In our regular series talking to makers and hackers, Tech Know takes time to get to know artists who hack everyday objects in their work.
When the history of maker culture is written, the Mutoid Waste Company (MWC) will have a volume all to itself.
Back in the 1980s, this group of artists toured the country and when they hit a town, found the scrapyard, built a huge sculpture from what they could salvage and then moved on.
It started many of its members on a lifetime of tinkering, hacking and making.
One such is Giles Walker who was part of the MWC for years.
“I had just left college, they were squatting the factory next to where I was living,” he said, explaining how he hooked up with them. “It’s where I learned welding, discovered windscreen wiper motors and how to trigger them with doorbells.”
Now he has become a scrap artist who uses found materials, and those skills, to comment on the society that has discarded them.
Two of his most successful creations are robotic pole-dancers that are very life-like despite being made from cut-up shop mannequins, wiper motors, table legs, old CCTV cameras and castors. Together the two dancers form a piece called Peep Show.