Skip to content

**** ****

Technological Surrealism / Alec Nerds Out

About

Cassettepunk is a collection of conceptual collisions, usually between an antique or appliance and its own mortality.

I attack technology with love but not respect.

Alec Smecher

My name is Alec Smecher. I am a software developer, musician, and artist in Vancouver, BC.

I experimented with electronics and software early. For my 12th birthday my father gave me permission to work with 120-volt household current. One of the first things I built was a bouncing wooden rabbit as a gift for a crush. It went nowhere, of course — the crush, not the rabbit. While in grade school I built my own digital drum set, broke into the school’s computer network, and won an award for a homemade video game in which you play the role of a defecating seagull.

I built projects in the intervening years and blogged about them in Free Geek Vancouver’s (since abandoned) social media outreach. This led to an exhibit at the 2012 Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver. I was hooked. People connected with the playful and creative character of the projects over and above their nerdy underpinnings.

While humour is central to most of the projects, I also criticize our acceptance of technology and our distance from those who make it. And how better to criticize technology than by using technology itself?

Selected Works


PCsr: A fictitious 1980s-era home computer

Ottoman Empire: A turntable built into a Naugahyde footstool

Viewmaster Video: A conversion of a Viewmaster toy into a mini-CD 3d video player

Dymaxion Auto-matic Buckminster Fuller: A tribute to the late great Bucky

Selected Coverage

Testimonials

If I were to see this up close and personal, i would destroy it with a sledge hammer. simple, what a effin douche.
soopergooman (Challenger)

Unreal! That is super-cool, dude.
Dystopian Living (Viewmaster Video)

Ha ha somebody made that.
critically_damped (2.7-5.5V FUCK)

for what purpose
Allyosaugh (Vox Humana)

Contact