Dezeen Music Project: Berlin videographers False Manners Productions mixed fluids including milk, food colouring and make-up remover to create the cosmic patterns accompanying this track by producer Quenum.
Fernanda Mattos and Federica Marchese of False Manners Productions immediately associated Quenum‘s chilled-out 5AM track with natural phenomena and galactic movements.
“5AM is a very romantic track,” Mattos told Dezeen. “We couldn’t stop associating it with an amazing sunrise, the movement of the stars and all the planetary motion.”
The duo used all the fluids they could find in their homes and experimented with mixing them together to form the desired densities, shapes and patterns.
“We went back to study basic science and interactions between different fluids, densities and compositions,” said Mattos. “We used a lot of different stuff – so many trials that we lost count. Of course we used water, milk, food colouring, different oils. We basically took everything liquid that we had at our places, including a fancy eye make-up removal.”
Movements caused by stirring the concoctions and liquids reacting with one another were filmed close up to capture the detailed patterns flowing past the lens.
The video starts with illuminated large colourful blobs and smaller speckles that could be mistaken for glowing planets and sparkling stars.
The subsequent visuals show colours swirling in layers, creating patterns reminiscent of cosmic dust clouds.
Globules of oil move around each other like orbiting celestial bodies, then coalesce into constellations.
“[The visuals] make you dream, wonder and let you flow through the universe,” said Mattos. “An authentic landscape for such timeless song.”
The video took the pair a full weekend to shoot, then a few more days for editing and post-production.
“We withdrew ourselves into the studio from Friday morning until Monday afternoon, non-stop day and night,” Mattos revealed. “We ended up with so much footage that it took us a few days to prepare the files and select the approved material.”
5AM features on Quenum’s latest LP Face to Face, released with record label Serialism. False Manners Productions also produced the videos for the three other tracks on the album.
Dezeen Music Project: surreal animated creatures made out of plasticine inhabit this music video by Rafael Bonilla for upcoming British band Glass Animals.
Bonilla sculpted the basic shapes of the creatures’ bodies using wire and epoxy, onto which he applied layers of plasticine to create their final forms.
“The band wanted to make sure that the whole video was stop-motion,” he told Dezeen. “I shot the animation one frame at a time. There’s something like 6,500 individual photographs that make up the final product.”
The video features a range of weird and wonderful shape-shifting creatures, including a fox that transforms into a mushroom, which Bonilla envisioned as a kind of surreal documentary.
“I had this story in my head about a dark, undiscovered forest somewhere that has all kinds of strange animals that inhabit it,” he said. “I wanted to structure it like a nature documentary, where you catch glimpses of the different animals to get a sense of the environment as a whole.”
Glass Animals are a quartet from Oxfordshire, England, signed to a new record label called Wolf Tone set up by producer Paul Epworth, who has worked with a diverse range of artists including Adele, Bloc Party and Azealia Banks.
They released their debut AA-side single Black Mambo / Exxus in 2013 and are set to release an EP in 2014.
Cologne 2014: the colour temperature of this series of LED lamps by Rotterdam designer Arnout Meijer can be adjusted to create different moods throughout the day (+ movie).
Meijer presented the project as part of the [D3] Design Talents exhibition at imm cologne trade fair last week.
He designed the Thanks for the Sun series in response to the need for light that fulfils different roles – providing bright white light for working and aiding concentration, and a warmer, more soothing hue to help people relax before bed.
“When you think about a lamp design, you design everything but the light: you design the shade, construction, base, etc but in the end you just screw the light in,” Meijer told Dezeen. “I wanted to turn that around and let light play the main character. So I wanted to make a lamp series where the design and the shape was about the light.”
Each of the acrylic lamps incorporates an inner and outer strip of LEDs that can be adjusted using a dial or slider to change the colour of the light from a bright white to a warmer red or yellow.
Light from the LEDs spreads across the surface and catches lines that have been milled into the transparent acrylic.
The patterns feature wavy lines that transition into smooth shapes as they radiate from the inner form to the outer edge.
