Hylozoic ground

Architect/artist Philip Beesley, in collaboration with Rob Gorbet and Rachel Armstrong, has created a new installation based on a previous one called 'hylozoic soil.' Like that one, this one invites people into a living, breathing space, that responds to its visitors. This invites people to get out of their individuality for a while, merge with the space, and release into the aliveness of the present moment.

Organic aesthetics of movement

Yury Dovganyuk calls himself a 'motion designer', and part of his work is to capture organic, beautiful movements into either static or dynamic products. I wanted to briefly share his original and experimental work with you.

The image you see on top is a concept for a cup that seems like it's about to do a pirouette. Maybe it will soon be possible to produce this one in ceramic through a rapid manufacturing technique.

The following is a table concept that is organic in a way that makes the object seem interesting from all angles and elicit a great spatial experience.





My personal favorite in terms of aesthetics is a clock concept that augments the kinetics of the clock hands through rods that slide in and out of the clock and follow the hands. Moving all the rods with individual motors would make this an utterly expensive and energy consuming product. I wonder if it can work through powerful magnets integrated into a ring around the clock, and an ingenious way to reduce friction and sounds. Maybe Yuri can take this one a little further, and have a clock manufacturer pick it up. Watch the clock in action in the movie below.

Kinetic building skin

The Kinetower by Kinetura is probably one of the best present-day examples of the potential of moving architecture. It has a dynamic building facade that is composed of a pattern of movable elements. These can respond to the needs of the moment by curling up and down, thus either closing or opening the building up.



It seems that the idea of a dynamic skin is one of the first aspects of technology that has it move towards a truly interconnected, physically intelligent, almost biological state. We are seeing the living skin more in architecture, such as in the Geotube by Faulders Studio, and it is also trickling down into automotive design, with the BMW Gina and subtly with the Renault Dezir, as well as into product design such as in the works of Karim Rashid and Ross Lovegrove. I think we can only celebrate this, immerse ourselves into the aesthetics of it, as well as incorporate it into our own creative processes where possible.

a hard drive with legs

Here's an interesting application for giving products simple physical behaviors.

Living chairs

Too astounding to remain in the unblogged realms of the datasphere is Arthur Bodolec's living chair. It seems to be a black box, but when you sit on it, the backrest and even armrests pop up. What I particularly like is the chair being independent of stored energy in the chair itself, being powered completely by the sitter-to-be. And so the evolution towards a living world is slowly seeping ahead still. To see a prototype of the 'Jack' chair in action, skip the following movie to where the marker reaches 1:00.

kinetic dress beautifully shows wearer's stress patterns

Kerry Jia Yi Lin has created a great wearable electronics prototype with her dress that shows the "emotional and non-emotional stress of the wearer". Not being entirely sure about what that means, this design just speaks for itself. Like all great design does.

This dress is such a splendid example of how wearable electronics can take human embodiment further, and even how it can change our entire lives and mindsets. This kind of directly interactive systems that function on the background of awareness and alter our embodiment can change the whole way in which we interact with the world, how we feel about it and how we reflect on things. They take us back to a mindset where we are fully connected to the things around us, where we come to intuitively come to understand that every of our actions, even every of our thoughts, is as relevant as any other, and has a continuous effect on our world. They rephysicalize us as a kind of hybrid animals in an artificial lifeworld, that will be richer and more beautiful that anyone could have ever dreamt of. This dress truly is a new organ of our body, and that I think is a beautiful idea to keep in mind while developing products.



I hope that Jia Yi will make another movie of her work, one that just shows the dress being worn in relevant contexts, without any further explanation. Show us what the dress can do, and moreover, emphasize its aesthetics of movement. Let it be of highly professional quality, ready to go into the media, and simply let it sell the dress, nothing else. 30 Seconds is enough for an impactful little clip. I will post it here too, of course.