Spring Cleaning

• April 21st, 2006 • • experiments, studio 4A •

Ahhhh. The studio is finally clean and organized. It’s pretty much been a disaster area since last summer, when I helped my parents move out of their house of 20+ years. In the final days of packing, a lot of items were moved to my garage temporarily. There is some corollary of Parkinson’s Law that states something to the effect of: stuff will multiply such that it fills all available space, irrespective of how much stuff or space there is. I think this is even more true when someone moves. Soon after my parents moved, I started student teaching and the studio was all but forgotten as it was filled to the brim with boxes and whatnot. Immediately after student teaching came the holidays, during which I was planning a wedding! The weather lately has been most conducive to being outside so FINALLY, 4A is clean.

Good thing, too! I’ve had a few projects brewing in my brain so having some working space will do me just fine. One of my projects I’m not sure what to do with, though. I had a plot to cut up some of the many many circuit-boards and computer parts in attempt to make jewelry. Cutting up a video card was fairly difficult with the Dremel; the cutting wheel protested several points and I dared not cut though anything other than board as I was unsure as to the contents of those little transistor-looking things. (That’s a technical term.) This endeavor made a helluva mess! There was powder everywhere, and it did not like being swept up. (Yes, I was wearing a respirator and goggles!) A little too late I found a source saying what’s actually in those circuit boards.

Printed Circuit Boards contain heavy metals such as Antimony, Silver, Chromium, Zinc, Lead, Tin and Copper. According to some estimates there is hardly any other product for which the sum of the environmental impacts of raw material, extraction, industrial, refining and production, use and disposal is so extensive as for printed circuit boards. Exerpt from The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition

Whooooa nelly! Take a look at some of the lists on that site for all the nasty things in there! No way in hell I’m setting the Dremel loose on ‘em now; heck, I would feel bad about simply hucking my piles of parts into the trash as well. Their purpose has been for making wearables for so long, I can’t get my mind to thinking about something else; I’ll have to grind the ol’ clutch on this one.

Leave a reply