Some 60,000 years ago one of our ancestors laid their hand against the wall of a cave in Indonesia and stenciled its outline by applying mineral pigments. Although the procedure had not been recorded or documented by any means, we can assume that nobody asked them to do so.
Do you remember?
Every human has a time in his life when he explores his ability to create things from scratch, straight out of nothing, literally from dirt: baking "cakes" in a sandbox, tapping out a rhythm on a table, decorating the walls of the child's room with stencils of little hands. Discovering self-efficacy feels magical to a child, and that urge to create stays strong during youth. The "cake" becomes a cake, the table becomes a drum set, and the walls become a canvas. A workbench, a notebook, a flowerbed in a garden. All from an intrinsic need to make, to create. Then life begins in earnest.
When was the last time that you baked something not because you were hungry, not because of someone's birthday, nor because a client ordered it, but because you wanted to create something with your own hands just for the pleasure of it?
Making things nobody asked for has become a rare occurrence in a world where every minute of the day serves economic requirements. Not that creative efforts and activities were an extremely popular way to spend spare time for the majority of people in the past. You must have sufficient energy left over from your working day. Making things nobody asked for is a privilege. You must have resources to create things that won't bring any revenue. Vincent van Gogh did it anyway and died broke.
But what does revenue mean? In societies where daily livelihoods are guaranteed by monotonous or intangible paid work, the experience of self-efficacy might be more valuable than any monetary reward. The haptic feedback of working with our own hands recalls deeply buried skills from the time when building a hand axe was essential for survival. Today, we need this experience to survive spreadsheets, meetings, and repetitive administrative tasks.
Is it sabotage?
Furthermore, making things nobody asked for has political implications. Skipping an application process, ignoring market demands, and not waiting for someone's order are fundamentally anarchistic. Spending time producing unmarketable goods is an act of pure autonomy. Our marketer friends freeze with fear. The entertainment industry is shaken. That individuals create joy out of nothing has no place in the capitalist's agenda. Sure, some makers turn a bit of profit from the DIY community. But that's no substitute for what capitalism really needs: people who consume without thinking, not just products, but the ideas fed to them by those in power.
Meanwhile, you don't have to aim for a political revolution. Van Gogh's paintings laid the foundation of modern art. And, to lower the bar, those things nobody asked for don't even need to be useful. Swedish maker Simone Giertz became the "queen of shitty robots" by building machines that fulfill their intended tasks inadequately. While her intrinsic motivation was simply the fun of it, she may have unknowingly added another layer of meaning to the next big thing in domestic robotics.
Are you serious?
Is there anything to criticize about making things nobody asked for? Sure. Put your effort into something that improves the world more visibly. Stop burning resources on a planet already on fire. Go find yourself a purpose.
Fair points. But remember Van Gogh: you never know what groundbreaking benefit might emerge from someone's hedonistic experiments. A measurable outcome is simply not what we should expect. Society, in my opinion, can spare a handful of hours of lost productivity. And isn't a world on fire exactly the place to be a hedonist? Firefighters need inspiration, too.
Man shall not live by bread alone.
As for burning resources, fair enough. But start with the corporate jets, not the woodworking bench. Ground a couple of those, and there's plenty of saved resources left for the rest of us to build with.
Purpose. In my personal experience, making things nobody asked for is a serious method of exploring meaning. While creating in the absence of an external corrective, one can dive deep into one's deep-seated needs. Perhaps this is followed by the realization that these needs are universal. Can anything be more meaningful than developing an understanding of one's fellow human beings?
Conclusion
There are many different motivations for making things nobody asked for. They all have in common an inherent human drive for growth and self-expression. This need has outlasted epochs of human history, unaffected by political systems and social background.
What is the benefit? Don't care. Just do it. Is it l'art pour l'art? Fine! Want to leave a mark on the world? Yay! Killing time beyond well-trodden paths? Go ahead!
