A blablabLAB project for trastienda

A printer connected to an ink supply is displayed to the visitor. By pressing the button, a page is printed in a limited and numbered edition, counting the number of prints made and thus contributing to the study of the object’s lifespan as the work, the printer, becomes obsolete.

This is a product of the [augmented obsolescence] line.

“The determination, planning or scheduling of the end of the useful life of a product or service so that – after a period of time calculated in advance by the manufacturer or service company during the design phase of that product or service – it becomes obsolete, non-functional, useless or unusable is called planned obsolescence or planned obsolescence.” Wikipedia.

While for millennia we have managed to produce consumables with excellent performance, many of those produced today intentionally circumvent shelf life as a consumer right.
In this line of design is condensed the foundation of the current consumer system. The hyper-consumerist nature of today’s capitalism rebels through these ubiquitous products on a daily basis. It also transfers to the product, on its most material and formal scales, the unsustainable nature that this form of production-consumption projects on a global scale and in the medium term. There are numerous black spots where the detritus of this non-circulatory practice is condensed: nuclear waste dumps, oceanic macro-bags of plastic waste, electro-dumps of developed countries in underdeveloped countries, illegal dumping…
This form of production also acquires a self-propagating component under the idio-syncrasy of the laws of the free market, which extends and emphasises them.
Printers that stop working after a certain number of prints, light bulbs that blow out earlier and earlier, extremely fragile devices, etc. The day is probably not far off when real estate will also be traded under this market strategy.
[augmented obsolescence] aims to explore this condition from non-commercial points of view.

[augmented obsolescences] aims to explore this condition from non-commercial points of view.
A priori, several heuristic practices are proposed from which to generate a prospective analysis, altering the life of objects to the point of absurdity, re-contextualising certain designs or behaviours, through mixtures of these, etc.
[augmented obsolescences] proposes an artistic view – analytical, critical, ironic – of a phenomenon that is as common and widespread as it is little known by consumers.