Thank you for your thoughtful comments, I'm very sorry if I caused any agitation as a result of my art. I must admit, lurker may have been too strong of a word. I have a friend involved with vintage computers and is the one who pointed out the one 14" platter I found from this group. Since then I subscribed, but dont get a chance to read often. The majority of my art supplies have come from Ebay with a substantial investment on my part, most being sold as scrap. Some platters, spacers, and actuators were bought disassembled already. The ones not sold as scrap, I'm paying the value of a working drive. Now at this point anyone else could have purchased these drives and attempted to use them. I would be happy to work with people from this forum to sell some individual parts one might want. As for the drives themselves, I've spent over $300 in shipping alone for some of the 8" and 9" drives I've bought and disassembled from CA. I've been scanning Ebay for over a year targeting value, and specific models , I've got 60+ searches I check daily. I've invested thousands of dollars, countless hours disassembling drives, countless hours designing and creating my art, and tons of blood and sweat. That all being said, I do have an impressive collection of hard drive parts from the last 50 years, and I can understand your frustration as a vintage computer restorer. I would honestly rather use my parts for art, but I could be willing to help provide parts for sale where I could. I have sold 90% of the circuit boards on Ebay, including many from real vintage drives. I will say, when I looked into starting this project, I did tons of research into art made from hard drives, what I found was there were lots of clocks, and a few sculptures here and there, but nothing anywhere near what I had in mind to make. So, I found something new and unique and creative to reuse many old hard drives that eventually all would find their way to a scrap yard or landfill. New + unique + recycling seems a rare thing these days, and something I feel the world needs more of. I think the shelf life (or wall in my case), can out live any working vintage hard drive. That being said, I'm happy to work with those who want to prolong their own vintage computers. On Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:43 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Brian Brubaker posts about use of hard-drive parts to create art, for our appreciation. Well, this use of vintage electronics as art, gives me pause. I thought about it; I wrote a lecture; I decided a lecture would not be read or appreciated. So here's my straightforward considerations.
Brian: I restore vintage computers to operation. So I see in parts of your art, computers that can't be restored because they were demolished. That's not an abstraction, for me - that is a fact.
This situation is not your fault. However, you have posted in a group of vintage-computer restorers; so my point is relevant in this forum.
So: Brian, I encourage you to make available, such ancient drives and parts as might be useful to restore ancient computers. I'm sure you can get guidance about doing so.
I don't mean to spoil your fun or interests. Do not go back to "lurking" because some old-guy doesn't like your work - that is not what I said, that's not how I said it. Art evokes responses; the artist can't determine all those responses. This is part of my response. And certainly, there's art today which is FAR more controversial than a bunch of old computer parts. I'm making a point, not cursing your works, which have artistic merit.
Brian, thanks for showing your works in this forum.
Herb Johnson
-- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net