The B-Hind devices demonstrates all the tensions inherent to an Internet of Things that inhabit the body without being noticed
The Center for Technological Pain is a mock company that offers DIY and open source solutions to all sorts of physical ailments caused by our insouciant use of smartphones and laptops
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?
LIFE SPORT sells grey sweatpants at a reasonable price to anyone in need of a leisure item. The artists then invest the money earned in exhibitions they organize with other artists
With this installation, critical and speculative scenario designer Tina Gorjanc is asking whether producing ‘fake’ copies of an extinct animal is an attempt to understand the past, or just an excuse to constantly create the desire for rarity
The interactive installation invites “deep listening” within the body but also offers us an opportunity to reflect on how anthropocentric geological changes might be recorded, experienced and how they can be reproduced for other people in order to help them attune themselves to a future marked by man-made geological changes
INHERITANCE consists of a set of precious jewellery artefacts which are radioactive and therefore rendered practically and symbolically unwearable for deep time, until the radionuclide transmute naturally into a stable and non radioactive isotope of lead
Superflux is looking at the ways emerging technologies interface with the environment and everyday life and the result of their research is a rather extraordinary portfolio which explores deviant economies for India’s elastic cities, climate change, political engagement, desertification, human enhancement, etc
Suzanne Lee is the Founder of BIOCOUTURE, the first ‘living materials’ design consultancy. The last time i met Suzanne, she was cultivating bacteria into green tea and harvesting layers of cellulose which, once dried looked like leather that she then used to make garments.
Suzanne’s work has now taken an even more ambitious dimension as she is building an open innovation resource to enable collaboration within the global biological materials community
The theme of this year’s exhibition is City of Cyborgs. Not the city of androids, clunky clones and man/machines contraptions but the city we are already walking through, smartphones in our pockets, implants in our bodies for some and ready to get our hands on Google glasses. City of Cyborgs in STRP speak means animatronics, opera for prehistoric creatures, a forest of interactive lasers, tapas made from edible solar cells, absurd mega machines and lots of dance. The high tech, the low tech, the digital, the organic and everything in between and beyond.
For some obscure reason i haven’t been able to locate the wikipedia entry about Haus-Rucker-Co. but if you’re curious about their work, there is a lot to (re)discover at the retrospective of the Viennese group currently hosted by WORK Gallery, near Kings Cross: inflatables capsules for two, parasitic structures, breathing devices, utopian ideas, helmets and pneumatic prostheses. It’s critique of architecture and architecture as critique at its best
I love Walter Van Beirendonck. He puts men on stilts, wraps them in latex, has them wear T-shirts with prints of preoperative drawings for plastic surgery, sends them on the runway with gas masks, corsets, prosthetic horns or with the face adorned with stick-on latex interpretations of Maori facial tattoos, etc. Actually, i think i adore that guy
While worn, exposure to the noise is structured through a sequence designated by a composer which controls the behavior of the sound-prevention valves. The composer also determines what values are adjustable by the listener through the single knob built into the device. The headphones mechanically create a personal listening experience by composing noise from the listener’s environment, rendering it differently familiar
The Muybridge installation is a study set out to capture temporal change in 3D. A three-step sequence of a bird spreading its wings is reconstructed and sculpted into T-Shirts. As the change in the wings’ position is a function of time, each wing’s plumage is reduced to polygonal form, modeled and rigged into successive arrangements to portray the spreading motion
Prédiction was the biggest exhibition of the International Design Biennial in Saint Étienne. Its ambition was to reposition the boundaries of contemporary design, exploring in over 100 artefacts and 2000 m2 the new types, methods, and practices of the discipline
A sensorial wearable device forcing to smell grass and to hear your own breath. Equipped with fresh sod and headphones, this mask inhibit the visual system while enhancing the olfactory by the proximity with soil.
