Hasta La Ideas

The birds inside this cuckoo clock by London design studio BERG are programmed to poke their heads out to announce Twitter messages, retweets and new followers (+ movie).

#Flock, which was commissioned from BERG by social networking service Twitter, was built using BERG Cloud, the design studio’s operating system for network-connected products.

Using a wirelessly controlled Arduino microcontroller, the three birds inside the clock are choreographed to respond immediately to activity on Twitter.

Retweets, direct messages and new followers each trigger one of the three birds to pop out of the clock, accompanied by a snippet of birdsong.

Like the studio’s Little Printer, the tiny thermal printer that led to the development of BERG Cloud, #Flock is a web-connected device designed to give digital data a physical expression.

BERG isn’t the only design studio exploring ways of making digital data tangible – we previously featured a project to print muddled news headlines harvested from the internet and a plotter set up to write and re-write text from Wikipedia as it’s updated.

Other machines on Dezeen include a mechanically operated sliding whistle that uses a bellow and levers to mimic birdsong – see all machines.

Photographs are by BERG.

The post #Flock by BERG
for Twitter appeared first on Dezeen.

UK studio Universal Everything motion-captured a dancer to make this animation, which is projected onto the world’s highest-resolution screen (+ movie).

“We choreographed a contemporary dancer in a motion capture studio,” Universal Everything founder Matt Pyke told Dezeen. “We then transformed the motion capture data into a digital sculpture, formed from the trails of human movement.”

The hundreds of white light points that form the dancing figure become strands that glow yellow, then red, before solidifying into blue as the dancer moves across the screen.

Universal Everything produced animations at a highly detailed 16K resolution for the 25-metre-wide by four-metre-high screen in the Hyundai Vision Hall, located at the South Korean motor group’s Seoul campus.

“The film was produced at such a high resolution to achieve a life-sized dancer moving through the space,” said Pyke.

The studio and various collaborators created 18 short films for the hall to turn it into “a space that inspires leaders, engineers, scientists, workers and designers to learn, rethink, and collaborate.”

More digital installations on Dezeen include Arik Levy’s interactive screen that uses visitors’ movements to mutate computer-generated crystals and a wall of digital animals that distract children on their way to surgery.

See all our stories about installations »

Universal Everything sent us the following information:

Hyundai Vision Hall

Euisun Chung, Vice Chairman of the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG), has a vision for the company that he leads. His aim is to align HMG with the best contemporary art, sculpture and digital design in the world. Artistic invention and innovation will be at the heart of both Hyundai and Kia’s future vision.

“The Vision Hall at Hyundai Motor Group’s Mabuk Campus is a symbolic space for presenting employees with Hyundai Motor Group’s values, providing them with a sense of pride, and sharing with them its dreams. The media wall, the central focus of the Hall, screens three video artworks that convey the vision and core values of the group.

An interactive artwork ‘Who Am We’ by world-renowned artist Do-Ho Suh was designed to develop pride and solidarity among the group’s employees and was produced through the participation of employees throughout the world. A metaphorical film series ‘Mobius Loop’ by Universal Everything expresses the group’s vision, management philosophy and core values. The third film, ‘Documentary’ depicts the last 10 years of Hyundai Motor Group’s history.

The Vision Hall – through continuous development of diverse creative content in collaboration with the group’s employees is a digital media archive that conveys and communicates the vision of Hyundai Motor Group” – Euisun Chung

To date HMG have collaborated with leading exponent and practitioner of Korean art Do Ho Suh, architect Elho Suh, and Peter Schreyer – Chief Design Officer for KIA, one of the world’s leading automotive designers (and a fine artist in his own right). The latest talent to be invited on-board are Universal Everything (UE) – an internationally acclaimed, UK based multidisciplinary studio working at the crossover of digital art and design.

The HMG Vision Hall

The Vision Hall is the first physical manifestation of E.S. Chung’s thinking. A contemplative and Zen like space at the entrance to Hyundai’s Mabuk University Campus – Elho Suh’s minimalist masterpiece that sits high in the verdant hills outside Seoul. Measuring around 900sqm the Hall is stripped of superfluous decoration, allowing visitors to appreciate its rich palette of materials and more importantly to concentrate the eye on its focal point and crowning glory – a 25m wide, 4m tall, 44k resolution screen seamlessly constructed from 720 micro tiles.

This is a space that will greet the majority of HMG’s 80,000 worldwide employees over the coming months – a space that will allow leaders, engineers, scientists, workers and designers alike to learn, rethink, collaborate and be inspired.

