Computer Village is a sound-based artistic research project that explores the afterlife of technology through its sonic residues; electromagnetic emissions, and environmental noise produced by discarded electronic devices. The work takes the form of a ghostly composition, made from residual signals and material traces that reveal how machines continue to operate sonically long after they stop working.

Borrowing its title from one of Africa’s largest informal technology markets in Lagos, the work positions Computer Village and the Olusosun e-waste site as interconnected infrastructures within global technological circulation. Field recordings from Olusosun capture the sounds of shattered screens, wire stripping, and human labor, while recordings from Computer Village document repair practices, market activity, and human–machine interaction. These are combined with processed electromagnetic recordings from malfunctioning or obsolete devices, exposing ghost frequencies and residual hums that persist within technological bodies.

By engaging e-waste not only as environmental debris but as a sonic archive of global consumption, decay, and repair, the project centers on informal economies as sites of technical knowledge and adaptation. Sound functions as a research tool and a way of understanding alternative forms of innovation based on maintenance, reuse, and resilience.

Through this approach, Computer Village contributes to the conversation about sustainability, circular economies, and post-colonial technological futures by using listening as a way to understand how technology works from places usually overlooked.