Well-done graffiti murals and open pit copper strip mines both fall into this interpretation; both activities re-purpose materials for a use that is more important to a particular group. In one case it is to reclaim soul-less urban landscapes, and in another it is to convert the land into jobs and a standard of living. I think the important discussions occur when we disagree about to whom the reincarnated work is more useful; and this hinges largely on context.
I've spent a large amount of time in the Basin and Range of the western U.S., and have wondered how an artist that works primarily in recycled materials could make sculpture there, given that some of the best parts of it are protected in National Parks, National Forests, and Wilderness areas where collecting rocks and wood and such are prohibited. Here is where painters and photographers have the artistic upper hand; the landscape is the same for them having been there.
Fortunately for me, people litter. Especially by roads. Stuff falls off trucks, gets tossed out the window, etc . . . Hayduke, Ed Abbey's militant environmentalist, even tosses crushed beers cans out his truck window. I'm not looking to be a trash collector, though. It's not littering if I pick up stuff, change it, and return it to where I found it, right?
I found some wood scraps by the side of a road and carved them into tiny hubs, which I then used to create big tumbleweeds. I then put the mega-tumbleweeds out where i found the wood scraps and donor tumbleweeds and let the wind eventually carry them off to their next adventures. It seemed appropriate to use the symbol of traveling in the desert (a tumbleweed) to ritually salvage found scrap wood into something that would travel across the desert on its own.
If the original materials more useful in their reincarnated form, or if they will ever be seen by people again, I'm not sure.
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