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Cool garbage

• Maggie Shiels
• 21 Aug 08, 14:24 GMT

We are constantly being told to recycle recycle recycle. And with something like two million tones of e-waste being produced in America alone, a very interesting piece of art work caught my eye while at the in San Francisco.

Standing 9ft tall, it's kind of hard to ignore as I rush back and forth from the press room to technical sessions and round tables and keynotes. But aside from its size, the 'Skull' is making a pretty strong statement given the fact it is made from electronic waste, some of which was most probably created by a company like Intel.

Some of the dead and obsolete computers though end up at the whose mission is to recycle responsibly. Every year it turns a portion of the four million pounds of computer waste it handles into useable computers. One thousand of them, in fact, every year which the centre donates to schools, non profits, underpriveleged homes and the like.

The Skull's artist is James Burgett, founder of the centre ,who says he is on a one man crusade to attack e-waste, with which he has a profound disgust.

The eyes and teeth of the Skull are made out of flat panels. It plays streaming audio and will read out test messages in one of hundreds of artificial voices, though at the Intel Forum the Skull's voice has been silenced.

At night, it has a projector that shows old classic movies on old technology. Things like The Last Man on Earth, Flash Gordon and the Night of the Living Dead.

And apparently it can move under its own power playing the theme from Jaws.

Now that's cool and I think worth sharing.