“When I decided that I wanted to change between warm and cool light I thought it was important that when the character of the light changes, the character of the lamp changes as well,” explained Meijer.
“When you see a drawing of a light bulb from the end of the nineteenth century there is always a sort of wave-like pattern, which mimics glowing,” the designer added. “Whereas cool white light is more modern and straight, like the hard line of a fluorescent tube.”
The collection comprises a narrow table lamp, a round table table and a larger wall lamp.
Meijer originally designed the lamps during his studies at Design Academy Eindhoven and is now using them as the basis for experiments on a larger scale, which he says will eventually result in a series of limited edition light sculptures.
German designer Jule Waibel has created 25 of her folded paper dresses for fashion brand Bershka’s shop windows around the world (+ movie).
London
Jule Waibel produces the dresses by hand-pleating large sheets of paper into forms that fit the body. Each takes over ten hours to complete.
London
She was contacted by Bershka with an offer to exhibit 25 dresses in as many of its flagship stores in cities including London, Paris, Milan, Istanbul, Osaka and Mexico City.
“I was excited and shocked at the same time,” Waibel told Dezeen, “25 dresses for 25 shops?!”
Waibel scores the paper horizontally and vertically before folding along the seams, then repeats the process for the diagonal.
Amsterdam, London, Berlin
The two halves of the sheet are printed with a different pattern, one for the bodice and the other for the skirt.
Amsterdam
Most of the dresses are printed with colour gradients, while a few are covered with detailed patterns.
Mexico
Different colours and graphics were used for each of the cities, but Waibel was keen to move away from stereotypical shades and motifs such as the ones used in the countries’ flags.
Berlin
“I found it too obvious to use the typical colours and instead I wanted to try something different,” she explained. “I figured that the people must be bored with seeing the same style all the time.”
Singapore
Her favourites are the black and white design in Paris, the dress patterned with tiny black and orange fish in Berlin and the installation on London’s Oxford Street that appears to glow like lava.
Milan
Waibel and her team spent just over a week producing the garments and a set of accessories at a studio in Barcelona.
Osaka
“Together with my supportive pleating assistants we managed to fold 25 dresses, two bags and two umbrellas within eight tough working days!” she said.
The origami dresses will be installed until 31 January.
Dezeen Music Project: in this music video by animation designer Nick Cobby, billowing forms are used to visualise a gentle piano solo and spiky geometric shapes appear when electronic sounds are played over the top.
Nick Cobby created contrasting visuals for the different styles heard in the track Fragments of Self, created by musician Max Cooper and featuring pianist Tom Hodge.
Circular forms expand one after another in time with the piano keys and disperse into alien-like tentacles, lines and dots as the notes resonate.
When the electronic glitches kick in, the visuals dramatically change into sharp, spiky shapes that pulse and distort with the beat.
“The track hit me as having two very different styles to it, so I wanted to create two polar opposite visuals – one that followed the piano and one that came in with the glitch effects,” Cobby told Dezeen.
“The piano was more of a free-flowing sound so I wanted some kind of natural or organic element, while the harsh glitch needed to be mechanical, sharper and more defined.”
The movie is purely black and white until muted colours appear as the piano is reintroduced on its own. The colour flickers off again towards the end of the track.
“It didn’t strike me as a video that should have lush colour,” Cobby said, “except for the middle part of the track when the piano comes back in after all the glitch. It sounds so peaceful and I wanted some colour to subtly come in to help signify that.”
“I used a plugin [for visualisation software Particular] called Sound Keys to monitor the waveform of the piano to create the pulses – but with a lot of manual keyframing as well to tweak it,” he said. “I’m a big fan of just using one or two methods to create a whole video, as I think the restriction helps me to be more creative.”
“I wanted the viewer to feel very calm at one point then really on edge the next,” Cobby added. “That’s how I felt when I heard the track and what I really liked about it, so hopefully that comes across.”
The resident of a compact apartment in Madrid demonstrates how she can rearrange walls and pull furniture out of the ceiling in this movie by photographer and filmmaker Miguel de Guzmán.
