Digital Ghosts, E-Waste, and Data Loss: Artist Workshop with Miguel Novelo

Join the ICA San José and Recology AIR for a hands-on workshop exploring the afterlives of everyday devices—from technological aging and decay to creative transformation. Participants will bring old or discarded screens, monitors, tablets, and smartphones to investigate the intersections of materiality, design, and data. This workshop emphasizes design, data, and decay while fostering care and curiosity around technological aging. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of their devices’ material, ecological, and poetic afterlives, as well as small experimental sculptures or other creative digital explorations of their devices.

This workshop is accessible to participants of varying technological and artistic experience levels. To Bring: Old or discarded screens, monitors, tablets, and smartphones.

Structure:

• For ICA Site: 20-minute introduction: Guided conversation on e-waste from San Jose’s Zero Waste team, covering responsible disposal, data clearing, and ecological implications of digital consumption.
• Device transformation: Functional devices become material for sculpture, drawing, or gestural experimentation. “Dead” devices serve as raw material for creative reanimation — exploring decay, residual data, and aesthetic potential.
• Speculative design & making: Using accessible creative coding, free software, simple interventions, and sculptural practice, participants activate electronic devices to explore the poetic and technological afterlives of their devices.
• Responsible closure: Components at true end-of-life are routed to certified e-waste streams.

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Host or Publisher Institute of Contemporary Art San José