I went to the Barbican last night for the Ron Arad: Restless exhibition. It was a really interesting showcase of his work mainly focusing on his chairs (but also including lighting design, shelving and architecture). This sounds really very dull but it wasn’t. The chairs were highly sculptural, organic and bordering on jewellery in many case.
Overall a very playful and fun experience. The set design of the exhibition used big LED screens to take you through the concepts and the meaning behind many of the pieces.
The last part of the exhibition focused on his architecture. Really interesting to see how his style evolves into large scale buildings.
The flickr gallery below showcases the exhibition.
Lolita – A Chandelier you can SMS.
Ron Arad: Restless
18 Feb–16 May/10
Bold, experimental and inventive, Ron Arad defies categorisation. This internationally acclaimed London based maverick is variously described as a designer, architect or artist.
To celebrate, Barbican Art Gallery stages the first major exhibition in the United Kingdom of the internationally acclaimed, London-based design maverick Ron Arad.
Ron Arad: Restless explores three decades of Arad’s designs from his early post-punk approach of assembling products from readymade parts to his exclusive and highly-polished sculptural pieces. Featuring a dramatic exhibition design by Ron Arad Associates using the latest LED display technology, Ron Arad: Restless also includes architectural designs and immediately recognisable mass-produced items. Highlighting the significance of experimentation, process and materials in Arad’s work, the exhibition offers a timely insight into the development of objects from initial idea and fabrication to finished design.
The Kinetica Art Fair was on over the weekend and I wandered down to see the sights and sounds. Having been the previous year, I was well prepared for more steampunk cyber art but the talks last year were the highlight – although this year I missed the talks.
So onto the show. It was PACKED full of people which was great for everyone. I’m really hoping it was a massive success and elevated new forms of art to the masses. Here is a bref recap of caught my eye.
This was a mechanical drawing device that took plaster casts of heads and traced their contours and drew them out onto paper – A sort of 3D to 2D process. It was really interesting to watch it happen in realtime and the mechanical direct feel really made me want to watch this artwork form. The output was just as interesting – Something a bit disgusting and indefinable.
A very simple yet beautiful piece of work – If you imagine hundreds of threads of light forming ethereal bodies floating in space. I think the artist used fibre optic cables and ‘cut’ them to let the light bleed out thus creating the forms. There was no interaction or gimmickry (something common to a lot of the work) and I really liked it.
Kinetic Masters
My favourite section of the fair was the area devoted to pioneers of computer / cyber art. You can imagine at the time just how far these guys were innovating and their pieces are still of artistic value to this day. Just shows the process of creating art is irrelevant if the end result connects with you on some level.
I had heard of this ground breaking show at the I.C.A and it was brilliant to study the poster up close. A lovely piece of polish graphic design. A shame I left my camera at home as I wanted to note down all the artists present – If anyone has the poster or the programme of artists could they drop me a line. I’m sure I recalled that Xenakis was present.
So overall a very interesting experience. Some of the ‘art’ I would classify as playful interactions but then others would class it as art or even the process of creating the art. A debate I couldn’t get drawn to far into.
For another review of the fair, check Chris O’ Sheas excellent pixelsumo site.
The london underground might be derided as a creaking, rickety antique of a public service but atleast there were some great design moments in its history – Harry Beck and his iconic map, Charles Holden and his modernist masterpiece stations and the lesser known Enid Marx who provided many moquettes (fabric designs) for the tube seats.
The TFL has decided they would like to open up the design of new moquettes to the public – There is a £5000 prize which sounds great in principle but for a professional designer this isn’t much at all – considering the usage the TFL will get from the designs.
I can understand change, progress and iterating design to make it better – I just hope they leave these designs in place somewhere as a reminder of how good design can be timeless.
The V&A had a late opening last week which was a triumph of exploration and entertainment. One of the many many events to partake was a very amusing take on ‘Cluedo’. On starting the game you were given a detective pack with the following instructions.
The task at hand was to retrieve 10 cards which would reveal the killer, location and weapon of ‘Jim’ – a faithful doggy. Also included in the pack was a map of the museum with all the clues needed to find the cards.
Along the route through the museum were lots of entertaining events – films, postcard making, surreal chairs etc and after a lot of sleuthing we grabbed nearly all of the cards (some were missing by the time we found them).
