The Form of Function

       Tradespeople have been taking the same skills they use every day at work to make a living, to make their home lives more fulfilling or more interesting. Part financial need, part personal challenge, they customize their possessions or invent them totally anew.

Freezer turned meat smoker, Daniel Edman 2011

      Rather than an outward display of identity or class aspirations, the worker's bricolage represents some privately meaningful end. Often it is practical, as in the case of the freezer turned smoker, though sometimes it is for the simple pleasure of making something.

     One can also view the hacked object as a sort of artifact of eccentric labor, emerging from the challenge of developing a particular skill (wiring a successful circuit) or a proof of concept (the icemaker). The physical evidence left behind from a specific attempt to repair, replace, or reinvent  says a great deal about the thoughts and priorities of its maker(s). When materials and means are limited, hard choices must be made about what is critical, what can be sacrificed, and what merits the investment of more time. Even in the most practical of creations, there are always aesthetic statements made, consciously or unconsciously.

Icemaker (collaboration with Jon Kessler), Tom Sachs 2009
(tomsachs.org)

     While these creations are sometimes thought of as inelegant, to my mind the elegance is found in the invisible elements of the work. My primary interest in these objects is in the clever repurposing of existing materials and devices to new concepts; in the mechanism of the function, rather than the form itself.