In his latest project titled “Err”, artist Jeremy Hutchison is taking factory seconds and turning them into art. Hutchison adds a twist to this familiar model by using objects that are intentionally made dysfunctional by factory employees.
He has written a dozen companies asking for products like a comb or a chair that is ruined by a worker. The worker is free to mangle the product any way they want and Hutchison will gladly pay for it. He says his Err project is “about the rub between art and design, the mass-produced and unique, the functional and the dysfunctional”.
Whatever it’s about, it works. Hutchison has received such imaginative items as a plugged pipe, a comb without tines and shovel with its handle on backwards. As you would expect, many of his emails are met with confusion and bewilderment that someone would actually want a product that was deliberately broken.
Hutchison kept these email conversations and is presenting the objects and their back stories in a London Art Exhibit. [Creative Review via Kottke]