Weird and useless life hacks reimagined
Have you ever been on Instagram, Youtube, or even get a message on Facebook from your mother showing you an “awesome and useful life hack.” Well, I have, and if you haven’t let me explain. These “Lifehacks” are supposed to be useful things you can do to make daily life easier or more efficient. The hacks can range from simply cutting up a water bottle to hold a wet umbrella so it does not drip on your floor, to entire projects that require velcro, sawing, and hours of planning and concentration. Needless to say, these hacks are not really worth your time, for the most part, they take much more time and energy to make then they save you.
Before social media and everyone in there mom making life hacks, there was a thing called Cindogu, while life hacks can sometimes be a good idea but just require too much work. Cindogu is meant to be a useless idea, well a useless idea of a useful invention. Originating in Japan in a home shopping magazine titled “Mail Order Life” in this magazine editor Kenji Kawakami would fill spare pages with these inventions that he named Cindogu. Which he says translates to “weird tool” these tools would be anything from toilet paper attached to the top of your head for when you need to blow your nose, to a small fan attached to chopsticks to help cool off your noddles.
In this series titled “The Art of Chindogu” photographer, Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek recreates some of these famous inventions in his own style. While most of the tools shown in his series are tools featured in the “Mail Order Life” magazine these images are presented with more elegance and style. Almost making it seem like its “cool” to have a toilet paper roll on your head or an umbrella for a tie.
Artist Website: https://gebhart.dk/c/sunday/
Artist Instagram: @doublekoek
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