The Digital Junkyard will transform your unwanted vector files into new real-world objects

No, this isn't some snarky Craigslist ad. The Digital Junkyard is a website with a mission to transform as much of your unwanted vector files into a new physical object or creative idea of sorts, via digital fabrication tools, in the real world. Recently launched by architecturally trained designer and artist Car Martin, the Digital Junkyard can be a helpful tool for architects and designers eager to clear up their digital workspaces, and at the very least pique one's curiosity to see how their original idea gets recycled.

Read on for more.

In addition to dumping their files, users can "salvage" and download donated files, and can eventually check out the resulting "artifacts" — although that section of the site is yet to be filled.

The Digital Junkyard accepts a maximum of 250 MB and is mainly looking for vector files. More specifically:

• Adobe (.ai .eps .pdf)
• Autodesk (.dwg .rvt)
• Mcneel/Rhino (.3dm .gh.ghx)
• Sketchup (.skp)
• GIS (.mxd & shapefile folders)
• Other (.svg .dxf)

Martin reveals an introspective side to the Junkyard that is greatly relevant at this point in our tightening relationship with information technology. In a way, it also celebrates the creative process itself.

In a reflective blog post about "thought ecology", Martin writes that she got inspiration for the website from Susan Sontag’s collection of essays, "On Photography", which explores the relationships between physical things and information production/reproduction.

Martin writes:  "We have reached an age with information technology where the split between the virtual and the real has become blurred, as we witness potentially the third great technological revolution, the lines between physical production and idea generation have never been so thin...However, as we make things, we also make mistakes, we throw things away before they are produced, we make changes and then we scrap parts of ideas. It is possible that there are tiny fragments, physical ideas that we put intellectual energy into creating, that could be saved and clustered into something useful, or something brilliant, or beautiful."

Check out the website here, and start dumpin' away.