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French “internet of things” engineer. Olivier Mevel just released The Machine as a device that repeats the true essence of Marvin Minsky’s first “useless machine”, albeit in a playful and boldly colored composition. It is not surprising that he drew stylistic inspiration from the well-known postmodernist Ettore Sottsass. The founder of the Memphis Milano movement, Sottsass has never been afraid to use a terrifying interplay of shapes and patterns, often articulated as a surface material.
It reflects the same playfulness and supposed poetry in which Mevel is imbued Broken: an illuminated rabbit-shaped device – released in 2005 – that relays the daily forecast and one’s email in spoken text and flashing lights. It’s all about humanizing and personifying technology, not as a marketing gimmick that drags us to endless hours of mindless rot, but as an interactive object that more closely reflects our temperament and maybe even distracts us from the stress of the day.
Unpredictability is another key factor. The entropic algorithm ensures that no two La machines act the same. When and if he will decide to switch off is difficult to determine in advance. If left alone for too long, it will take matters into its own hands – or leverage the “little hand” – and remind us of its existence. A jingle is heard every time. The correlations with the Furbies of the late 1990s – zoomorphic robots that demanded a lot of attention – are palpable. Sometimes he can completely refuse to cooperate.
La Machine is anything but an addictive platform that’s always there, ready to mine personal data. As Mevel says: “La Machine is neither here to serve you nor to enslave you, but paradoxically becomes a necessary object: one that reminds us that the useless, the unnecessary, the absurd can actually be a precious place of freedom in our everyday lives.”
Satire does not only appear in literature and film. It also creeps into the design. One only has to look back at the Italian radicals of the 1970s or the Dutch designers of the early 2000s. Both groups mocked the richly decorated styles of the past, but also the crudeness of “purist” modernism. Postmodernists often emphasized the power of image over actual form and function as a means of social commentary.
In technology, satire has often come as an antidote – a way of mitigating the relentless advance of so-called “progress.” A decade ago, Jasper Morrison tried to stem the tide of the ever-refined and all-encompassing smartphone with the Punkt MP01, a forerunner of the mobile phone revival. All it had was a Dieter Rams– a style keyboard for making calls and a small screen for sending basic texts, taking notes, keeping a calendar and calculating numbers.
The desire to look back and wax nostalgic about a pre-mechanical and digital age—or to challenge the dominance of a few corporations that co-opt certain innovations—has long preoccupied some of the more critical but influential technologists. Take American cognitive and computer scientist Minsky – a Bell Labs and MIT heavyweight. He was one of the first to explore the potential applications and wider implications of artificial intelligence.
In 1952, he developed the first “useless” or “top machine,” a new toy that would turn itself off immediately after being turned on by an outside actor. One flipped a switch that activated a lever that appeared from a hidden compartment, then turned that switch off again. The inherent irony is hard to miss.
What it primarily was: an engineering hack. In the spirit of Italian DIY designer Enzo Mario, it was a format and kit of parts for others to reimagine and replicate. More and more complex versions were developed over the decades. Some have turned it into a piggy bank for stealing coins. It’s even said to have inspired the autonomous Thing arm from the gothic sitcom The Addams Family.
For La Machine, it’s a much more moderate expression. The basic shape is shown in yellow, the oversized round button in red, and the “opening compartment” top layer in black. The entire contraption – available in a limited edition of 2,500 – is manufactured in France using 100% recycled plastic.
For more information about La Machine visit la-machine.fr.
Photo courtesy of La Machine.
