New media practices can have a significant environmental impact due to the technologies used, creating high volumes of e-waste, plastics use, energy processing and more. In this session, we will explore how to carefully hack, fix, repurpose electronics for your life and work. Please BYOE -- Bring Your Own Electronics to hack, fix, and repurpose!

Depending on the complexity of the electronics you bring, we can't guarantee that you'll come away with a completely fixed object, but we will go over:

• Electronics complexities and power requirements
• Reviewing manuals and/or repair videos for your electronics
• Reverse engineering, risk assessment, and assessment of risk aversion
• Health and hygiene implications: what to do when your electronics are rusting, moldy, or posing another health hazard?
• Determining a feasible plan for your electronics: when to DIY? When to take it in for repairs? When to e-recycle?

We will provide personal protective equipment and electronics workbench equipment, as well as ample time for you to explore and discuss your hacking/fixing/repurposing plans with other participants who bring similar objects.

This session is presented as part of the Sustainable Practices series, made possible through funding from the Microsoft Toronto Community Fund, supported by Microsoft.

Header image courtesy of Ar Ducao.

About the Facilitator

Ar Ducao (they / zey pronouns) is an artist, engineer, educator, and organizer who specializes in working with underrepresented and incarcerated STEAM (science, tech, art, engineering and math) learners. Through their firm DuKode Studio, they created the award-winning sci-fi arthouse animation series "The Great Tit is a Bird," which follows Black and Brown feminine and trans-feminine people around the world, the losses they survive, and the ways they shape our high-tech era even as they are pushed to the margins. Their media work has been honored with the SXSW Community Service Award, the Best App Ever Award, and Vaaranam International Film Festival Best Animation Prize, among others. Their innovation work has been profiled by the New York Times, MSNBC, WIRED, Discovery Channel, NPR, and many more. They are a past winner of the Science Channel reality show "All American Makers."

Ducao is also a co-founder and principal at Multimer, a bio-spatial analytics spinoff from MIT Media Lab and National Science Foundation (NSF.gov) Small Business Innovation Research awardee. A federally-certified EDWOSB (economically disadvantaged woman-owned small business) with multiple patents, Multimer has worked with marginalized communities in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Ducao is a research affiliate and instructor at MIT, and a part-time professor at NYU School of Engineering and NYU Prison Education Program. Their writing and design has been published in journals including Bright Lights Film Journal, Journal of Intelligent Buildings, and International Journal of Community Well-being; and books including Data, Architecture, and the Experience of Place and Instrumental Intimacy: EEG Wearables and Neuroscientific Control.

Ar Ducao is Deputy Board Chair for InuaKike.org (Kenya), Community Advisory DEI Member-at-Large for Callen-Lorde (LGBTQ+) Health Center (NYC), Advocacy and Research Ambassador for the National Eczema Association (USA), and Technical Advisor for the Black maternal health startup Birth By Us (USA).