The device defines also a sensory territory constructed by the rhytm of the breath, which is diffused from the headphones with a 1.5 sec. delay
More than just a fashion piece, T-post uses great design as a subversive tool to instigate meaningful thought, conversation, and action
As her pop musician alter ego “Sputniko!” Hiromi Ozaki showcases 3 manga-inspired characters who design objects to fulfil their own particular complex needs — Crowbot Jenny builds a crow-shaped robot to communicate with crows, Sushiborg Yukari, a sushi-serving cyborg who modifies her body to become a lethal weapon, and Menstruation Machine (Takashi’s Take), a boy desiring to become more ‘feminine’ who builds a suit in an attempt to experience the bleeding of menstruation
If you are in the right place at the right time, you (may) experience something fantastic whether it’s a lightening strike, a sense of the paranormal activity around you or a perfectly dry space at the bottom of the ocean
In the Loop features essays and images that show the progression of knitting and discusses the topics of knitting in art, international knitting traditions, knitting as social activism, the oral history of knitting, and knitting technology
The photo series documents a traditional winter masquerade in Bulgaria that was originally aimed at frightening the evil spirits away but has now become way to welcome the new year. Estelle Hanania observed the scene from a nearby parking lot where participants changed into their costumes and masks
The exhibition explores the new “updated” textile crafts that are developed by a new generation of serious amateurs, innovative craftsmen, engaged entrepreneurs and political practitioners. Once again the home is the workshop where economic and ecologic innovation happens – not only in the labs of the industrial expertise. After decades of outsourcing, the new modes of production are in the hands of the layperson
The world of fashion and design is inundated with a seemingly endless list of rules. Think of “Less is More,” “Form Follows Function,” “Keep it Simple,” “Dress Your Age,” and the list goes on and on. They’re familiar sayings that some designers consider to be valuable words of wisdom, which serve as a guiding line and source of inspiration. To others, these rules are mere restrictions: design dogmas and fashion formulae that need to be bended, twisted or broken altogether
The exhibition The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusions explores the intersection between fashion designers’ boldest experiments and the world of contemporary art. 25 international artists and fashion designers participate to this exhibition. 5 of them were commissioned new pieces that investigate the convergence of art and fashion
The exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam investigates the borders between fashion and art. Today’s fashion designers use installations and performances, and their designs are often more sculptural than wearable. Five of them have been commissioned to make new work specifically for the exhibition
I can’t recommend the visit of Persona enough. First, there’s the museum, its colonial-era hauteur is so un-PC, it sometimes made me cringe but it needs to be experienced before the place is renovated to a modern, polite and friction-proof version of itself. The exhibition itself presents the most breathtaking collection of masks i’ve ever seen
Photographer Danny Treacy recovers discarded clothing he finds lying around in streets, car parks and waste ground. He then stitches the garments together into spooky suits, which he wears in life-sized portraits to become Them
Just found out that the utterly brilliant and fascinating thesis that Otto von Busch presented last year at the University of Gothenburg is available as an online PDF. So leave Dan Brown on the shelves and take this one on the beach this Summer, ok?
This suit allows one ardent fan to distinguish themselves from the crowd at film premieres. Comprised of a projector, speakers and a light system, controlled by an portable media player, the suits emits hysterical screams louder than the standard fan collective. As the target star approaches confessed messages are projected. When the wearer gets the attention from the object of their devotion, the suit rejoices by bursting into a climatic display
‘World War One, France: a radiographer wearing protective clothing and headpiece’, a photo seen at the remarkable exhibition ‘War and Medicine’ at the Wellcome Trust in London
Born as a mere advertising tool to sell napkins and toilet rolls, the paper fashion craze took off in the late ’60s. The exhibition is also looking at the way paper is used in fashion of today, showing design, art and publicity objects, filmed fashion shows and recent creations by some of the most innovating fashion designers
C.STEM 2008: Breeding Objects – Computational Design, from Digital Fabrication to Mass-Customization
The conference and exhibition present a selection of visionary projects anticipating future developments in design process and technologies. What happens when design, creative coding and digital fabrication meet mass-customization?
Gosh! Was it hot that day! That didn’t prevent Lucas to hide inside a cabinet waiting for passersby to roll him home, Jenny walked around in black jacket monitoring wifi signals and Gerry morsed around the neighbourhood
The artist has just received a Design for our Future Selves award for Commuter Thrival, a brilliant communication campaign that aims to raise awareness of the issues surrounding public transport through posters visualising people’s emotions with quirky costumes
How are people’s lives being affected by online games and what is the role of real world ethics and behaviour codes in such virtual spaces?
The International Symposium on Electronic Art takes place biannually in various cities throughout the world. This year, the main exhibition features 16 works developed specifically for ISEA2008 by international and local artists. Priscilla Bracks reports from Singapore
PSJM acts as an trademark of happening art addressing issues of the artwork in the market, communication with consumers, or function as an artistic quality, using communication resources borrowed from capitalism of the spectacle to underscore the paradoxes produced by its unbridled development.
Or how Karl Marx made me buy a blue Summer dress
Barking coats, hidden messages in the tablecloth, fermented dresses, sensitive shoes and sensual switches
Kumao’s performative technologies generate artistic spectacles in order to visualize the unseen: psychological states, emotions, compulsions, thinking patterns, and dreams
A Dutch fashion designer inspired by prosthetic technology, fetishism, genetic manipulation and animals