which could be very lucrative but wasn’t in his case) for a few years when I was young, so there was a lot of electronic stuff around (I’m talking about resistors, capacitors, coils, transformers and vacuum tubes). I can’t count how many hours I spent playing with the tube tester (spaceship control panel, of course) he built as part of the DeVry Institute correspondence course on TV repair. I learned that there were almost always user serviceable parts inside, despite what the warning labels said. (“No user serviceable parts inside” ca 1975 meant “no vacuum tubes you could replace”.)
After the farm machinery factory my father worked at closed (consolidation, you know), he ended up ‘working’ at a nearby landfill (‘The Dump’). Thus he had ‘access’first call’ for discarded items and he made use of it.
This flow of discards made a big difference – we couldn’t afford much in the way of new things but Dad would bring something slightly worn or a little bit busted and we would make do. Sometimes a transistor radio only needed a new battery (yes, people threw away their portable radios because the battery was exhausted), or an electric can opener a new power cord. My second bicycle was cobbled together out of parts from The Dump and it served me for the better part of a decade, finally biting the dust sometime in my sophomore year at University of Texas. Give my father two dead lawnmowers and he could bring forth a working one (a lot cheaper than buying one).
I pretty much grew up with a screwdriver in one hand and a soldering gun (yes, the pistol sized three pounds type – they still exist) in the other. I was not afraid to look under the hood, to see where that wire went and what it attached to. In those days, it was practically necessary (unless you were wealthy, of course) to be a bit of an auto mechanic, electrician, plumber or carpenter – in short a problem solver. This was the ethic of my Great Depression era parents – use it up, wear it out, and then maybe think about throwing it away. If it breaks, fix it, because of money and pride and the social expectations central to the 1940’s America male role model.
My father came from the generation of “I can build that”, and with the help of the next door neighbor, built the garage which as of 2026 still stands in the backyard of my childhood home. I spent many hours at his side while he fixed and built things, and I learned how to use tools. Like my father, I have a large collection of tools, some of which I inherited from him and work as well for me today as they did for him over 50 years ago (and will continue to work for whoever gets possession of them when I am gone).
Back to that disk drive. My first endeavor was to make wind chimes from the disk platters. Looked pretty but was totally monotone, the disks being the same size and made of metal which did not really ring. But the hook was set, and it went on from there.
To date I have made around ‘art objects’, ‘robots’, fun things and silly thing from pieces of computer parts, burned out blenders, defunct televisions, broken cameras, failed disk drives, mop handles, umbrella ribs, old tools, discarded USB cables and much more.
The materials speak to me. They tell me what to make them into. When I obey the result can be impressive and the times I’ve said “this is what I am going to build”, it often doesn’t pan out. The harder I try to make an idea work, the more obvious it is that it probably isn’t going to actually work.
I don’t always completely choose what I build. I do the work, obviously, but often I’m putting flesh on to bones already given me. Sometimes I envy creators who know what the are trying to make – draw the line from point A to point B (of course it isn’t that easy in real life).
My works are one-of-a-kind. It’s a bunch of things I’ve made, absent a perspective of what the whole might be, or where any particular piece may fit (or misfit) into it.
So here it is – what one can do with superglue, screws, pop rivets and an ear to hear what things say.
§The computer geek job I started in October of 1979 and worked until the end of 2022 (43 years for those up in the cheap seats). I was programming computers back when they were based upon “stone knives and bearskins” (extra credit if you get the reference without the link).
The multi-million dollar, room filling supercomputer of 1979 gets its ass kicked by my old iPhone 5c in every imaginable way. Hell, an Apple Watch flattens those old dinosaurs. That is how far computer technology has progressed during my professional lifetime.
From vacuum tubes to transistors to integrated circuits to a chip that smaller than a thumbnail. I have not ‘seen it all’, but I have seen a lot of it and used my share of it.
Shouter to Dead Parrots 