The ‘game’ was brilliant – There really wasn’t a game at all – It was just a very very entertaining way to guide people round the museum to take in the multitude of activities.
For five nights this week, visitors to Trafalgar Square will be treated to spectacular illuminations covering the front of the National Gallery.
25 February – 1 March, 6–10pm
Picasso exhibition
You can also see real masterpieces by Picasso at the Gallery. The illuminations celebrate the opening of the National Gallery’s must-see exhibition ‘Picasso: Challenging the Past‘.
Interactive installation work is really becoming really interesting of late as more brands commision work and more design studios are born out of the frustration of working in one medium – really blurring the lines between art/architecture/design/interaction. A great way to introduce yourself to this world is with the upcoming Kinetica Art Fair.
Kinetica Art Fair is developed by Kinetica Museum in partnership with P3 and supported by the Contemporary Art Society.
More than 25 galleries and organisations specialising in kinetic, electronic and new media art are taking part with over 150 exhibiting artists. The Fair will be like no other with living, moving, speaking and performing art.
The Fair provides unparalleled opportunities for the public and collectors alike to view and buy work from this thriving international movement and to participate in the programme of talks, workshops and performances.
It’s on from friday 27th -> monday 2nd in London town and the lineup of speakers and performances looks great.
When you think you’ve seen it all, along comes a visual technique that really makes you sit up and take notice. ‘Datamoshing’ with its seriously terrible moniker, hit the mainstream recently with the new Kayne West ‘Welcome to heartbreak’ video. It breaks in from black into this riot of colour that is so blocky and compressed you think that youtube is actually broken. But it isn’t. It is the intent of the director who employs this techique of glitching out the video and blending the motion together to create something quite mesmerising.
But this effect isn’t new. It is very very very old. If you’ve every played a divx video without the right codec installed, you get these compression artifacts because your computer doesn’t understand how to render the video. I’ve seen it many times when you skip through a video and the frames start to ‘blend’ together, but never investigated if some bright spark had applied it in some creative way. Well, with the Kayne video coming to light, a lot of the design blogs are point towards David OReilly as being one of the first artists/directors to intentionally glitch video.
After immersing myself in the world of compression glitching I’m really loving how this technique instantly puts you on edge and unsettles you. Taking it further and glitching the edits or blowing the compression so much you can’t actually tell what you are looking at really makes you look harder. A brilliant way to subvert the medium.
The NY Times have recently released an API allowing developers to access a huge archive of news and data. This is a perfect example of how an open attitude to intellectual property increases brand awareness because people hack/mould/mash/visualise the data in interesting ways.
The brilliant Jer Thorp has starting putting together some stunning data visualisation with processing.
This is a visualization of the frequency of the words ’socialism’ (orange) and ‘capitalism’ (green) in New York Times articles since 1981.
This visualization reads like a clock. 12:01am is January 1st1984 and 11:59pm is January 1st 2009.
Le Corbusier (1887-1965), widely acclaimed as the most influential architect of the 20th century, was also a celebrated thinker, writer and artist. His architecture and radical ideas for reinventing modern living, from private villas to large-scale social housing to utopian urban plans, still resonate today.
Le Corbusier — The Art of Architecture is the first major survey in London of the internationally renowned architect in more than 20 years. This timely reassessment presents a wealth of original models, interior settings, drawings, furniture, photographs, films, tapestries, paintings, sculpture and books by designed and written by the architect himself.
The exhibition charts how Le Corbusier’s work changed dramatically over the years from the regional vernacular of his early houses in Switzerland, to his iconic Purist villas and interiors of the 1920s, to the dynamic synthesis achieved between his art and architecture as exemplified by his chapel at Ronchamp (1950-55), and his civic buildings in Chandigarh, India (1952-64). Important works by his collaborators, such as Fernand Léger, Amédée Ozenfant Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé are also featured.
Le Corbusier at the Barbican
Barbican celebrates Le Corbusier with a host of special events, including concerts, films and talks by acclaimed speakers. The last truly utopian urban planning project in London and greatly inspired by his aesthetic, Barbican presents the perfect backdrop to explore the man and his legacy.
Thursday Lates
The Gallery is open every Thursday until 10pm. Meet friends at the Gallery cocktail bar and join architects, designers and others for their personal take on the exhibition.
