A series of sculptural pieces utilizing late 20th century musical formats and hardware that are now considered extinct or anachronistic. Repurposed, recontextualized and recycled as an expression of defiance against the “designed obsolescence” method of consumerism embodied by the modern era of products from Thomas Alva Edison’s light bulb to Steve Jobs’ iPhone. Music media especially has gone through a rapid process of innovating and promoting new formats while vehemently proclaiming the previous format technologically inefficient, materially unreliable and culturally passe. The drive behind this, it could be argued, springs from either our desire for newer, shinier, more advanced things to populate/define our lives/lifestyles, or is the explicit mission of the companies and corporations whose livelihood depends on such a cyclical system of disposability. Each piece confronts these ingrained cycles, the cultural/technical history, the physical possibilities and the limitations of the format and enters into dialogue with it. Stripped of it’s original purpose it is either given a new function as a practical/decorative object or pushed further towards useless dysfunction to the point of absurdity...

Black Ball Projects :

https://www.blackballprojects.com/16invertedobsolescencejohnpugh

The Fucking New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/john-pugh