Beautiful gallery of destroyed Apple products

A gallery of images produced by Michael Tompert and Paul Fairchild.
(Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

• [Anonymous]

  C’est vraiment génial !

• [halfacre]

  uh, i think, emotionally, we’re all playing into the artist’s intentions. everyone take a deep breath and say “meh. busted iphone, bad shop job.”

  At least no Millionaire Calculators were harmed.

  • [Goblin]

    I make too little money to not care about such gross waste… As I live now, I could live comfortably for about six months or more on the amount of money these two “artists” have dropped, shot, smashed, or otherwise blown… Sorry, but I’m just too poor to find any redeeming value, artistic or otherwise, in this exercise of childish abandon.

    By the way, halfacre, if I am playing into the artist intentions and I have become part of his “tableau,” then think about the irony involved: The artist must really hate himself, especially if I am the evocation he sought. And that raises the obvious question, why the hell would he do this in the first place?

    The simplest explanation is that this guy is a well-off snob with enough time and money to bust lots of expensive gadgets and take hi-def pictures of his handiwork. And that, that is just slightly pretentious.

    • [halfacre]

      Sorry, reply is a little late. I agree with you on all points, but I refuse to let myself be manipulated by a truly second- or third- or probably tenth-rate artist with too much money to waste and to few ideas. Hence my cynical comments.

• [Chris Tucker]

  Christ. What assholes!

• [querent]

  Tempting, but I’ve always let the purported presence of heavy metals dissuade me.

• [Anonymous]

  You are upset!? Do you pay good money to see movies where the production companies spend millions on destroying stuff for entertainment? Cut this artist a break! The photos are fantastic!

  • [Goblin]

    Yes I’m upset… And Anon #15, you miss the fact that there is a huge difference between blowing up scale models or props and actually breaking the real thing. These snobs broke the real thing. That makes these guys less artist and more photographer.

• [Goblin]

  If the destruction is real, then this is god-awful snobbish and just slightly pretentious.

• [Jack]

  I liked it better when some guys made a skateboard out of an iPad. This is just that basic art school trope of… DEATH! DEATH! DEATH! Look DEATH! I made think that flirts with DEATH! I iz an artish!!!

• [hadlock]

  Can someone explain how they got that much black soot to fall in a splatter pattern from the device — twice? I’ve seen stuff shot by bullets before – the blast of the impact usually throws any grit it creates far from the device. It’s sort of like being blasted with a 1200fps blast of air. No doubt the holes are real — but the grit behind it looks fake, or at least doctored.

  • [schr0559]

    The soot behind the image is symmetrical. It’s like a Rorschach test. Might be shopped.

    Still, judging by the will-it-blend version, you might see some black dust from shattered plastic or other tasty chemicals after a bullet-thru-an-iphone.

• [halfacre]

  They’re gonna regret it one day. Some guy is selling an Apple I for >100k.

• [Pete]

  I’ve never understood the mentality behind buying expensive items and then breaking them. It seems akin to Graham Greene’s “Destroyers” mentality. But, I will admit, that when I see somebody using a broken iPhone, or a laptop held together with gaffer tape, I’m fascinated.

• [owlrigh]

  With Goblin on this. What a waste of money and resources, if real, and for what? A few photos? Pah.

• [Anonymous]

  @hadlock Look closer, the splatter patterns are mirror images. Not real.

• [TNGMug]

  With Goblin and owlrigh.

  What’s the next art project, wasted food?