Designed by Spanish studio Elii Architects, the Didomestic apartment occupies the loft of an old building, so it was designed to make optimal use of space by creating flexible rooms that can be adapted for different activities.
Sliding pink partitions allow the main floor to be either opened up or divided into a series of smaller spaces, while a new mezzanine loft provides a bedroom where floor panels hinge open to reveal a vanity mirror, toiletry storage and a tea station.
The architects also added several fun elements to tailor the space to the resident’s lifestyle; a hammock, playground swing and disco ball all fold down from the ceiling, while a folding surface serves as a cocktail bar or ironing board.
“Every house is a theatre,” explained the architects. “Your house can be a dance floor one day and a tea room the next.”
The movie imagines a complete day in the life of the apartment’s inhabitant, from the moment she wakes up in the morning to the end of an evening spent with a friend.
“The idea was to show all the different spaces and mechanisms in a narrative way,” said De Guzmán.
Getting dressed in the morning, the resident reveals wardrobes built into one of the walls. Later, she invites a friend round for a meal and they dine at a picnic table that lowers down from the kitchen ceiling.
A rotating handle on the wall controls the pulleys needed to bring this furniture down from overhead, while other handles can be used to reveal shelving and fans.
A metal staircase connecting the two levels is contained within a core at the centre of the apartment and is coloured in a vivid shade of turquoise.
A shower room lined with small hexagonal tiles is located to the rear of the kitchen, plus there’s a bathroom on the mezzanine floor directly above.
Here’s a project description from Elii Architects:
Project for the complete refurbishment of an attic in downtown Madrid
The scope of the project covers from the development of a customised functional proposal for a user that is turning a new leaf to the rehabilitation of the structure, the insulation, the facilities and the modernisation of the existing construction systems.
The selected approach removes all obstacles from the floor to provide the greatest possible flexibility. Two basic elements are used: firstly, the central core, comprising the staircase, some shelves and the larder. The core is at the centre of the main space under the mansard roof. It connects the access floor and the space under the roof and allows the natural lighting coming through the roof into the living room. Secondly, there are two side strips for the functional elements (kitchen, bathroom, storage space and domestic appliances).
This basic arrangement is complemented by two strategies that provide flexibility to the domestic spaces.
Firstly, the moving panels that are integrated into the core and run along guide rails. These panels can be used to create different arrangements, such as adding an extra room for a guest, separating the kitchen from the living room area or opening the whole floor for a party. The panels have transparent sections so that the natural lighting coming through the mansard roof can reach this space.
Secondly, the secret trap doors that are integrated into the ceiling of the access floor and into the floor of the mezzanine and that house the rest of the domestic functions. The ceiling doors are opened with handles fitted on the walls. These handles actuate pulleys that lower part of the furniture (such as tables and the picnic benches, a swing or the hammock) or some complementary functions and objects (such as the disco ball, the fans to chill out on the hammock or an extra shelf for the guest room).
In addition, the floor of the space under the roof has a series of invisible doors that can be opened to alter the functionality of the raised space where the bedroom area is (these spaces house the dressing table, the tea room and the storage spaces for the bathroom).
All these elements are integrated within the floor and the ceiling and they appear and disappear at the user’s whim. The secret trap doors and the sliding panels complement the basic configuration, fit the needs of the moment and provide different home layout combinations.
Rotterdam designer David Derksen has decorated a set of plates by employing the oscillations of a pendulum to drip patterns of paint (+ movie).
The patterns on Derksen‘s prototype Oscillation Plates were created using both the mathematical shapes of the pendulum’s swing and the human element of positioning and initiating the movement.
“A beautiful pattern that is formed under the influence of gravity, which is normally hidden, is now literally shown,” Derksen told Dezeen. “On one hand it follows the mathematical laws of gravity, on the other hand it is very playful.”
The designer created the brass pendulum so it could hold and drip the right amount of paint. “We had to adjust the size of the hole to the viscosity of the paint, to create a nice thin, constant paint flow,” he said. “It also needs to have enough mass for making a constant oscillation.”
