Curated from new developments in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, engineering, biology, and art, this survey demonstrates the myriad ways in which our perception of what it means to be alive has dramatically changed. Where do we draw the new lines?
Category Archive: design
This year, the Triennale di Milano examines the global issue of inequality through an impressive inquiry encompassing architecture, design, technology, bioscience and data
“Rather than producing a meaningful order, design might be just about inhabiting chaos”
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Over the past few years, Vladan Joler has been collaborating with data analysts, media theorists and cyber forensic experts to bring to light some of the hidden layers of digital infrastructures
The works exhibited suggest a new era of planetary and geological consciousness where we are asked to read, feel and listen to rocks in new ways
Chatting with the artist about the role that the digital can play to both preserve and exploit cultural heritage, deliberately training the data of an AI device in order to imbue it with underrepresented perspectives and struggling with the Man vs Nature dichotomy
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The show addresses a series of themes including: gravity as “the greatest designer”, extraterrestrial architecture, deep space mysteries, future body modifications and other matters that raise more questions than answers
The artist is continuing his exploration into a future that will probably depend more on DIY and basic survival skills than on the thrills of green, sleek smart cities
It seems that design is locked in a system of exploitation and profit, a cycle that fosters inequality and the depletion of natural resources. CAPS LOCK uses clear language and striking visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are inextricably linked
The Device_art festival questions, subverts and adds poetry and humour to the many devices, systems, mechanics and machines that share our life
Interview with a multimedia artist, engineer, educator and designer whose practice focuses on the practical and experimental applications of sustainable energy technologies, particularly photovoltaic solar power
The Antilibrary looks closely at artists’ books in order to identify atypical trends and future attitudes. Its material of choice tends to be very speculative, decidedly science-inspired, slightly bizarre and never without a touch of humour
Maggie Kane: On the role of creativity when helping marginalised communities in capitalistic systems
“You have to be creative to operate in this capitalistic system. You have to find all kinds of walk arounds and work with pretty much no assistance from the government”
The research project aspires to develop an alternative history of the rise of modernity and the spread of colonialism from the perspective of sugar itself. What if sugar was the actual engineer behind all of this?
Artists offer new insights about genetic engineering by bringing it out of the lab and into public places to challenge viewers’ understandings about the human condition, the material of our bodies and the consequences of biotechnology
In 2014, the designer compiled a Computer Virus Catalog. He’s telling me about about the malware exhibition he co-curated in Rotterdam
What happens to the design discipline when it has to evolve from a world where designers do wonders with (seemingly) unlimited resources and energy to a world where their creativity can only rely on limited ones?
A journey into the dark side of computing illustrates the beauty and sophistication of some viruses, highlighting the creativity behind their methods of disruption
Materialism is an impressive exercise in dismantling consumer culture, in leaving aside functions and in ennobling the resources we extract from the Earth at great human and environmental costs
What will happen to our sensory apparatus in 50 years, when the mechanisms for how we communicate and sense our surroundings become obsolete, prompted by the advancement of sensors that will enable brain-to-brain communication?
Basse Stittgen uses blood discarded from slaughterhouses as a biomaterial that he dries, heat-presses and then turns into egg holders, records and other domestic objects
The artists and designer is interested the often invisible political nature of spaces and technologies, and how the design of the ordinary is involved in shaping values, practices and ideologies
Enter The New Newsroom where journalists, technologists, artists and designers investigate innovative formats, analyse the news and present their findings in stimulating visuals and installations
The essays focus on future fictions in art and design from different perspectives: future fictions and imagination in creative practices, future literacy and future ethics
SulSolSal’s Staying Alive is part a “wunderkammer,” and part a survival guide that collects some of the most interesting or tongue-in-cheek attempts to respond to the ongoing climate of impending doom
In the streets of Istanbul, people improvise repairs, upgrades and improvements with craft, any cheap material available and a lot of ingenuity. It might not looks very sophisticated but it’s fast, smart and efficient
I talked with artist and designer Xandra van der Eijk about space mining without the need to leave the Earth and about controlling or being controlled by microorganisms
Together artists, designers, curators, scientists and philosophers delved into technodiversity, contemporary utopias and dystopias, the future of money, Glitch Feminism and cultural resistance, and the human-technology relationship from an artistic, philosophical and scientific point of view
At MUTEK_IMG in Montreal, i got to hear some very interesting and, at times, provocative ideas about artificial intelligence, post-truth media, human-machine choreography and automated storytelling tools
The book portrays the routine cruelties of the twenty-first century through a series of detailed non-fictional graphic illustrations. None of these cruelties represent extraordinary violence – they reflect day-to-day implementation of laws and regulations around the globe
As its name suggest, the show aimed to demonstrate that design can play an important role when it comes to engaging with today’s social, social and political concerns. Through various visual and experiential strategies, designers can make more visible and even tangible problems that are under-discussed or too abstract to be easily understood
I interviewed Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke about The 3D Additivist Manifesto and The 3D Additivist Cookbook for this year’s edition of the Digital Design Weekend 2017 in London
Maya Jay Varadaraj sees the glass bangles worn by married women in India as objects that condone the oppression of women and normalize violence towards them. Her Khandayati project uses household objects to reduce these bangles to dust and then transform them into spinning weapons
The reason why i wanted to write about the website of MOMENTUM 9 the Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art is that it doesn’t look like anything i have experienced before. First of all, it doesn’t seem to pride itself in being user-friendly…
Allan Wexler’s works can be broadly described as tactile poetry composed by re-framing the ordinary. They sustain a narrative about landscape, nature, and the built environment that highlights the intriguing and surprising characteristics latent in the elements and rituals that pervade daily life
The booklet’s manifesto calls for design (or art) that gets out of the sleek graduation shows and galleries, confronts sociopolitical issues head-on and bites back. As he sums up, “Design can be how to punch Nazis in the face, minus the punching”
Presented as a traditional four-act play, ‘The Ascent’ attempts to examine the discrete nature of class politics; paralleling contemporary workplace geometries from multiple vantage points. The production centre’s around the story of law firm attending a mandatory training day that takes place on board a one to one scale replica of an American Airlines Boeing 747. Although fruitful in its intentions, the experiment unfolds into chaos and bloodshed
Prepare for a future in which the only way of making a living is to ‘lend your lung’ to filter heavily polluted air. Clean Air International Inc. is looking for suppliers for its first Organic Clean Air (TM) retail store
Some of these objects and systems have been part of our society for far too long. Others have emerged only recently. What these pieces have in common is that they demonstrates that violence is everywhere around us and design has a role to play in it. It can fight violence but it can also normalize it, hide it from our consciousness and even heighten its brutality
What these works have in common is that their design and violence are ambiguous. They start with what looks like a laudable impulse, only in the most ruthless context possible: rice that feeds hungry populations but pollutes the environment with pesticides, a brutal weapon that causes pain but not so much pain that it will kill, animal welfare in slaughterhouses, and other oxymoron.