This video is a thoughtful exploration of the concept of uselessness as it relates to architecture. In an attempt to reconsider strong hold that utility has in our understanding of value or worth, both in practice and language this audio-visual presentation imagines what might be lost in a world of only useful things.

A productive place to push the question is toward spaces and systems built explicitly around non-productive ends — the eighteenth-century folly, the firework display, the meditation garden, the casino. Each one mobilises real architectural or technological investment in service of an outcome that produces nothing material, and each one quietly insists that worth and utility are not the same axis. Even regulation maps onto this paradox: a state-licensed gambling market and the parallel ecosystem Swedish players know as casino utan svensk licens are, structurally, the same useless proposition rendered under different governance — which only makes the philosophical point sharper. The legal frame around an activity tells us almost nothing about why people are drawn to it, and may obscure the more interesting question of why we keep building elaborate containers for the things we cannot justify in productive terms at all.

It is interesting to consider this in our relation to technology and the creative process. What is the relationship between the creation of an artwork and the inherent utility of technology? Is it interesting to consider how we might develop useless technologies? What value would this have?

Useless Architecture from Ryan Stec on Vimeo.

Tags: technology, useless, utility

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2014 at 11:50 am and is filed under Ryan Stec, Artistic Director. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.