L’artiste coréen Do Ho Suh a récemment présenté au National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art de Seoul, Home Within Home. Une installation géante qui représente 2 anciennes résidences de l’artiste imbriquée l’une dans l’autre. Une création surprenante à découvrir jusqu’au 11 mai en Corée du Sud.
A l’occasion du jeu vidéo Gran Turismo 6 sortant sur Playstation 3 pour le mois décembre, voici ce nouveau concept-car du constructeur Mercedes-Benz intitulée le Vision Gran Turismo. Une création unique et exclusive pour célébrer les 15 ans de la saga du jeu. Plus d’images et la vidéo de présentation dans la suite.
Paris designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have installed a chandelier at the entrance to the Château de Versailles, France, comprising looping cords of illuminated crystal (+ movie).
The Gabriel Chandelier by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec is the first permanent contemporary artwork to be installed at the Château de Versailles and hangs over the Gabriel Staircase at the main entrance to the palace.
“We thought that in the final analysis it was not perhaps necessary to give a delineated form to this piece of lighting but rather to try to arrange it so that the form naturally found its line from gravity,” said the designers.
“Because it is effectively the number of pieces of crystal which make it up, the weight and the length determine this form rather than a curve which we would have drawn.”
Manufactured by crystal brand Swarovski, the 12-metre-high installation comprises 800 crystal modules threaded around a stainless steel skeleton containing an LED lighting system.
“It seemed to us that crystal was the best response because, historically, all the chandeliers at Versailles were made with this material,” the designers added. “This would ensure a link between past and present.”
The Gabriel Staircase was conceived by french architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1772 but was never completed. Work resumed in the 1980s, then Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec won the commission to create a permanent artwork to adorn and illuminate the finished staircase through a competition launched in 2011.
Photography is by Studio Bouroullec.
Film is by Juriaan Booij.
Here’s some more information from the designers:
A dramatic new chandelier created by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec with the support and expertise of Swarovski will light up the entrance to the King’s Grand Apartments at the Palace of Versailles from November 2013.
Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec won the commission through a competition launched in 2011 by the Public Administration of the Palace, Museum and State Property Department for Versailles to create a permanent mobile artwork to adorn and illuminate the grand Gabriel Staircase at the main entrance to the palace.
The award-winning designers created a majestic chandelier made of Swarovski crystal whose sweeping grace and modern lines integrate harmoniously with the historically charged location. The piece, which is over 12 metres high, is suspended in loops from the ceiling like a luminous transparent chain. It comprises three interlacing strands, each made of hundreds of Swarovski crystals illuminated by luminous LED light-sources which diffuse a gentle, continuous and encircling light.
These immense, supple lines form an organic design ruled by the laws of gravity which each viewer will experience differently as they gradually ascend the two flights of steps of the Staircase.
To create the chandelier, the designers chose crystal, the material traditionally used in the making of chandeliers for ceremonial rooms, in order to establish a strong link between the past and the present. They called upon the expertise and technological mastery of Swarovski, the prestigious Austrian crystal business, which has a longstanding collaborative relationship with the brothers and has supported the Palace of Versailles for more than 30 years.
Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s creation is a delicate yet complex alliance of crystal and innovative lighting, two areas in which Swarovski has long become the point of reference. The project forms part of Swarovski’s major programme of cultural support and ongoing patronage of art and design.
The Gabriel Staircase, a monumental space conceived by Ange- Jacques Gabriel in 1772, was never completed. Work resumed in the 1980s, but the finished staircase lacked a focal point. The installation of the ‘Gabriel Chandelier’ in November will enrich these historic surroundings, emphasising the entrance to the Grand Apartments whilst preserving the unique nature of the space.
The post Gabriel Chandelier at the Château de Versailles
by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec appeared first on Dezeen.
In an information-obsessed society, a new crop of artists is representing visual data in engaging, imaginative ways. In June, we were pleased to announce this year’s Information is Beautiful Awards. It’s a competition, open to the public, that was founded last year…
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by Tariq Dixon Poler is the self-proclaimed maker of “the world’s highest standard of stuff.” Founded in 2010 by longtime buddies Benji Wagner and Kharma Vella, Poler makes stylish and well-priced wares for the everyday…
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La boutique polonaise située à Poznan spécialisée dans la vente de chaussures RunColors Sneaker Store a demandé aux équipes de Mode:lina Architekci de repenser la décoration intérieure. Le résultat est d’une grande beauté, utilisant des cordes de couleurs pour donner un aspect futuriste et moderne au lieu.