Universal Everything’s brief

Universal Everything were commissioned to fill the world’s highest resolution screen with content that would simply ‘inspire’. Such creative freedom is indeed rare. Matt Pyke, UE’s founder and Creative Director, was specifically asked not to include any brand related slogans or logos – furthermore he was requested not to feature Hyundai or Kia cars currently in production.

The sole ‘commercial’ request was to nod at the ‘mobius loop’ concept that underpins HMG’s whole ethos and production process. This loop symbolizes the infinite cycle of resource circulation and serves to connect all the innovative, creative activities and events of the Group into an organic whole. As an illustration HMG make steel to make cars, and then the cars are recycled to make more steel.

“The sheer scale of the vision hall, and the freedom that the HMG granted us gave us the power to create powerful, immersive audio-visual experiences which had never been seen or heard before. The commission allowed us to push our ambitions, transforming familiar subjects and materials into hyper real beautiful abstract expressions” – Matt Pyke

The intention is to allow Hyundai and KIA’s staff to digest the work openly and personally – to allow a deeper connection and to arrive at their own interpretations of the artworks – possibly seeing the familiar in the unfamiliar. The shear scale and resolution of the onscreen content combined with an immersive sound system would instill HMG’s staff with a sense of shared pride and solidarity – making them realize that they are indeed an integral part of the ‘bigger picture’.

Why ask UE?

UE were asked on board at the inception of the Vision Hall project as HMG’s ‘digital artists in residence’. The invitation came on the back of artistically pioneering and challenging work created for (amongst others) La Gaite Lyrique – Paris’ brand new Digital Art Museum, Deutsche Bank’s Hong Kong HQ and Coldplay’s sell out world tour of 2012.

UE’s response

The project has been the studio’s most ambitious project to date – requiring the core staff of 4 to swell to over 30 for the duration of the project. Matt Pyke and long term collaborator, director Dylan Griffith’s response to the challenging brief has yielded 18 films in total, ranging in duration from 00’40” to 02’45”. Created exclusively for their architectural context, the films allow the giant screen to become a ‘stage’ – a performance space that is often filled with life size humans and abstracted production processes.

The films mix a myriad of animation styles and live action – building upon UE’s trademark ethos of ‘maximum innovation’. Abstraction is pitted against familiarity to engage all types of viewer – whilst themes such as nature, technology and mans relationship with them feature heavily. All areas of HMG’s activity are explored with hyper real vision and audio – from steel creation to architecture, construction, future technologies, the corporation’s diverse multi-talented workforce to car design and production.

GGI studios in London, sound engineers in Germany and the UK, Korean programmers, an Italian Director of Photography and Film Directors from Amsterdam and Hong Kong were choreographed from UE’s home base of Sheffield, UK.

The post Made by Humans
by Universal Everything appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in this movie filmed in Milan earlier this month, leading designers and manufacturers discuss the phenomenon of copying and how they are responding. “It’s become an increasingly big problem for us,” says Tom Dixon. “People can steal ideas and produce them almost faster than we can now.”

“An original design product will have a cost higher than its copy,” says designer Marcel Wanders (above). “It’s very simple. Stealing most of the time is more cheap than buying.”

Unscrupulous manufacturers visit Milan to photograph new prototypes and then rush out copies before the original products reach the market, according to Casper Vissers (below), CEO of furniture and lighting brand Moooi.

“It’s very sour if you have presented a product in April and it’s in the shops in September, but a bloody copier has it already in August,” says Vissers, speaking at Moooi’s spectacular Unexpected Welcome show in Milan (below). “This is what happens at the moment.”

Vissers adds that legal action against copiers in Asia is expensive and, even if it’s successful in the short term, it does little to stem the tide: “You need huge amounts of money [to launch a law suit in the Far East] and if you win – if – a new limited company in China will start production [of copies]”.

Copiers are increasingly shameless about their intentions, says Tom Dixon, speaking at his presentation at MOST in Milan. “People feel very confident copying things. Some people come around with spy glasses photographing things but other people are more overt and come in with iPads or film crews.”

Dixon says the problem is getting worse, with markets around the world and even the UK market increasingly flooded with copies. “Everywhere we go in Australia or Singapore or India we’ll see many, many copies, and that’s also hitting more and more the UK as well.”

Gregg Buchbinder (above), CEO of furniture company Emeco, says the solution is for designers to push manufacturers to make more sophisticated products that are harder to copy. The furniture collection Emeco developed with designer Konstantin Grcic for the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island (below), for example, “was a very difficult project to do. Although the chair looks simple, there’s nothing skipped.”

