Chicago-based new media artist Nick Briz has released an open letter to Apple Inc. petitioning the company to relax its policy of ‘planned obsolescence’. The half-hour pseudo-documentary mimics the interface of his afflicted MacBook Air, features interviews from his peers, and past footage of an idealistic Apple co-founder Steve Jobs elaborating on the ideology of ‘creative copying’ that, Briz claims, the company is now in opposition to.
Becoming known as the ‘default art computer’ for its user-friendly interface and industrial design, Briz and his fellow prosumers highlight that among its good qualities, a rapid updating policy makes past projects, made within the Apple ecosystem inaccessible, while rendering its hardware components obsolete far too frequently. Something not mentioned and worth exploring further is the phenomenal amount of technological waste such a rapid turn-over would produce, which is something photographer Pieter Hugo investigated in his Permanent Error exhibition last year, pointing to a global issue far greater and more urgent than just artistic inconvenience.
You can see the video in full and as intended here.**
