feature image via Shutterstock

Welcome to the forty-forth installment of  Queer Your Tech with Fun, Autostraddle’s nerdy new tech column. Not everything we cover will be queer per se, but it will be about customizing this awesome technology you’ve got. Having it our way, expressing our appy selves just like we do with our identities. Here we can talk about anything from app recommendations to choosing a wireless printer to web sites you have to favorite to any other fun shit we can do with technology.

Header by Rory Midhani

As y’all know, sometimes I like real things and not virtual things, or tech things. But the thing is, most of the time the line between real, touchable things and technology isn’t there. Technology helps artists and artisans, whether it’s in a new way to think about or talk about their work or in a new way to create something classic. Sometimes it helps humans deconstruct something, breaking it down to see its essential elements. As I trucked around the internet this week, it seemed especially evident – there were videos everywhere about science and tech aiding in creation and destruction of physical things. The theme struck a chord with me.

Making

Fikri sent me this amazing video that originally came off a Kickstarter, though the project is long-funded by now. Ardent Heavy Industries is providing a new take on cloud technology – one that takes it literally. An industrial arts collective, they’re used to installing large-scale art in various locations and festivals around the world. I love the way they talk about their art like a Silicon Valley startup with a sarcastic nod to both art and tech – “engineering solutions to problems… that don’t exist.”

Polybius is a song by Julian Corrie, video by James Houston, in which a SEGA Mega Drive, Commodore 64, floppy disk drives and hard drives all form the instruments. They’re controlled, live, via MIDI.

Like Adam Smith, one of the toy-makers in this video, I always thought a computer must make toys. But actually, artists sculpt action figures. And then a lot of tech goes into making plastic parts. By Mile Deep Films and Television.

Did you know there are basically two studios on planet earth that still make globes? Here’s a short film about Bellerby and Co., one of those two studios. Directed by Charles Arran Busk & Jamie McGregor Smith.

Dash is a DIY, arduino robot kit that’s not yet on the market. I find this little dude both fascinating and creepy. It’s built from cardboard and plastic, so it’s f*cking fast. And it looks a little like an insect. And I kinda want one.

Breaking

This video is old, sure, but I came across it again this week and who doesn’t like seeing plasma light up a microwave and burn through a plastic container? Veritasium, a YouTube channel dedicated to exploring science, often with slow motion footage, put a grape in the microwave to make plasma.

And here’s a video of students crushing a 55 gallon drum using water vapor and air pressure. I originally found this video on Sci-ence.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!