Here Is A Deep Fried iPad

New Zealand-born, Brooklyn-based artist Henry Hargreaves deep fried an iPad (pics below). Well, a foamcore replica of one, and a few more gadgets while he was at it. Not sure they’re edible, but the idea behind the project is to elucidate the way our consumer culture cyclically idolizes and abandons gadgets and, perhaps, to implicate the negative social and environmental impacts such behavior causes to occur.

Pete Brook of Wired provides more insight:

Like greasy food, there’s growing concern over the long-term repercussions of the world’s consumption of electronics. The harmful chemicals in obsolete and discarded gadgets collect in dumps (usually in Asia) with toxic consequences for the environment, like so much artery-clogging fat sediment…

The approximately 245 million cell phones in the United States, for example, have an average lifespan of 18 months, with 900 million already put out to pasture. About 150 million are retired each year, and in an interview with the Environmental Protection Agency, Seth Heine CEO and President of Collective Good, estimates that only 30 million of those are actually recycled.

The interesting juxtaposition here is that deep frying is hardly gourmand when it comes to cooking, and yet the newest devices are designed and marketed as ever sleeker, lighter and sophisticated.

Said Hargreaves to Wired, “I see a connection between tech and fastfood culture, both are fetishized, quickly consumed then discarded.”

His other art includes a bacon alphabet, a self-portrait made of Jello, and… a book of topless women. IN 3-D. Belated Father’s Day gift?