Stay Free! magazine is seeking artists and (broken) iPods for an upcoming project about planned obsolescence. Why does the portable player widely considered the hallmark of savvy design typically die in little over a year? Are iPods "made to break"? Or simply, as some critics have suggested, run-of-the-mill e-waste?

If you know someone who owns an iPod, chances are good that you know someone with a broken iPod. Environment groups have taken Apple to task for its dirty practices, and we'd like to join them - by making lemonade out of lemons.

Here's what we're looking for:

I. TURN (BROKEN) IPODS INTO ART
Transform your broken ipod into something deliciously useless:
finger puppet? toy car? coaster? Use your creatively to
come with something beautiful, funny, or otherwise engaging.
Take a photo and email it us with your contact information
at temporary181 (at) stayfreemagazine.org. Favorite projects will
be featured in Stay Free! and ultimately exhibited in New York
(venue TBA).

Artists unable to find a broken ipod should contact us for
assistance (though, due to our limited resources, we recommend
exhausting your peers first).

Deadline: Friday, December 8

II. SEND IN YOUR BROKEN IPODS
Don't have time to create something but want to help?
Please donate your broken ipods to Stay Free!, a nonprofit
organization. Donations are tax deductible. We'll distribute
broken ipods to working local artists for this project.

Address:

Stay Free!
23 Hawthorne Street
Brooklyn, NY 11225
(347) 715-2013

For more information about this project, stay tuned to http://www.ifrod.org.

WHO WE ARE

Stay Free! is a Brooklyn-based, nonprofit print magazine that explores the politics and perversions of mass media and American culture. Stay Free! is published once or twice a year, whenever circumstances warrant. For online archives and information, see http://www.stayfreemagazine.org.

BACKGROUND ON THE IPOD

"Good Luck with that Broken iPod"
New York Times - February 4, 2006
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/pub lic/broken-ipod-new-york-times.html

"Pain in the Pod" - from Chicago Tribune
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/pain-in-the-ipod.html

Greenpeace's "Green My Apple" campaign
http://www.greenmyapple.org/

Computer Take Back campaign
http://www.computertakeback.com/bad_apple/bad_apple_biz.cfm

WHAT IS PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE?

The iPod Is Bad Garbage: An interview with Giles Slade
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/08/01/MadeToBreak

Kindly forward with abandon...