The pendulum contained enough acrylic paint to decorate one set of plates. After the first push, the pendulum released a constant flow of black paint onto the surface of the plates in overlapping oval shapes.
Every rotation added to the pattern, creating criss-crossing lines and darker areas where the pendulum changed direction. The position and swing orientation was then changed for a second round, then the plates were left to dry.
The plates are to be developed by a ceramic specialist and made available for the VIVID Gallery in Rotterdam.
Here is some more information from the designer:
Oscillation Plates
With gravity as the acting force, these plates are decorated by a pendulum. The patterns are a graphic representation of the oscillation of a pendulum, revealing a hidden pattern that exist in nature.
The result is a play between the mathematical rules of the natural oscillation and the randomness of the human that initiates the swing of the pendulum. This combination makes each plate unique.
The 365 wooden sledges used to construct this Christmas tree in Budapest by Hungarian designers Hello Wood will be given to a local children’s charity following the festive period (+ movie).
Hello Wood designed the 11-metre-tall structure for a site in front of the Palace of Arts in Budapest and spent one week assembling the wooden frame then fixing the sledges to it.
Two weeks after Christmas the tree will be disassembled and the sledges distributed to local children living in homes operated by SOS Children’s Village, a charity that helps families care for their children and provides accommodation and support for orphaned and abandoned children around the world.
“We wanted to create a temporary installation, which is not only spectacular, but its main elements remain usable so they can be distributed among kids,” explained Andras Huszar of Hello Wood. “For us, this is the point of social awareness: you don’t only show something, but at the same time you give something unique.”
A steel base weighing 4.5 tons anchors the wooden framework, which is made from sections that were part assembled off-site and lifted into place using a crane.
The sledges were then fixed to the frame by a team who used abseiling equipment to suspend themselves from the top of the tree as they worked their way around the conical structure.
“We were thinking a lot about what the secret of an original Christmas decoration is,” David Raday of Hello Wood said. “The sledges were the good choice, because they are symbolising Christmas, but free from the commercial Christmas clichés and the general bad taste that comes with them.”
Visitors are able to step inside the installation and look up at the geometric arrangement of wooden struts, which creates a pattern that resembles the fractal form of a snowflake.
At night the sculpture is illuminated by spotlights positioned around its base that project different colours onto its surface.
Hello Wood designers build christmas tree to sledge away
Inhabitants of SOS Children’s Village receive unique present
Designers of Budapest based Hello Wood built a huge christmas tree made of 365 sledges in front of the Palace of Arts at the riverbank of the Danube. It is an exceptional piece of art and architecture marking the Christmas period. After the holiday season all the sledges will be given to the kids living in the homes of SOS Children’s Village thanks to Hungarian Telekom.
Christmas is coming. Lights are flashing in the streets, people are carrying big red and green boxes, bright plastic snowflakes are hanging in the hall of shopping malls. Big companies send out their messengers to take presents to everybody, from the youngest to the oldest, supposing that some chocolate bars, candies or a funny t-shirt can cheer them up.
Hungarian designers of Hello Wood, known for their social awareness and tasteful approach, rethought the idea of Christmas present, and put it in the right context. They built a huge Christmas tree made of 365 sledges, which will be given to children two weeks after Christmas.
“We wanted to create a temporary installation, which is not only spectacular, but its main elements remain usable so they can be distributed among kids. For us, this is the point of social awareness: you don’t only show something, but at the same time you give something unique” – says Andras Huszar, architect of Hello Wood about the installation.
The Christmas tree was built in a week. Visitors can step in and have a look at the construction from the inside. The base is made of steel, it weights 4,5 tons, so the construction is perfectly safe from the heavy winds of winter. The four stems of the installation hold 325 kilograms each. First, the carpenters of Hello Wood made the 10,5 meters tall wooden frame, which was brought to the scene, where it was put together with the help of a crane and the use of welding techniques. Then came the alpinists of Hello Wood, who were working on the installation for four consecutive days, fixing the sledges on the wooden frame while hanging down from the top of the tree. Although the installation is pretty heavy, it looks lightsome: if you step inside, it feels like you are in the middle of a huge snowflake.