“The more difficult it is, the more difficult it is for people to knock it off,” Buchbinder adds.

Emeco aggressively pursues copyists through the courts and earlier this year won a case against fellow US manufacturer Restoration Hardware, which had copied the iconic Navy chair.

But outside Europe and the US, copyright law is less robust and harder to enforce. “It’s very, very difficult to protect yourself legally,” says Dixon.

Dixon’s company is directly responding to the problem of copying by developing a range of new products designed to make life more difficult for counterfeiters.

“What you’ll see [at our Milan presentation] is a number of coping strategies,” Dixon explains. “We’ve been trying as much as possible to invest in tooling and slightly more advanced technology. We’re working on adaptive models where we make specific things for clients. A new bespoke division where we make things for people, so we adapt our products to suit a client’s needs. So there’s ways of dealing with it. We’ve just got to be faster and smarter.”

See all our stories about copying in design ».

Milan is the second stop on our Dezeen and MINI World Tour. See all our reports from our first destination, Cape Town. This movie features a MINI Cooper S Paceman.

The music featured is a track called Divisive by We Are Band, a UK-based electronic act who played at the MINI Paceman Garage in Milan on Friday. You can listen to the full track on Dezeen Music Project.

The post “Milan is a breeding ground for people
who copy our products” appeared first on Dezeen.

Fetishistic suits of armour, orthopaedic braces and wearable tusks all feature in an exhibition of prosthetics at the SHOWcabinet space in London (+ movie).

Curated by Niamh White, associate director of fashion film website SHOWstudio, the exhibition opened on Thursday and contains pieces intended to enhance, protect or deform the body.

The name of the showcase derives from the Ancient Greek word “prosthesis”, which means “to add”, but the collection also incorporates the modern understanding of prosthetics as replacement limbs.

Above: Fragmented Figure by Úna Burke

Designer Úna Burke created original pieces for the show made from leather straps joined with rivets, which encase limbs like a suit of armour.

Above: RE.TREAT #4 by Úna Burke

A black leather outfit is made up of one piece that covers the neck, arms and shoulders, and another that fits over the legs up to the waist, leaving the chest and abdomen exposed.

Above: RE.TREAT #8 by Úna Burke

Similar tan coloured pieces include a bodice extended over the shoulders and up the neck, fingerless gauntlets and a restraining device that forces the arms into a submissive position by encasing them together in front of the body.

Above: RE.TREAT #6 by Úna Burke

Burke and SHOWstudio collaborated on a film titled Bound, in which the black attire is warped as if a wearer is moving in it – watch a teaser at the top of this page or the full movie here.

Above: Infundibulum White Brace by Kat Marks

Other items in the collection include legs worn by American athlete Aimee Mullins at the London 2012 Paralympics opening ceremony, adorned with golden wings that flow up each shin.

Above: Infundibulum Black Brace by Kat Marks

Following her experience of wearing a back brace as a teenager, designer Kat Marks created three vacuum-formed thermo-plastic braces in 2009.

Above: Crown of Thorns with Mirror by Patrick Ian Hartley

A headdress formed from pipette-shaped glass tubes that fan out from a metal head brace complete with screws is by designer Patrick Ian Hartley, as are a range of restored artificial hip joints.

Above: Animal – The Other Side of Evolution #4 by Ana Rajcevic

Horns and tusks from London College of Fashion graduate Ana Rajcevic‘s Animal: The Other Side of Evolution series are also on display.

Above: Animal – The Other Side of Evolution #3 by Ana Rajcevic

The SHOWcabinet gallery space and shop are situated in Belgravia, west London, and host new exhibitions every couple of months. The Prosthetics exhibition is on display until 31 May.

Above: Splint #1 by Patrick Ian Hartley

SHOWstudio recently streamed a live project during which photographer Nick Knight captured water thrown at model Daphne Guinness. His images were used by Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen to create a dress – more information in our previous story.

Above: Splint #2 by Patrick Ian Hartley

See all our stories about fashion »
See more architecture and design exhibitions »

The information below is from SHOWstudio:

The term ‘prosthetic’ is now attributed to the branch of surgery dedicated to replacing missing or defective limbs, but to the Ancient Greeks it was an altogether more assertive concept meaning ‘to add’, ‘to advance’ or ‘to give power to’. For April’s SHOWcabinet, our re-imagined gallery space, we embrace this original meaning and display a range of artefacts that engage directly with prosthetics’ ability to adorn, equip and enhance.

