If you’re exploring London’s Kensington area this week to check out what’s on offer at Chelsea Fringe—the alternative garden show that will be sprouting up all over the posh neighborhood from 18 May to 9 June—be…
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London Design Festival: this mechanical contraption by artist Martin Smith and his design company Laikingland will wake you up by chirping like a bird (+ movie).
Bird Song with a Found Feather is a mechanically operated sliding whistle that uses a bellow and levers to mimic birdsong.
“The noise is created by two cams rotating and pushing levers up and down,” explained Smith, who is also the artistic director of Laikingland. “One lever pumps the bellows, forcing air into the whistle, and the second lever adjusts the slide in the whistle in order to change the pitch and length of the chirp.”
The feather itself offers no clue to the bird imitated by the contraption. “The origins of the feather are unknown, as it was found and donated to the piece – although it is very blue,” Smith told Dezeen.
A bespoke analogue timer has been built into the piece so that the chirping sound can be used as an alarm clock.
The piece was displayed at Mint in South Kensington during the London Design Festival – see all our stories from the festival here.
We’ve featured a few other machines by Laikingland previously, including a gong timer that’s inaccurate on purpose and a cacophonous doorbell made in collaboration with Tord Boontje.
See all our stories about machines »
See all our stories about Laikingland »
Here’s some more information from Laikingland:
The concept came from the notion of waking up to the wonderful sound of birdsong. Rather than a caged living bird, an elaborate mechanically operated sliding whistle has been devised that can be set and activated when required.
I wanted a piece that could be set, as with an alarm clock, and would allow you start the day gently. I am interested in producing mechanical bird sounds and seeing the cause and effect through a mechanism. For me the making is very important and I wanted to craft every part of the machine, to understand how the bellows are constructed and operate and to get the bird whistle sounding just right.
Materials: steel, brass, fabric, motor, custom electrics and a feather
Dimensions: H 1500mm (59”) W 300mm (12”) / D 300mm (12”)
Power: 12v motor
Edition: unique
Price: on request
The post Bird Song with a Found Feather
by Martin Smith/Laikingland appeared first on Dezeen.
London Design Festival 2011: Czech designer Maxim Velčovský presents a series of containers made from semi-finished iron piping at Mint in London.
The Local Collection comprises pieces of piping that have been diverted from their intended life as part of the city’s plumbing network and joined together to make vases.
The series was on show as part of and exhibition called Mint Explorers at the west London shop as part of the London Design Festival and the exhibition continues until 30 September. See all our stories about the London Design Festival here.
This time last year Velčovský showed a series of objects covered in mineral deposits at Mint – check them out in our earlier story and watch an interview we recorded at his Prague studio here.
Parisian studio Ciguë recently furnished a cosmetics shop with pieces of diverted plumbing – take a look at it here.
Photographs are by Jara Moravec.
Here’s some more information from Maxim Velčovský:
Local Collection
The Local collection is inspired by local identities. Quite recently the oldest porcelain workshop in the Czech Republic got closed.
I reacted by going to the local ironmonger’s shop. In the global era I started working with the stuff you can find in your neighbourhood. The material and the subsequent process in the context of place and time is what make the design really authentic.
The semi-finished products for the production of piping became my building material for the new collection. In the ironmonger’s I have always been fascinated by the parts whose morphology anticipated a function of the object.
The Local Collection makes use of the morphology of parts displayed in anonymous wholesale metal shops. I see these warehouses as boxes with Lego bricks without the original instructions that got lost. Now we can only use our own imagination.
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| Story cabinet by Maxim Velčovský | Underground Souvenirs by Maxim Velčovský | Interview with Maxim Velčovský |
Czech designer Klára Šumová has designed a wooden lamp where the turned base emerges from a raw tree branch. (more…)
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