It could be the solution for anyone trying to give up their iPod. A surrogate mp3 player carved out of wood has been created by a Dutch artist to mark a new exhibition featuring bronze laptops filled with genetically modified grain.
The artist, known only as Pii, claimed that his “PiiPod” solves the problem of mp3-related muggings and the risk of deafness by being “specially designed to be unable to play music and sound files”. Crucially, however, the recycled wooden device still delivers an iPod-style “fix” by producing a bulge the size of a personal music player in the carrier’s pocket.

Pii, who creates familiar objects from unexpected materials, said any satire was in the eye of the beholder. “I am trying to make people think about what they are missing out on by spending their free lives and transportation periods – travel – locked into their own musical worlds. People do become addicted and dependent – whether there are really health problems or not. It is a basic part of treatment for any serious addiction to attempt to provide a substitute of some kind.”
The PiiPod was created to celebrate another sculpture inspired by Apple that forms the centrepiece of an exhibition at the Spectrum gallery in central London. Twelve bronze casts of laptops set out on tables laid with knives and forks make up a piece called Laptop Dinner, in which the model iBooks are stuffed with GM rice and corn.

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