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Mark Bourgeois

I’m positive this must have been discussed before (seriously, how could this group not have?), but – blast that search engine! – I couldn’t find any references, so here goes…

Chindogu in Japanese translates into "unusual tool" (“chin” + “dogu”).  (An alternate translation involves penises, but this is a family website, and besides that would be really OT, although perhaps useful information for anyone with Japanese spouses.)

Chindogu are considered “unuseless” inventions: they are everyday gadgets that appear to provide a solution to a real problem; however, anyone who actually tried to use the invention would find it caused a different set of problems or triggered significant embarrassment, so much so that he wouldn’t use it.

The International Chindogu Society has a list of 10 tenets governing the definition of chindogu.  Click here for them.  Notably, chindogu must not have humor or mean-spiritedness as their aim: they must be a “real-world” solution to a “real-world” problem.  At the same time, chindogu cannot exist in the real world: they must not be invented for profit or even commerce.  Such applications degrade the value of chindogu.

Here's my golf architecture chindogu: a device enabling golfers to take "architectural audio tours" as they play a course, much as one takes audio tours of museum exhibitions.

So as the golfer plays his round, he receives info on how this bunker was built, why this hole was designed a certain way, how Bobby Jones took driver, brassie, brassie to play the hole but Corey Pavin drove it with a 4 wood, etc etc.

Aside from being illegal (Can you imagine using one of these in a competition? It would have to be worth 3 strokes a side -- for the opponent, that is), I think this idea is unuseless because it would draw unwelcome attention to the golfer from non GCA freaks and would force the golfer to decide between architecture and playing the game.

Grasshoppers, what is your golf architecture chindogu, and how does it enlighten us on the eternal mystery of golf course architecture?


Mark

Bob_Huntley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Another Idea from the Crazy Uncle in the Attic: Do You Chindogu?
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2007, 05:07:25 PM »
Mark,

You have far too much time on your hands.  Now, you have to admit that you have spent time in the Orient or scoured the shelves of the Bodleian Library to come across such an arcane philosophy.

Is golf course architecture THAT complicated?

As an aside, I do enjoy reading your posts, I just wish I
understood them.  :D


Bob
 

Dan King

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re:Another Idea from the Crazy Uncle in the Attic: Do You Chindogu?
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2007, 06:10:05 PM »
It's tough to imagine anything more Chindogu for golf architecture than this Web site. Go through the list, every criteria fits this site.

Cheers,
Grandan
Quote
Chindogu are man-made objects that have broken free from the chains of usefulness. They represent freedom of thought and action: the freedom to challenge the suffocating historical dominance of conservative utility; the freedom to be (almost) useless.

Peter Pallotta

Re:Another Idea from the Crazy Uncle in the Attic: Do You Chindogu?
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2007, 06:22:36 PM »
Mark - keep them coming (but I bet you knew I'd say that).

How about a device similar to what fisherman use to 'see' the bottom of a lake i.e. its ridges and low spots and submerged trees etc. But in this case, it would give golfers a picture of what the land they're walking on looked like BEFORE the architect shaped it or used it for a golf hole. It would 'solve' nothing, and certainly no 'problem', but might lead to a raft of new discussions and topics that another chindogu could later 'address'.    

Peter
By the way, are you actually a crazy uncle to some lucky niece or nephew?

Mark Bourgeois

Re:Another Idea from the Crazy Uncle in the Attic: Do You Chindogu?
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2007, 07:30:56 PM »
Peter

That would be amazing.  It would have to be some kind of "night-vision" goggle-type thingy, wouldn't it?  An extended meditation of the built environment, and man's relation to nature.

They would need to sell Dramamine and...other stuff...at the halfway house.

Sir Bob

The Bodleian Library will have slipped considerably for Chindogu to be found inside.  No, this is Lord Byron territory my friend. giant-addle-brained territory...Mary Shelley territory...

Picture this: a bar in which pink elephants twist and dance off the ceiling, beers named for a medical condition found in only in severe alcoholics...


You pour out into the allee, mistakenly turn left, into a pack of giggling university students.  A glance right, and a double-take into what surely is Satan's apse, the dim den of Jeanneken Pis:


Ho! What's this?  The dim outlines of a Chindogu, flooding the mind, the audio tour...

But laugh now, scratch that pate in puzzlement.  But my California friend sometime, maybe in the near future, your Chindogu will come and you will rush to this thread, grateful it has slipped only to the 37th page in the prior two weeks....

Maybe New Year's Eve -- picture: half-deliriumed by biltong and Stellenbosch, the idea comes upon you in such a rush you fear its passing before it can be recorded for eternity, aye a real beauty, this one, a manly ruggedness, a Maori-quality Chindogu....

You madly dash for the computer before it runs off, the fleeting Chindogu...special glasses that enable one to identify, via secret markings imprinted on the face, hidden to all but the wearers of the glasses, fellow members of the R und A -- yesssss!!!!!!

Mark

PS Actually I found it at the Met.  You know, the one on 5th Avenue, in New York.

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