Revealing the Lifecycles of Electronics: Creatively imagining the land-based histories and futures of electronic materials in electronic art

This practice-based research is focused on a primary goal of creative response, representation, and expression of the lifecycles of electronics in an effort to reveal hidden identities and relationships for electronic material in electronic arts practice. It approaches this with an original research framework which helps to bridge between conceptual understandings of these lifecycles and the realisation of creative works. Conceptually, this project considers and creatively (re)imagines histories and futures of discarded electronic circuitry. Creative performance and installation works are made with electronic materials, imagining sonic and visual representations of the land such materials originate from and eventually return to. It also realises imagined material post-‘waste’ futures, as elements of creative works, while recognising and portraying the expansive present realities technological waste faces in landfills. I position myself as being a part of a critical collaboration along with the electronic materials whose histories and futures I consider in the creation of works. Along the way, the words, art, music, and worldviews – particularly those of Indigenous researchers and artists – became an increasingly guiding and unavoidably relevant role in the building of this understanding. This is particularly so as I reflect on not only to where my materials are native, but also how my own Indigeneity shapes this understanding.

In addition to providing creative representations of the electronics lifecycles, this research also contributes a framework centered around this goal. Through the description of the construction, evaluation, and application of the framework, provisions are also made which are applicable to other conceptual areas in creative research. This includes an iterative design process in which an initial framework is made, then tested through its application in creative work-making, then a new iteration is subsequently formed around the evaluation of this framework and its application.