today and tomorrow

The Royal College of Art in London is currently showing the work of their postgraduate students: Show RCA 2008. Here are some projects:

Home Sweet Home by Marie Retpen (Ceramics & Glass).

The Aftermath by Caroline Tattersall (Ceramics & Glass).

Blog Bot Platform by Andrew Broomfield (Design Interactions).

Blog Bot Platform is an open source system which I have developed for creating Different types of Blogging objects. Turning Simple experiences into online encounters. These bots ‘tweet’ to their experiences to micro blogging services. I am interested in how people react when they encounter these Blogjects invading their web 2.0 space.

White Lies by Alice Wang (Design Interactions).

This scale allows one to lie to him/herself.
The further back you stand, the lighter you become.
The user can gradually move closer and closer to reality.

Nanofutures: Sensual Interfaces by Christopher Woebken (Design Interactions).

Rather than focusing on the current development of nanotechnology, such as creating lighter and stronger materials, this project focuses on exploring its potential further, creating more manipulative prototypes such as organic electronics.

What do organic computing look like and how will our relationship with these products change? Can organic electronics with biosensors open up new possibilities for sensual and poetic designs?

Seeds contain material and information needed to grow organisms as well as algorithms for device networking. Using seeds as a simulation for smart dust, it allows one to easily visualize new interactions such as breaking, sharing, throwing away and mining data. These new interactions not only generate new behaviors but also redefine existing stereotypical electronic products.

Plugless Sink by Maja Ganszyniec (Design Products).

Plugless sink is exactly that, a sink without a plughole. To get rid of the grey water we have to tip the water out. By doing so we become more conscious of how much water we are using and mainly throwing away. This sink shows the value of water through its volume and promotes water re-usage.

Potato Chips by Cyrille Najjar (Design Products).

The Fastest Clock in the World by Freddie Yauner (Design Products).

Exhausted Cutlery by Kathryn Hinton (Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery).

Lightmark, photography by Cenci Goepel und Jens Warnecke.

The Image Fulgurator is a project by Julius von Bismarck. Here is his description:

The Image Fulgurator is a device for physically manipulating photographs. It intervenes when a photo is being taken, without the photographer being able to detect anything. The manipulation is only visible on the photo afterwards.

In principle, the Fulgurator can be used anywhere where there is another camera nearby that is being used with a flash. It operates via a kind of reactive flash projection that enables an image to be projected on an object exactly at the moment when someone else is photographing it. The intervention is unobtrusive because it takes only a few milliseconds. Every photo another photographer takes of an object at which the Fulgurator is also aimed is affected by the manipulation. Hence visual information can be smuggled unnoticed into the images of others.

Video of the first test of an image fulguration in public.
Context:
This video shows an Intervention at the Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. (former border of east and west Germany) The target of the manipulation was the famous “YOU ARE ENTERING THE AMERICAN SECTOR” - sign.
The manipulation created a link from the former East / West border to the US / Mexican border in order to reimagine the dramatic situation at worldwide borders today. The massage was addressed to the tourists on location, that can travel easily over every border without risking there life.

‘Parking For White Cars Only’ by Helmut Smits.

More at jezebel.

RBG6 did this workshop in experimental typography at Konstfack, University Collage of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. First they designed the costumes and then the played an alphabetical football game. It looks like it was fun.

Photography by Rasmus Norlander.

Pisser (Corner Piece) by Remco Torenbosch.

found at VVORK

The Olafur Eliasson exhibition ‘Take Your Time’ at MoMA in New York is almost over. This video shows his installation called ‘Ventilator’, you can find more photos and video on this website.

found at kottke

Stained Glass is a project by Posterchild, he does streetart. He placed a variation of the Pixelator over HD screens installed over subway entrances in New York. It basically difusses the light of the screen and turns the video ads in an animated stained glass piece. Blah blah blah … watch the video.

Beautiful!!!

So I’m finally back from good old Belgium. We almost had a private flight back to Berlin, there were only 14 passengers in total. It was quite bumpy due to some thunderstorms over Germany, it was still 29° C when we walked over the tarmac of Tempelhof International. Maybe it was my last flight from Tempelhof, they plan to close it by October 31st 2008. A big mistake! It’s the best airport I know.

I also visited Hasselt where I saw ‘Bridge’ by Michael Cross at Z33.

The Bridge is a series of steps which rise up out of the water in front of you as you walk from one to the next, and then disappear back underneath behind you as you go, leaving you stranded with only one step visible in front of you, and one behind. The bridge ends in the middle of the water, where you find yourself totally isolated and cut off from the shore. You return the way you came. The mixed feelings of peace, isolation, relaxation and fear that the piece elicits are powerful. The project is on-going will ultimately lead to a permanent installation in a lake.

As always a video …