Noud Sleumer is a conceptual designer whose role is to critique ‘the act of making’. Within self-initiated and explorative projects his focus is trained on methods of deconstruction and reduction. Simplicity is the tool that underlies these approaches and enables Sleumer to create new playgrounds of creativity, in which we can collectively re-examine our relationship to man-made matter.
The smartphone is more than a communication device: it is a personified instrument that enables connection, individualism, and efficiency. It blurs the restrictions of place and time, making us independent from our physical surroundings and creating an immaterial playground from our most private information—a data stream of highly personal values.
However, the role of the smartphone cannot be separated from its concrete form. In the moment that a smartphone breaks, it transforms from a personalised device into an object with no function. Once the software stops working, the hardware takes over. From the perspective of the user, the broken smartphone seems to have lost all value. But from the perspective of the global system of production, this artefact still contains 42 precious materials as well as the user’s unique personal data.
This project takes the seemingly catastrophic moment in which the smartphone breaks as an opportunity to redefine the value of the expired object. The machine both dramatises and guarantees the destruction of the data storage, making personal information inaccessible, while capturing the moment in which the smartphone’s inner materials are revealed. The machine activates new possibilities for the circulation and reuse of materials, while preventing the user’s private history from disseminating into the public sphere.
‘Smartphone Destructor’ is part of the research project ‘(Im)material Telephone’.
© Design Academy Eindhoven