Maxim Bakos, one of the founders of Hello Wood originally wanted to create a whole forest made of sledges, then came the idea to create a tree instead of a forest. “We were thinking a lot about what the secret of an original Christmas decoration is. The sledges were the good choice, because they are symbolising Christmas, but free from the commercial Christmas clichés and the general bad taste that comes with them.” – says David Raday, creative leader of Hello Wood, one of the originators of the concept.
Hello Wood is best known for its flagship event, a one week long art camp curated by founder Peter Pozsar every summer. It is not by chance that they co-operated with Palace Of Arts in creating the installation. One of the goals of the Palace of Arts is to work together with young and creative designers and architects. The installation of Hello Wood is more than just a nice piece of young creativity, because thanks to Hungarian Telekom, the sledges will be given to the inhabitants of the SOS Children’s Village.
This movie shows shoppers walking under and sitting beneath the Christmas lights installed above public crossings and squares in central Berlin by German studio Brut Deluxe.
Brut Deluxe created a series of three festive light installations to hang along the shopping avenue of Kurfürstendamm.
“Rather than typical decorations that represent Christmas through objects or symbols contemplated from the outside, we wanted to create a space that can be entered and experienced,” said the design studio.
One of the installations features five illuminated cubes hanging at different angles in the middle of a traffic crossing.
A patterned dome comprising segments of wavy lights and spanning 7.5 metres appears to hover over Joachimstaler Platz.
At the traffic crossing at Knesebeckstrasse, a dense collection of 50 wavy light strings are suspended vertically above pedestrians.
The installations will be in place until 6 January. Photography and movie are by Miguel de Guzmán.
Here is some information from the designer:
Weihnachtsbeleuchtung Kurfürstendamm, Berlin 2013 christmas lights, Berlin 2013
Three light installations were realised on Kurfürstendamm: the first, a huge light dome with a diameter of 7.5m, at Joachimstaler Platz, the second consisting of five big three-dimensional light cubes at the crossing with Uhlandstrasse, and the third, an artificial landscape build of 50 light shrubs, at the crossing with Knesebeckstrasse.
What all three installations have in common is that we want to achieve an atmospheric effect with them. Rather than typical decorations that represent Christmas through objects or symbols that are contemplated from the outside, we want to create a space that can be entered and experienced.
We imagine this artificial space in the city as a place of retreat, similar to an imaginary clearance in a forest.
The atmosphere surrounding the spectator is produced only with light that alters its density and intensity constantly through the visitor’s movement and changing perspective.
The realised landscapes of light are inspired by images and situations recalled from our memory that we associate with Christmas and abstractly convert to light.
Dezeen Music Project: a choir of outdated computer equipment and games consoles performs a rendition of Carol of the Bells in this music video by Glasgow filmmaker James Houston.
Houston created the video as a Christmas e-card from The Glasgow School of Art, from which he graduated in 2008. “I thought it would be wise to do a song or a track,” Houston told Dezeen. “Music is the best way to get festive.”
He used speech synthesis on some of the machines to make them sing while the other consoles sound the four repeated notes from the tune of Carol of the Bells, a Christmas carol composed in the early twentieth century.
Houston wanted to continue his work using old technology to create sounds and images, and combine it with showcasing his old Christmas gifts: “The idea was to get a collection of old Christmas presents, stuff that I’ve been given over the years and try to make music out of that.”
All the machines are his own apart from a couple of items he sourced via Twitter. Old Apple Mac computers, a Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum + 1 and a SEGA Mega Drive are among the choir. The ensemble sings lyrics by writers Robert Florence and Philip Larkin about gaming at Christmas, which Houston did a lot as a child.
“Christmas for me is mostly about gaming,” he explained. “Each Christmas is delineated with whatever game I was playing at the time.” The video was filmed in The Glasgow School of Art school’s Mackintosh Library, where the machines were unpacked and arranged on a table among Christmas decorations before playing the festive song.
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