If You Could Exhibition

On Friday, we went to see the If You Could Collaborate exhibition, which is the fourth annual If You Could exhibition. The aim of the exhibition is to provide a platform for the finest creatives from all over the world to question their conventional working methods and outcomes. The contributors had been challenged to produce something a little unexpected, by working with a partner of their choosing from any discipline, profession or background. There was no brief to answer, or format to honour – the only limit was the enterprise and imagination of the artists involved, and a liberal 12 month deadline. There was some really nice stuff at the exhibition, I particularly liked these numbers designed by George Hardie, Leonardo Sonnoli & Sara Fanelli. Working with well known children’s illustrator Sara Fanelli and highly regarded graphic designer Leonardo Sonnoli, the trio have used their time to play a game of consequences with numerals.
Visit the website to see other interesting stuff http://www.ifyoucould.co.uk/collaborate.

Maharaja Exhibition

I went to the see the Maharaja exhibition at the V&A. The exhibition explored the extraordinarily rich culture of the Maharajas (great kings). I really liked the exhibition but it's a shame that taking photos wasn't allowed within the exhibition, so I couldn't take any photos. I did buy a booklet of postcards, here are the scans of a few of them.

Ankus (detail)

Elephant goad

Gold with colourless saphires and enamel

Jaipur, around 1870

Golden Thorne of Ranjit Singh

Hafiz Muhammed Multani

Wood and resin with embossed gold

Lahor, about 1820

Canopy (detail)

Pearls, rubies, emeralds and diamonds

on deerskin and silk

Baroda, 1865

Comissioned by Maharaja Khanderao Gaekwad

of Baroda

Private Collection

Rolls-Royce Phantom 1 with 'Hunting' coachwork

Made by Hooper

England, 1927

Specified and ordered by His Highness

the Maharana of Udaipur, shipped to India in 1927

Reproduced by kind permission of Christopher van Essen

For more information about the exhibition visit http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/maharaja/

Networking Project

Today we were given the project brief for the first half of the term. The title of the project is Networking, which is an ideas based self promotion project. The main purpose of this project is to get us thinking as professionals, considering our peers and the design industry. For the project, the whole Networking group was divided into sub-groups of 4s. In our group, it's me, of course, then its Anna Maria, Matt Bolton and Konrad Bednarski. So we introduced ourselves to each other today, and tried to come up with unique ideas to promote ourselves, what we came up with today was to do something related to charity for Haiti and send some 10 clients broken bricks with our blog name spray painted on it. Now I am going to do some research into current collaborative groups and events and try to come up with some more ideas for our group meeting on Thursday.

Decode, Tree 2005

Above are the photos of another interactive installation by Simon Heijdens who often explores the themes of nature and technology in his work, which he displays in urban environments. The branches of the tree blew in response to the wind outside the museum. As you approached the tree, its leaves shed and gathered on floor. They moved as visitors walked among them.
Check the website out at http://www.simonheijdens.com/, there is some really interesting stuff in there.

Decode, Light Rain 2007

Above is the video of an exhibit called Light Rain by a Japanese group named Wow. This was one of my favourite exhibits in the exhibition and I quite enjoyed kind of interacting with it. In Light Rain as you can see in the video activated as someone moved in front of the projection, the responsive graphics triggered by shadows cast on the projection surface. These shadows were detected and movements were integrated into the animations.

Check their website out at http://www.wowlab.net/

Decode, Swarm Draw 2009

Above is the video of an animation by Joshua Davis called Swarm Draw. Davis was one of the first web designers to work with open-source Flash programming. Adobe Flash is a programme that allows designers to create interactive and animated web-pages. Davis has created Swarm Draw within the Hype framework, a network that supports non-specialists programming in Flash.

Check some more of his work out at http://www.joshuadavis.com

Decode, Exquisite Clock 2009

Above are the photos of the Exquisite Clock, which is my favourite piece in the whole exhibition. I was really fascinated by this interesting clock, and I spent most time in the exhibition watching it. I really like the idea behind it which I think is very unique. The clock designed by a group called Fabrica is fed by a live database of images constantly updated by visitors to the website http://www.exquisiteclock.org. These images form an ever-changing series of numbers making up a digital clock face. The numbers are made up of everyday objects photographed by the public and uploaded to create a clock made by a series of networked participants.

Visit Fabrica's website at http://www.fabrica.it