Uselessness
Description
Is uselessness a tool? The acquisition of tools is the secret to humankind's success and what distinguishes us from animals. However, we also use tools to tell stories and produce objects that are perplexingly useless. Uselessness rarely meets our expectations, but can also be fascinating and liberating, because it eludes the logic of the "use = value" equation.
In the Modern Age usefulness became a priority: with reference to space, production or training. Yet futurologists today predict that one product of artificial intelligence will be a "useless" future. If the future makes us useless, it will be necessary to reconsider our attitude toward uselessness. The texts in this interdisciplinary reader illuminate the potential creativity the future can bring in light of this development.
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Persons
Michelle Howard , Luciano Parodi , Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of fine Arts, Vienna
Content
- Intro
- CONTENTS
- CONTRIBUTORS
- PREFACE. USELESSNESS IS A RAREFIED THING
- INFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: Excavating Obsolete Migrant Skills
- REFUSING TO PERFORM: Trans-Utility, or the contemporary value of uselessness in architecture
- USELESSNESS AND PURPOSELESSNESS: On central norms and imperatives of Western aesthetics
- USELESS, AND THEN DANGEROUS: Public Space and Property in 20th century British Modernist Housing
- USELESS ARCHITECTURE
- USE-LESS-LAND: Two centuries of defending Tempelhofer Field in Berlin
- IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS USELESSNESS
- CONQUEST OF THE USELESS
- ART-USE- USEFULNESS. Two Discourses: Use Value and Instrumentalization
- EPILOGUE: USELESSNESS, XXXXXi