Dutch Design Week 2013: Portuguese designer Susana Soares has developed a device for detecting cancer and other serious diseases using trained bees ( + slideshow).
The bees are placed in a glass chamber into which the patient exhales; the bees fly into a smaller secondary chamber if they detect cancer.
“Trained bees only rush into the smaller chamber if they can detect the odour on the patient’s breath that they have been trained to target,” explained Soares, who presented her Bee’s project at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven last month.
Scientists have found that honey bees – Apis mellifera – have an extraordinary sense of smell that is more acute than that of a sniffer dog and can detect airborne molecules in the parts-per-trillion range.
Bees can be trained to detect specific chemical odours, including the biomarkers associated with diseases such as tuberculosis, lung, skin and pancreatic cancer.
Bees have also been trained to detect explosives and a company called Insectinel is training “sniffer bees” to work in counter-terrorist operations.
“The bees can be trained within 10 minutes,” explains Soares. “Training simply consists of exposing the bees to a specific odour and then feeding them with a solution of water and sugar, therefore they associate that odour with a food reward.”
Once trained, the bees will remember the odour for their entire lives, provided they are always rewarded with sugar. Bees live for six weeks on average.
“There’s plenty of interest in the project especially from charities and further applications as a cost effective early detection of illness, specifically in developing countries,” Soares said.
Here is a project description by Susana Soares:
Bee’s / Project
Bee’s explores how we might co-habit with natural biological systems and use their potential to increase our perceptive abilities.
The objects facilitate bees’ odour detection abilities in human breath. Bees can be trained within 10 minutes using Pavlov’s reflex to target a wide range of natural and man-made chemicals and odours, including the biomarkers associated with certain diseases.
The aim of the project is to develop upon current technological research by using design to translate the outcome into systems and objects that people can understand and use, engendering significant adjustments in their lives and mind set.
How it works
The glass objects have two enclosures: a smaller chamber that serves as the diagnosis space and a bigger chamber where previously trained bees are kept for the short period of time necessary for them to detect general health. People exhale into the smaller chamber and the bees rush into it if they detect on the breath the odour that they where trained to target.
What can bees detect?
Scientific research demonstrated that bees can diagnose accurately at an early stage a vast variety of diseases, such as: tuberculosis, lung and skin cancer, and diabetes.
Precise object
The outer curved tube helps bees avoid from flying accidentally into the interior diagnosis chamber, making for a more precise result. The tubes connected to the small chamber create condensation, so that exhalation is visible.
Detecting chemicals in the axilla
Apocrine glands are known to contain pheromones that retain information about a person’s health that bees antennae can identify.
The bee clinic
These diagnostic tools would be part of system that uses bees as a biosensor.
The systems implies:
– A bee centre: a structure that facilitates the technologic potential of bees. Within the centre is a beefarm, a training centre, a research lab and a healthcae centre.
– Training centre: courses can be taken on beetraining where bees are collected and trained by beetrainers. These are specialists that learn beetraining techniques to be used in a large scope of applications, including diagnosing diseases.
– BEE clinic: bees are used at the clinic for screening tests. These insects are very accurate in early medical diagnosis through detection on a person’s breath. Bees are a sustainable and valuable resource. After performing the diagnose in the clinic they are released, returning to their beehive.
Bee training
Bees can be easily trained using Pavlov’s reflex to target a wide range of natural and man-made chemicals odours including the biomarkers associated with certain diseases. The training consists in baffling the bees with a specific odour and feeding them with a solution of water and sugar, therefore they associate that odour with a food reward.
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“in ten minutes” says designer appeared first on Dezeen.
Focus sur la société Manta qui a ouvert récemment la première chambre d’hôtel sous-marine avec ce Manta Resort situé à Zanzibar. Des images montrant ce projet « Manta Underwater Room » et ce lieu insolite d’une incroyable beauté, à découvrir en détails dans la suite de l’article.
Bacteria from personalities including artist Olafur Eliasson, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and chef Michael Pollan have been used to make human cheese as part of an exhibition about synthetic biology in Dublin.
American scientist Christina Agapakis and Norwegian scent expert Sissel Tolaas collected bacteria from Obrist’s nose, Eliasson’s tears and Pollan’s belly button and used them to make the artisanal dairy products.
“We are presenting a set of cheeses made using bacteria from the human body,” Agapakis told Dezeen. “Everybody has a unique and diverse set of bacteria living on their skin that can be amplified using techniques from microbiology and grown directly in milk to form and flavour each cheese.”
