The Interactive Youth exhibition at the Material Connexion will be hosting a closing party tomorrow, Thursday at their Chelsea location. The exhibit features work by Anne Hong, Andrew Schneider, Ron and Nick Sears and my self. If you plan on coming please RSVP. If you can't make the party, Friday is the last day of the show! Here's some press coverage about the exhibition:

Time Out New York
Core 77
NYU Tisch
Material Connexion Press Release

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Last August I had sailor mouth....

Labels: shows materialconnexion alphabet machine mutherboard

This past weekend I wandered into the Power House Arena in DUMBO. The exhibition All Writes Reserved displays graffiti artists Retina, Revok, and Saber. The work certainly does rise above the rest (of the regular street are literally right outside the door). The work is particularly impressive especially from an aesthetic and typographic perspective.

As I strolled by the window display I couldn't help but recognize the friendly logos of the sponsors: Boost Mobile. In fact the official title of the event is Boost Mobile Presents: All Writes Reserved and the artists are part of the Boosted Artist Content Collaborators (yes, Boost has their very own graffiti crew).

I wasn't put back by this. Corporate sponsorship of art and galleries if fairly common (especially for art without a message). In fact the relationship between artists and corporate entities is ages old. One cold argue that historically the church has played the role of corporations and that the commission Michaelangelo received for the Sistine Chapel is no different. However, I couldn't help but think that Boost Mobile isn't so much concerned with creating a masterpiece to adorn the ceilings of their Irvine California office park, as they are in using artist as vehicles, as a commodity for cool.

Another example of where I was struck by corporations tapping the cool associated with art, artists and the gallery scene was Tiger Translate. The event, sponsored by Tiger beer and HP, sounds like a good idea. Tiger provides the beer, HP provides the printing, the artists get a space to show work, we all have have an intoxicated group hug, everyone goes home happy.

While at their New York event, I was particularly put off by the HP sales women demoing their awesome new printer in the 'gallery'. Is this really a gallery anymore? Or, had this corporate sponsorship altered the gallery space and turned it into, oh I don't know say, a show room? Corporate sponsorship doesn't seem to have the same effect at large institutions like MOMA where corporate sponsorship is common. There are no sales people showing you a printer after you walk away from Starry Night (and there shouldn't be).

With corporate sponsorship comes a fine line between genuine interest in supporting the arts and the commoditization of cool. Artists need to be at least aware of this for the intent of the later is riding the artists like a style wave. The sad part is that many of the participants at Tiger Translate didn't seem to know or care that they were being used to sell beer. And as far as the graffiti artists are concerned, do they know they have essentially created ads for mobile phones? As echoed in New York magazine: Where is the political street art? Was is sucked up by corporate interests? What happened to graffiti with a message?

A few ITP Projects made it into the BBC: Smart fabrics hit the catwalk.

Tomorrow, I'm finally heading over to Brooklyn Bridge Park to check out the pool.

If you missed the Daft Punk concert last night in Coney Island, or, made the concert and can't get enough of the robotic super group their latest and greatest avant guard film Electroma opens tonight at the Landmark Sunshine (143 E Houston, 212-330-8182).

Is it me or does the Daft Punk stage design look remarkably like Nokia Prism post from yesterday? Robotic rock stars and cellphones. Go figure...

Nokia releases Prism in attempts to lure Tron.

The International Yo-Yo Open goes down in NYC this weekend. Special appearance by Duncan's Yo-Yo Crew and B-Boy Neo. I'm thinking I need a dash in my name.

Paul Smith kicked off his sample sale earlier today. Its already a bit picked over but good deals are still to be had for the diggers.

In contest news Lantronix kicked off their Wireless Design Contest

And in more phone news Nokia makes a grab for the mobile social network by jumping in the Mosh pit.

From Core77:

"Hacking the Physical World: What we taught software designers, and what they're trying to teach us"

The author, Carl Alviani, is an industrial designer and writer who recently attended a conference on collaboration. The title drew me in for what I thought would be a discussion of industrial design and physical computing. Written form the perspective of an industrial designer, Alviani's article brings up many issues regarding cultural semantics, the design process (as applied to all disciplines) and the dichotomy seen while standing on the edge of the virtual (software) and physical environments.

Immediately the author brings up semantic problems when describing his job as a 'product designer' and how most people think he designs software. Alviani asks: "It raises a deeply interesting question though: why the confusion in the first place?" Attempts to define invention in the market place have a habit of re-appropriating what we know with 'the new'. For example, Information Architect. Personally, the term Information Architect (IA) has always bothered me not because I believe its inaccurate, rather, because the majority of IA's I've worked with have no understanding of the Architectural principles borrowed which define their profession. Alviani gives many others examples terms for software development which have borrowed form their physical counterparts.

Partially, the abstraction and re-appropriation of titles (and terms) is a reflection of software itself being and inherent abstract representation. Additionally, as new technology becomes main stream we see it as serving a similar purpose and therefor use words we already understand. Take 'dial' for example. There are no more 'dials' on phones anymore, especially mobile devices, however we sill 'dial' numbers quite regularly. Alviani writes:

"A more subtle but maybe more useful explanation is that digital creation has borrowed heavily from physical creation's paradigm. "

Alviani goes on to look for ways to adapt software development models like Agile to industrial design practices. Part of the flaw in doing so, as the author quickly finds, is that iteration is difficult on physical things especially finalized products. There is no command z or copy, paste for things (yet). However, I would argue that the Industrial Design process could learn from software development strategies like Agile. However the mapping would not be a one to one relationship. This is later acknowledged by the author admitting that there are indeed parallels like "getting physical fast".

As we continue "replacing industry with technology and service", the reality is that we can not live in a modern society without both physical and virtual (software) products. The author's ending is interesting because he sees a reversal in the flow of borrowing and states that it may be time for the design process of physical objects to borrow from software product development processes. Does this mean software development has matured? After all the software development industry is still relatively very young in comparison. Regardless of the direction, borrowing is here to stay in the semantic convolutions of our job titles, vernacular terminology, and process we use to design the products we create.

Labels: article software