Clay PCB (38c3)

What this episode covers

We built an Ethical Hardware Kit with a PCB microcontroller made of wild clay retrieved from the forest in Austria and fired on a bonfire. Our conductive tracks use urban-mined silver and all components are re-used from old electronic devices. The microcontroller can compute different inputs and outputs and is totally open source. It is an open secret that the hardware in our smart devices contains not only plastics but also ‘conflict minerals’ such as copper and gold. Technology is not neutral. We investigate alternative hardware from locally sourced materials from a feminist perspective, to develop and speculate upon renewable practices. We call it Feminist Hardware! Feminist Hardware is developed without mining in harmful ways, in an environmentally friendly way, under fair working conditions, and is manufactured from ubiquitously available materials, without generating e-waste, with consent, love and care. We researched on fair-traded, ethical, biodegradable hardware for environmental justice, building circuits that use ancient community-centered crafts encouraging de-colonial thinking, market forces to be disobeyed, and future technologies to be imagined. Our artistic outcome is an Ethical Hardware Kit with a PCB microcontroller at its core. Our PCB is made of wild clay retrieved from the forest in Austria and fired on a bonfire. Our conductive tracks used urban-mined silver and all components are re-used from old electronic devices. The microcontroller can compute different inputs and outputs and is totally open source. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 about this event: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2024/hub/event/clay-pcb/

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