macchine inutili

Bruno Munari was one of the first 20th century artists to use useless machines as a medium, in Italian 'Macchine Inutili'. Again, uselessness was somewhat of a misnomer, as he focused on machines that had different uses than the typical uses of production, processing, transport, etc. He rather focused on the use of machines to study concepts such as spatiality, chance, programming, abstraction and creation.

Many other artists followed in his footsteps, including Jean Tinguely, who focused more on kinetic and creative works with less of a conceptual focus (see creative bots).