recycling

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Art

Steampunk Watch Part Sculptures
by Sue Beatrice

Using the smallest components from repurposed antique pocket watches and other time pieces, New-Jersey based artist Sue Beatrice of All Natural Arts assembles curious sculptures of animals and human figures. Given the nature of watch movements I can’t help but want to see each one of these things spring to life. See much more here. (via my modern met)

Design

Recycled Bike Part Chandeliers Under a Texas Overpass

Ballroom Luminoso is a series of six chandeliers designed by artists Joe O’Connell and Blessing Hancock currently installed in San Antonio, Texas. Made from custom made structural steel, custom LEDs and recycled bicycle parts, the lights project colorful silhouettes of sprockets and other pieces onto the otherwise drab cement underpass. From the artist’s statement about the project:

Ballroom Luminoso references the area’s past, present, and future in the design of its intricately detailed medallions. The images in the medallions draw on the community’s agricultural history, strong Hispanic heritage, and burgeoning environmental movement. The medallions are a play on the iconography of La Loteria, which has become a touchstone of Hispanic culture. Utilizing traditional tropes like La Escalera (the Ladder), La Rosa (the Rose), and La Sandía (the Watermelon), the piece alludes to the neighborhood’s farming roots and horticultural achievements. Each character playfully rides a bike acting as a metaphor for the neighborhood’s environmental progress, its concurrent eco-restoration projects, and its developing cycling culture.

If you liked this project you might also enjoy Carolina Fontoura Alzaga’s bike chain chandeliers. Images above courtesy photographer Fred Gonzales. (via lustik)

Documentary Music

Landfill Harmonic: An Upcoming Documentary About the 'Recycled Orchestra' in Cateura, Paraguay

Cateura, Paraguay is a small city that has grown atop a massive dump. It is regarded as one of the poorest slums in Latin America, a village where people live among a sea of garbage. Incredibly, the landfill itself is the primary form of subsistence for many residents, who pick through waste for items that can be used or sold. Prospects for most of the children born in Cateura is bleak as gangs and drugs await many of them. But then one day, something amazing happened.

A garbage picker named Nicolás Gómez (known as “Cola”) found a piece of trash that resembled a violin and brought it to musician Favio Chávez. Using other objects collected from the dump, the pair constructed a functional violin in a place where a real violin is worth more a house. Using items gleaned completely from the dump, the pair then built a cello, a flute, a drum, and suddenly had a wild idea: could a children’s orchestra be born in one of the most depressed areas in the world? As you can guess, the answer was yes.

Now a group of filmmakers, producers, and photographers are trying to tell the story of the orchestra through a documentary titled Landfill Harmonic. The orchestra seems poised to offer many of the children opportunities outside of the slum— they are already planning a multi-city tour around the U.S. The movie is currently being funded on Kickstarter and just passed the halfway mark today. Watch the video above and you can learn more over on their Facebook. Backed!

Design

Urban Vertical Garden Built From Hundreds of Recycled Soda Bottles

As part of an innovative partnership called Home Sweet Home (Lar Doce Lar) between multidisciplinary design firm Rosenbaum and TV producer Luciano Huck, the teams went through dozens of Brazilian homes doing dramatic makeovers of interior and exterior spaces. On their 48th home Rosenbaum designed a pretty amazing vertical garden that was suspended in a narrow walkway just outside the house. Response to the garden was so huge the firm released design schematics (in Portuguese) detailing how to build one. Thanks to the team at Rosenbaum for sharing these photos with Colossal.

Design

Miniature Toy Robots Made from Recycled Electronic Components

Portuguese product designer Marco Fernandes built some fun robots out of electrical components salvaged from the trash heap. So far Fernandes has designed nine figures as part of his R³bot series, I think #R³bot nine is definitely my favorite.

Art

Birds Made from Recycled Metal Scraps by Barbara Franc

Inspired by the forms of animals artist Barbara Franc seeks to capture a sense of motion as she recreates a variety of wildlife from birds to horses using reclaimed materials such as old food tins. Via her artist statement:

I have always been fascinated by the shapes and sculptural forms of animals, they present a never-ending source of inspiration to me. I try to capture a feeling of their movement and presence in my sculpture. For this I use wire and other materials in a way that suggests drawing in three dimensions. This allows me greater freedom to add changes whenever I want during the construction to keep the feeling fluid and to reflect the diversity of movement and form. I increasingly use recycled and discarded materials as I enjoy the challenge of transforming something with a past history into something new and exciting.

You can see much more of her work on her website, and she appears to have a number of works available via Union Gallery. (via junk culture)