Above: Splint #3 by Patrick Ian Hartley

Una Burke’s leather sculptures create the foundation for the installation. Her inanimate bodies engage the language of the physical gesture. Each limb is constructed from countless, beautifully bound leather straps and resemble orthopedic braces or suits of armour. While offering protection or support, they also suggest that the encased body is a fragile system. This constant interplay between empowerment and restriction creates a fetishistic dialectic between invisibility and visibility, as well as denial and disclosure. Burke will also release an exclusive film directed by SHOWstudio’s Head of Fashion Film Marie Schuller to coincide with the launch of the cabinet. The film sees her ordinarily motionless figure brought surreally and subtly to life.

Above: Chimere by Yiqing Yin

Alongside Burke’s work sit a variety of objects and artefacts which explore ideas surrounding prosthetics. Created during a dynamic collaboration between Aimee Mullins, Betony Vernon and Dorset Orthopeadics, the prosthetic legs that Mullins wore as a Chef de Mission for the Paralympic Opening Ceremony will be on view in the cabinet. With the legacy of last summer’s Olympic games still fresh, the imagery on Mullins’ sculptural legs is powerful. A full set of wings run the length of each shin – a reminder of Icarus, and a nod to intrepid innovation. Mullins herself competed in the Atlanta Paralympic Games in 2006 sporting a pair of the then newly developed cheetah style prosthetics and has painstakingly spent her career giving a more positive and empowered face to disability.

Above: Brand New Smile by Kyle Hopkins

Also featured in the cabinet is Kat Marks’ artefact collection ‘The Braces’. Inspired by her own experience of having to wear a Boston Back Brace to redirect the curvature of her spine in her adolescence, Marks has created 3 vacuum-formed thermo-plastic braces in various colours and styles. Remaining true to the original function of the brace, these stylised pieces hold the waist in tight and accentuate the hips, exaggerating a shape which echoes an hour glass figure. No longer does the brace read as medical accoutrement but rather speaks to fashionable ideals of beauty and sexuality.

Alongside these powerful anchors, we present an array of items from innovators in fashion and art who embrace augmentation and aesthetics in tackling the idea of bodily enhancement and extension. Medical anomalies and instruments were often housed in early nineteenth century curiosity cabinets, but we’ve chosen to include artwork by Una Burke, Aimee Mullins, Betony Vernon, Kat Marks, Patrick Ian Hartley, Dai Rees, Kyle Hopkins, Ana Rajcevic, Naomi Filmer, Tara Dougans and Yiqing Yin as a means to probe the potential in prosthetics.

The display will be accompanied by a series of events and discussion geared towards exploring the creative industries’ capabilities to expand perceptions of prosthetics.

The post Prosthetics exhibition
at SHOWcabinet appeared first on Dezeen.

In this movie made as part of our print-on-demand project, Blurb founder and CEO Eileen Gittins explains how new technology is transforming book and magazine publishing and we visit the Dutch factory where our Print Shift magazine is produced.

Unlike traditional books or magazines, which are printed in bulk, a single copy of Print Shift is only produced when somebody orders it. Gittins believes this approach makes high-quality publishing much more accessible. “Blurb is a creative publishing platform that enables anyone in the world to make a proper book,” she says.

As a keen photographer, Gittins says her “number one criteria” when she set up Blurb was image quality. “Could we, as a business, faithfully reproduce the intention of the artist, whether you’re a photographer, a designer, an architect? I mean, that work needs to look beautiful, right?”

In Europe, Blurb’s books and magazines are printed by RPI Paro in a factory in Eindhoven. Jan van Baar, vice president of sales and marketing for RPI Paro, explains that print-on-demand publishing is made possible by advances in digital printing technology. “We are in the middle of a digital revolution,” he says. “Print-on-demand is a part of this. It is taking over the market from the older ways of printing because people won’t need large numbers in one time. They want to have it tailor-made, one by one.”

Gittins agrees. “A book is no longer as precious a thing as we used to think of it,” she says. “If you’re an architect and you’ve done a new project and you’ve got a book on file, just add the new project to it, maybe edit something old out, and you’ve got your latest and greatest work. It’s always available, you can always get it printed on demand.”

She continues: “I think it has completely changed how we think about books. They used to be permanent. You might make it once and maybe you’d make a second edition. Now you can make an edition a week if you wanted to.”

Buy your copy of Print Shift for £8.95 plus postage and packing »

For more information about Print Shift and to see additional content, visit www.dezeen.com/printshift.

The post “Print on demand has completely changed
the way we think about books” appeared first on Dezeen.