The project, called Selfmade, features eleven cheeses in total, made from bacterial cultures harvested from the skin of artists, scientists, anthropologists, and cheese makers using sterile cotton swabs that were sent to the donors.
The cheeses each smell, and taste, of the body odour of the donor, Agapakis said.
“It’s no surprise that sometimes cheese odours and body odours are similar,” she explained. “But when we started working together we were surprised by how not only do cheese and smelly body parts like feet share similar odour molecules but also have similar microbial populations.”
The project aims to demonstrate how living organisms that exist in the body also exist in food, and vice versa, and how microbiology can be used to harness and manipulate such organisms to create synthetic microbes with enhanced properties.
“Despite [their] chemical and biological similarities, there are obviously very different cultural and emotional responses to stinky cheese and stinky feet,” said Agapakis. “By making cheese directly from the microbes on the body, we want to highlight these bacterial connections as well as to question and potentially expand the role of both odours and microbes in our lives.”
“Nobody will eat these cheeses, but we hope that the cheese can inspire new conversations about our relationship to the body and to our bacteria.”
The cheeses form part of the Grow Your Own – Life After Nature exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin.
The show also features curator Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s proposal to create synthetic creatures to help solve environmental problems and a concept for humans giving birth to animals such as dolphins that they could then eat.
In their artistic statement about the project, Agapakis and Tolaas say they hope to draw attention to the importance and potential of bacteria and to overcome a cultural fear of micro-organisms.
“Can knowledge and tolerance of bacterial cultures in our food improve tolerance of the bacteria on our bodies?” they write. “How do humans cultivate and value bacterial cultures on cheeses and fermented foods? How will synthetic biology change with a better understanding of how species of bacteria work together in nature as opposed to the pure cultures of the lab?”
Grow Your Own – Life After Nature is at the Science Gallery in Dublin until 19 January 2014.
Here’s some more info from Agapakis and Tolaas:
Selfmade
The growing awareness of human microbial ecology and its influence on health is leading to wider understanding of the body as a superorganism; a collection of human and microbial cells that interact in numerous and unexpected ways. In this paradigm, notions of self and other, and of health and disease, are shifting to accommodate more ecological concepts of diversity and symbiosis.
Selfmade is a series of ‘microbial sketches’, portraits reflecting an individual’s microbial landscape in a unique cheese. Each cheese is crafted from starter cultures sampled from the skin of a different person. Isolated microbial strains were identified and characterised using microbiological techniques and 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing. Like the human body, each cheese has a unique set of microbes that metabolically shape a unique odour.
Cheese odours were sampled and characterised using headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis, a technique used to identify and/or quantify volatile organic compounds present in a sample. A short film documenting the process of cheesemaking, along with interviews of the bacterial donors accompanies the cheese display and the data from microbiological and odour analysis. Visitors to the gallery are exposed to the diversity of life in their food and bodies, and a diversity of visions for future synthetic biologies.
This project explores possibilities for a relational synthetic biology through the practices of cheesemaking. Cheesemaking involves a complex coordination of microbial life, promoting the growth of beneficial Lactobacillus strains that protect milk from more dangerous spoilage and the ecologies of microbes on the rind that create the prized flavours of different cheese varieties.
Those involved with synthetic biology are intent on transforming microbes into the useful machines of a new bioeconomy. In the short term, this is accomplished by isolating engineered strains and limiting microbial interactions in stainless steel reactors. However, the appeal of potential medium-term applications in the production of foods, environmental biosensors, or ‘smart’ living therapeutics demonstrates the power of thinking beyond the bioreactor.
Such approaches require addressing ecological concerns about the safety and complexity of interactions with other organisms, highlighting the need for a more relational synthetic biology. Understanding the biological networks inside cells as well as the networks of organisms, regulatory systems, economic structures, and cultural practices that shape the life of an engineered organism in the world will be crucial to the development of synthetic biologies in the long term.
Artist’s Statement
We not only live in a biological world surrounded by rich communities of microorganisms, but in a cultural world that emphasises total antisepsis. The intersection of our interests in smell and microbial communities led us to focus on cheese as a ‘model organism’. Many of the stinkiest cheeses are hosts to species of bacteria closely related to the bacteria responsible for the characteristic smells of human armpits or feet.
Can knowledge and tolerance of bacterial cultures in our food improve tolerance of the bacteria on our bodies? How do humans cultivate and value bacterial cultures on cheeses and fermented foods? How will synthetic biology change with a better understanding of how species of bacteria work together in nature as opposed to the pure cultures of the lab?”
The post Olafur Eliasson’s tears used
to make human cheese appeared first on Dezeen.
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