sources · updated 2026-10-26 stated
Access Space and the Redundant Technology Initiative (Sheffield)
Disposition: stated (the organisation's own pages and a 2000 nettime report, from search text, 2026-10-26). Created in trail-2026-10-26. Bears on hosting-cost-claim; compare metareciclagem and community-memory.
What: the UK's first free "trash media lab", opened in 2000 in a former film-props workshop owned by Sheffield City Council, run entirely on donated computers and GNU/Linux by the artist James Wallbank's Redundant Technology Initiative (RTI, from 1996/97). Why it matters: a second documented surplus-hardware commons, the one MetaReciclagem learned from, and the source of a clear statement of why the surplus supply keeps refreshing.
- In 1997 RTI handed out 200 flyers asking businesses for old computers; donations "flooded in" and they cancelled a planned 2,000-flyer mailing "for fear of being buried alive". Wallbank drew a graph of a computer's use value against its age and market value: "As the market value drops off sharply after year 4 (the point at which most computers are scrapped) the use value hardly varies at all", so the lab "will get regular free upgrades as each generation of computers are thrown away." https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-bold-0010/msg00583.html (search text, long extract)
- Wallbank's rationale: IT-access projects that book users "two or four hours per week in a high-tech IT suite" foster dependency; with "computer equivalents of Ford Escorts, not Formula Ones", users can buy the same kit cheaply from resellers and go on alone. The "Grow Your Own Media Lab!" model aimed to "upgrade the system at no cost instead of depending on external public funding". http://projects.lowtech.org/re-programme/booklet.pdf (search text)
- Present: Access Space says it has used recycled computers and Linux "since its it opened in 2000", now with "locally sourced recycled laptops"; "the capital cost of the lab is next to nothing, upgrades are free". Its Sidney Street building has been demolished. https://access-space.org/about-2/about (search text)