Hackteria: Give your old devices new life

An abundance of high tech devices--year-old mobile phones abandoned for the latest iPhone release, low-pixel digital cameras, too-slow gaming devices and other consumer electronics--get tossed into our local landfills every day. Most people don't realize that these tossed aside 'black boxes' have real potential. With a little hacking, they can become very useful tools with applications in new surroundings.

Interactivos09 Medialab Prado, held in Madrid, is a workshop dedicated to garage science and founded on the concepts of collaboration and sharing. At the conference two years ago, Andy Gracie, Marc Dusseiller, and Yashas Shetty together investigated the field of garage astrobiology with several days of intensive experimentation and discussions. Andy Gracie, a British artist based in Spain, was interested in exploring the artistic aspect of working with microorganisms such as tardigrades and nematodes.