Category: computers

Imagine if, ten years ago, you could drive around collecting free, working televisions until you filled several carloads, then finally had to abandon dozens more because you had no room.

That’s where we’re at today, as the dominant technology of our living room becomes obsolete practically overnight. HDTV is sending those heavy, awkward boxes out to the curb, to be replaced with newer, more expensive, and quicker-to-obsolescence machines.

I’m designing media for a new theatre show – Macbeth: nach Shakespeare by Heiner Muller. I’m building a throne of televisions that will show piles of corpses whenever the King sits on it… I thought it might be easy to gather free TV’s through craigslist, but I never imagined how quickly the cathode-ray sets were being discarded.

This class-warfare Macbeth takes the moral clarity out of the story: Instead of Macbeth murdering a wonderful King out of pure bloody ambition, we start the play with Macbeth committing murders for the King’s benefit. Peasants strung up for not paying rent, rebellious lords skinned alive for disloyalty. So when Macbeth decides to murder up instead of murdering down, the moral leap isn’t that big: what’s one more dead body on the pile?

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