Photography: 12LVE

"12LVE" by Michael Tompert

Photographed by Paul Fairchild

On exhibit at the small Live Worms Gallery in San Francisco, California

Is it art or metal illness? You decide.

Michael Tompert, San Francisco-area graphic designer with Raygun Studio, takes new Apple products and wrecks them in order to photograph the results.  His means are varied.  He has used blowtorches, sledgehammers, handsaws, and handguns, but the results are always the same.  Complete obliteration.

"It's not about destroying old products. It's about our relationship with the new." says Tompert, a self-described Apple fan, in an interview with the L.A. Times. "They're designed to be so bare-boned and simple -- like the monolith in '2001' -- and everyone is going crazy around it," he said. "I wanted to say relax, let's see what's in it."

Check out more photos at Cult of Mac.