Street Use

Jailhouse Tech

There's an emerging category of street technology which might be called Jailhouse Tech. The material constraint of a prison inspire fantastic innovation and re-use of made parts. A lot of the devices made in this manner are crude weapons, but others include eating implements, tattoo instruments, music, and other tools. Here are some examples from a prison in Mexico City by Gabriella Gomez-Mont.

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Electric cooking stove made with wire and brick.

From the fantastic interview with the artist who works in this prison and who facilitated the photographer who shot these images:

Now that it is over and done with I can tell you this. For the eight prisoners that helped us it would have easily meant another extra seven years in jail, and for us instant lock-up until they set bail. Especially because of having in our possession—or even presence–those knives made from the metallic edges of the windows!  In there, they menace and kill people with those, we would all gotten into so much trouble if we had been caught with them. I don’t even know if those particular knives that we photographed that day had already been used for some sort of bloody business or not, I preferred not to ask; but it would have been even worse.

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Weapons.

Posted on January 12, 2010 at 9:50 AM | Comments (4)



Comments

Also, check out the art group Temporary Services and their series of projects called Prisoner's inventions. http://www.temporaryservices.org/pi_overview.html

Posted by Katy on January 13, 2010 at 12:12 PM

If you're ever in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a trip to Canada's Penitentiary Museum is a must.

Their exhibit "Contraband & Escape Devices" is worth the price of admission (free) alone. :)

-dm

Posted by Dan Misener on January 14, 2010 at 6:55 AM

thanks for the repost!
had a great response after it came up on KK...

-gabriella

Posted by Gabriella Gomez-Mont on January 31, 2010 at 10:47 AM

That’s the useful topic. Was that workable to buy the tamil ringtones or free ringtones from this web site?

Posted by RubyAo on February 7, 2010 at 3:36 AM


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