---
title: The Almost Useful Machines
page_type: course
track:
course_type:
feature_img: /assets/images/2019-20/t-1/the-almost-useful-machine.jpg
img_caption: 
faculty: 
    - santiago-fuentemilla
    - xavi-dominguez
    - eduardo-chamorro
    - mikel-llobera
    - oscar-gonzalez
    # - julie-mallet
---

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## Syllabus 

Fab Labs and advanced manufacturing infrastructure are making accessible for any citizen to make anything anywhere while sharing it with global networks of knowledge, which allows accelerating design, development, and deployment processes for new products to be born. Traditional planning and urbanism are being disrupted by the acceleration of technology and the dynamic transformation of society during the last half-century; it is important to rethink how we make things and why, and generate active and practical conversations through projects and prototypes that become manifests itself.

[TAUMs](https://hackmd.io/TdLbzvcbTrm8HG6xkYFNeg#The-Almost-Useful-Machines-Weeks---TAUMs) is a practical and intensive two-weeks experimental program into fabrication and introduction to the Fab Lab environment. It has been designed to fill knowledge gaps and aimed to prepare students to succeed and improve their experience during Fab Academy.

We will be going over the basic skills needed to design, develop, and fabricate almost anything in a Fab Lab, as well as how to manage time and resources necessary for its proper operation.

Our active learning methodology is based on the practice and **spiral development**, designed to encourage the creativity and imagination of the participants, as well as stimulate the search for tools and solutions for their correct definition.

We will offer an impact experience, seeking to inspire and motivate the participants to use the possibilities of digital manufacturing and technologies to prototype, design, fabricate and program **an “honest” mechanical artifact that “makes” something.**

**USELESS MACHINES**

As existential purity, building a machine that doesn´t have a clear purpose as fabricating something or solve world problems allows the designer to focus on mechanics and movements allowing more freedom to really simplify actuation forgetting about constraints.

The metaphor of machines and artefacts doing endless predefined or random movements is what we call Useless Machines.

*Students will develop and fabricate something that is a mess of contradictions and wonderfulness.*

![](/assets/images/2019-20/t-1/image_2.jpg)

<iframe width="718" height="404" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2-iqu1EOcyo" title="Minimalist Marble Machine" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It has been a long tradition among philosophers and writers to praise uselessness as a means to stress the importance of spiritual activities and creations without clear functional aims. Aristotle, for one, established early on that knowledge was valuable in itself, not for providing practical utility—a notion frequently forgotten today. To praise in utility, thus, has been a reaction to the materialistic values promoted by capitalist society, which has been criticized for its lack of moral and spiritual values.

Because machines are generally associated with the fulfilment of a practical duty, the functional independence of art is particularly highlighted when artists create or represent machines. We find ultimate examples of useless art machines in Wim Delvoye’s pursuit of technologically sophisticated devices for the production of excrement, or in Roxy Paine’s machines to fabricate art, which we can consider two times “useless”: for being artworks and for producing more art.

## Deliverables

- Video at minimum 1080p stabilized (not hand held recordings, use a tripod if you don't know how to stabilize by software)

- Black or white background.

- Open source music matching the artifacts(properly acknowledged).

- Five photography's of the artefacts at high res.

- Ideally the sound produced by the machine will be also recorded in the video.

- Entry and finish titles with Team names, name of the artifact and Iaac/FablabBCN - Flu Logos.

- Min 10 slides presentation on:

  - How you designed it

  - What is suppose to do or not to do.

  - How you fabricate it

  - Accomplishments/failures

- All the documentation needs to specify what part of the project was developed by each team member.

*Goals*

- Maximize useless with the minimum amount of hardware

- Minimalism is key word

- Visually attractive machine

- All the element must be seen accounted for “INTEGRATIVE DESIGN”

## Additional Resources

- MDEF-FABLAB CRASH COURSE

- From Bits to Atoms 2018-19

- Fab Academy

- Fab Foundation

- Fab Academy BCN

- Fab Zero

- Daniel Armengol Altayo

- Machines that Make

- Designing Reality

- Reference Books

- Make: The Maker’s Manual: A Practical Guide to the New Industrial Revolution

- The 3D Printing Handbook: Technologies, design and applications

- Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop - from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication

## Faculty

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