Kluge

Used as slang among software developers a “kluge” is an inelegant solution to a momentarily insoluble problem. You need to get the project done and you don’t have time to figure out the correct way to do it so you create a work-around that gets the job done temporarily. Most frequently this is hidden from users. The frontend looks good but the backend is held together with bubblegum and rubber bands. In contemporary art there has been an aesthetic of the ad-hoc and the jerry-rigged but many times this kind of work has a casual elegance or ingenious DIY inventiveness (e.g. Tim Hawkinson), so they are not real examples of a kluge. So I want to look for artworks that succeed as a whole because of an inelegant solution or two, works that possibly use kluge-iness as a method. Are there artworks that have the fundamental difference between the frontend and the backend? It could be difficult to find examples.

And. I tend to believe all human products are kluges.

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