-5 - 14 March 2010  

Returning outdated software manuals to useful organic matter.

By shredding proprietary computer manuals and mixing the paper with coffee grounds we take the two staple components in a geeks day and turn them into a useful growing medium.

The Shredder was commissed by the Feral Trade Cafe to provide cafe ingredients. Installed and served in the cafe, the Shredder utilised the growing field of DIY mycology to fruit oyster mushrooms on a compost of shredded computer manuals and coffee grounds.

Images above: Shredding station: software manuals drop-off repository and shred-bin. Right, early stages of Shitake mushroom growing in a coche.

Images above: Shitake, lions main and oyster mushrooms growing and harvested.

Dominic Smith from Polytechnic gave a talk in The Feral Trade Cafe's Cocktail hour on the Shredder with mycology consultant John Robinson.

Originally devised as part of the geekosystem project, TheShredder is revisited by Polytechnic as an example of open modification working with open source concepts whilst at the same time drawing attention to the environmental impact and energy consumption of constant technological upgrades.

Resources:
Shredder wiki- http://www.shredshed.info/

References:
Consultation by John Robinson at Applied Micro Science-http://www.micro-science.co.uk/
Geekosystem- http://geekosystem.org/TheShredder
Feral Trade- http://feraltrade.org

Thanks to Kate Rich, John Robinson, Julian Priest, David Merritt & Adam Hyde.

In collaboration with:

Feral Trade commission at the AV10 Festival : trading goods along social networks