a hard drive with legs

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

flesh, the new plastic

Tactility it's what it's all about in the work of Jason Briggs. In looking like scrambled up versions of the human body, his sculptural objects almost pornographically refer to the details of raw, naked flesh, with names like 'toe', 'squirt', and 'cinch'. To me though, although they look rather eerie, these objects look quite like complete organisms, or should I say organic products, as well. I can easily imagine this to be future products that almost in a sexual way are able to merge with a human user, to which it could provide certain functionalities in a very intimate, empathic and mutualistic fashion, even aligning its entire physiology to that of the human carrier. What if you'd have to dial a number on your cellphone by sticking your finger into a soft, warm, throbbing hole?

In product design, a trend towards softness and providing a wider range of tactile experiences can also definitely be seen, such as with designs like the strawberry skin juice package by Fukasawa, or the Gel remote control by Panasonic (see below). We are collectively bored with anything resembling modernism with all its coldness. Moreover have we visually been conditioned to like glossy, clean and sharp looking imagery, while this is actually drawing us further and further away from the intrinsic qualities of the body with which we stand into the world, which is undeniably soft, warm, and in a way also dirty. Maybe we should learn to embrace these properties too before we can fully start living, without facades clouding our perception.

Are we ready to succumb to the intimate touch of the machine?

Transformer shoes

I just love transformable objects like these Nike shoes/toys. Our world is so static, cold and distant to us that people are still the most interesting things out there. I would like objects to start pulling tricks on us. To show us who we are, to mock us, to surprise and enlighten us. But most of all, to inspire us.

Dutch Design Week 2008

I've been roaming around some exhibitions this week in Eindhoven, where the Dutch Design Week, or DDW, was taking place again. Here are some photos I made of the works I found most interesting.

From the Design Academy Eindhoven:

A windable flashlight with an extremely clever texture design that indicates how to turn it.

Studies into materials, the first one being very much like Bart Hess' Future Fur project, the second one being directly inspired by biological forms, in this case probably ear cartilage.

A lamp that is 'overgalvanized', since the almost plantlike protrusions growing from the edges of the copper arise from not stopping the galvanization process at the 'right' moment. Thus, here the 'right' moment is being redefined, because the creator of this lamp thinks the beauty can also be in the manufacturing process and there is no need to ignore it or try to control it. I could not agree more but would have liked this lamp to have shown that in a more exaggerated way, with more edges so it would have been like the lamp was covered with a 'fur' of copper hairs. On the top of this post is a closeup of the copper branches growing from the lamp's edges.

From Design United, a joint exhibition between the Technical Universities of Delft, Eindhoven, and Enschede:

Somewhat direct but interesting hybrid between technology and nature. The snake whizzes his tongue when the water boils. Interesting that they call this 'evolutionary product development' too *smirks. Of course it's a simulated, disembodied evolution in the head of the designer, but anyway, it's somewhat interesting to me.

Another design under the label of 'evolutionary product development'. From studying the history of game console interfaces this modular design was extrapolated. The two individual controllers can be used while attached or detached from each other.

A head model to design for Chinese people. The designer got subsidized a million dollars from the Chinese government to measure 2.000 heads with a 3D scanner, and use this data to create tools for designers of for example helmets, to make them accepted in Chinese markets. The commentary in a CNN interview almost caricaturally signifies the overly rational approach to design once more applied: "I like to chop the body up into pieces". With these amounts of money one might ask whether it's not more interesting to develop an adaptive helmet that adjusts its shape through use, for example with growing and shrinking elements.

Some works displayed elsewhere:

GrowBike; a step that can be changed into a small bike, so the growing child can keep using his bike.

A sculptural wall with an organic shape, comprised of small, unique metal elements. It reminds of Kas Oosterhuis' parametric architectural design process, where a CAD file of a unique element is directly fed into the manufacturing machines. It makes for a very interesting form language, however the bright white light it was surrounded in didn't do it much right. I had already seen this one in Helsinki where it was displayed in a dark space with coloured light, making this piece really the protagonist of the space in a beautiful, subtle and harmonic way. The form always needs the right anti-form, and the light always needs the right darkness.

A clever idea to make it possible to use cardboard packages as origami, instead of throwing them away after unpackaging.

An interesting design for handgloves, ideal for praying or sleeping while hanging from a tree branch, in case you feel the primeval need to do such things. Anyway, it's interesting to explore how the physical shape of technology can valuatively bias our activities.

Showed by TNO, a sugar-basin that is laser sintered at various resolutions, with the comment that often it seems that our manufacturing processes are 'perfect', but inherently they are not. Indeed a very true statement, think for example of television; it gives the illusion of being real, but it's just pixels, and that's what the essence of the medium is. And 3D tv only reinforces this, so we become disembodied avatars in an electronic world, being tricked to living in a technological incubator.

A beautiful process of bonding gold to textiles called electroforming.

Interesting garment shown at 'De Krabbedans', graduation work.

A chair inspired by natural forms for a neo Stone Age, it seems.

A digitally controlled singing teakettle, whistling your favourite tune instead of the usual monotonous, thought-shattering tone.

Incorporating what common culture sees as 'disgusting' with what it sees as 'beautiful'. To me personally pearls are just as disgusting to see as dead frogs, by the way. It's an interesting combination that shows in an exaggerated way the extreme alienation from nature of mankind.

An anthropomorphic music player, that takes a pose corresponding to the genre of music it is playing. Unfortunately it can't dance yet, but is sitting like a plant on the window-sill.

An extremely clever design for a chair that can be folded from one single plastic sheet, and is surprisingly sturdy and aesthetically refined.

Dr. Pekoppa to the rescue

Sometimes the only thing you need is someone, or something, that listens to you and understands you in an intuitive way. Something that just responds minimally and does not talk back. As most partners do not fulfill this requirement, the Japanese at SegaToys filled this gap in the market by introducing for once not a robotic fembot, fish or chick, but a cute little plant called Pekoppa.

This wiggly artefact moves its stem and leaves in a surprisingly expressive way, and because it's shape and movements are so ambiguous it gives people all the space to create their own narrative around this artificial plant, especially because it actually reacts to human voices. The following movie mainly shows some Japanese people getting things of their chest with this little healer, but some simply seem to have a nice social conversation with it, or decide to sing a song for it.



It is interesting that this 'device' is marketed under the nickname 'Healing Leafs', and I strongly believe that such developments can have significant psychological impact on society. It is maybe not very noticeable, but humanity is undergoing an enormous psychological crisis, desperately labeling any anomaly as yet another disorder, and rates of suicides, addiction, and depression are staggering. We lost a connection to our selves, are distracted by all sorts of fairly meaningless chunks of data and abstract goals imposed upon us mainly by the mirror of the media, and society, and I believe strongly that technologies can help us reconnect and have us reflect more, in a playful, empowering, and motivating way.

NeoCube

Pretty interesting an artefact, this NeoCube, or should I say artefacts, since it is composed of 216 smaller magnets. Considering this could have been made already back in the 1930s it makes you wonder why such a product gets released only just now. It does have a little bit of a pseudo science-fiction flavour to it, and it's interesting that it seems to follow the simple but more and more ubiquitous idea of having many simple elements make up something more than the sum of its parts.

Seeing the NeoCube in action can be quite inspiring if you relate it to the way products could become reconfigurable by the end-user, or could be calmly self-reconfiguring based on how its user interacts with it.

More on http://www.theneocube.com