The old Mission: Impossible TV series, secret agents received their missions via recordings that would self-destruct shortly after receipt. It was an effective method of keeping those secret missions private – as far as we know, the baddies never got ahold of any mission tapes, allowing the agents to successfully carry out their campaigns against evil.

These days, data is shared far more frequently and in so many ways it’s kind of mind-blowing. Even sensitive digital information is vulnerable to hackers, disgruntled employees, and the general public in some unintentional cases. Artist Diego Trujillo Pisanty has created an art piece that takes us back to a simpler time when data breaches were far less common because hard copies of documents are so much harder to steal than digital copies.

This Tape Will Self Destruct is a small printer that perfectly mixes the past and the present. It prints fictional Cold War images and texts with excerpts of actual NSA documents brought into the public eye by Edward Snowden. Shortly after the printer spits out its meaningless message, the paper self-ignites and fire consumes the printout, permanently erasing its information.

The project is an insightful exploration of the relationship we have with secrecy and data sharing. We expect to be informed at all times, but government agencies argue that some secrecy is necessary for national security. This little printer hearkens back to the pre-digital age when having information meant having a piece of paper in your hands or a memory in your mind rather than words on a screen or hard drive.

The post Information Burnout: Self-Destructing Message Printer first appeared on Gajitz.

Most households in America have more than one television set, even if we can only watch one at a time. Presumably, this is because carting a television from one end of the house to the other is impractical. Brooklyn-based design duo CW&T – made up of Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy – have created the TV Barrow to make the television a far more mobile gadget.

This object – part TV stand, part wheelbarrow – allows a television to be moved freely from one room to another. The functional piece of art is made up of spare bike parts that the duo say they had just lingering around their studio. Bike parts are, according to the designers, works of art on their own – but when put into a functional context other than the one for which they were intended, they become even more fascinating.

Its simple but functional construction means that the TV Barrow is sturdy enough to serve as a stationary television stand (for flat screens only, obviously) but easy enough to move that it can be carted around the house on a whim. The TV Barrow is more than just a decoration for the designers’ studio – it is actually a custom-built product that can be purchased from CW&T.

The post If a Bike and a TV Stand Had a Baby, It Would Be a TV Barrow first appeared on Gajitz.