{"id":5559,"date":"2024-11-26T18:55:46","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T18:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/?p=5559"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:48:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T01:48:15","slug":"useless-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/useless-machines\/","title":{"rendered":"Useless Machines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Designing-the-Absurd-1024x576.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5863\" srcset=\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Designing-the-Absurd-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Designing-the-Absurd-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Designing-the-Absurd-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Designing-the-Absurd-1536x864.png 1536w, https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Designing-the-Absurd.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Useless Machines is about redefining \u201cusefulness.\u201d Through making, we will explore what it means, on an ideological, political and historical level, to create something \u2018useful\u2019 or \u2018useless.\u2019 We will play with these definitions and explore how these objects serve to be humorous, critical, disruptive and at times&#8230; useful. We will study \u2018useless\u2019 machines throughout history, which will provoke conversations and disagreements around the implications of existing and emerging technologies. The students will design \u2018useless\u2019 machines for their final project. Examples of \u2018useless\u2019 machines are drawn from Kenji Kawakami\u2019s The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions, Dunne &amp; Raby\u2019s Speculative Everything, Stephanie Dinkins\u2019 Conversations with Bina 48,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/esoteric.codes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/esoteric.codes\/<\/a>, CW&amp;T, Mimi \u1eccn\u1ee5\u1ecdha\u2019s Missing Data, Jacques Carelman\u2019s Catalogue of Impossible Objects, viral videos\/objects and much more.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Useless Machines is about redefining \u201cusefulness.\u201d Through making, we will explore what it means, on an ideological, political and historical level, to create something \u2018useful\u2019 or \u2018useless.\u2019 We will play with these definitions and explore how these objects serve to be humorous, critical, disruptive and at times&#8230; useful. We will study \u2018useless\u2019 machines throughout history, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5864,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5559\/revisions\/5864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/ima\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}