MoMA - Design and the Elastic Mind

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

The new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, "Design and the Elastic Mind" is an absolute gold mine of advancements in design, science, art and interactivity in the past decade.

The exhibition website is a great resource and experience. It has a really clever way of using tags - a system that has become common, but this design is far from dull. Who knew that navigating with tags could be so refreshing and exciting? As for the actual featured bits, we get little glimpses and then deeper looks. It's mysterious, yet fluid and intuitive.


On the exhibition:

“Design and the Elastic mind” is the most uplifting show MoMA’s architecture and design department has presented since the museum reopened in 2004. Thanks to its imaginative breadth, Nicolai Ouroussoff concludes, we can begin to dream again.

- New York Times

The exhibition and the website include objects, projects, and concepts offered by teams of designers, scientists, and engineers from all over the world, ranging from the nanoscale to the cosmological scale.
- Computerlove

The New York Talk Exchange

The New York Talk Exchange, that's right--not Stock, it's Talk--is MIT's latest publicly announced project. Created with the help of AT&T, BT (British Telecom), and Yahoo!, the program monitors the incoming and outgoing calls and internet communications of New Yorkers.




The whole idea of this makes me kind of scared--like, when did MIT tell New Yorkers that the were logging their transmissions?--but when I saw what pretty visuals were created from the data, I relaxed a bit. Makes me think if the PATRIOT Act included spiffy 3D recreations of their wiretaps I would be a little more OK with it... Right.




Anyway, Orwellian or not, the fruits of the MIT team's labor is on display in MoMA until May and, once again, available at any time here. You can read the AP article written about the exhibition here.



I'll leave you with what I think is the most interesting fact gleaned from this info: "From Manhattan, the most-called city is London, which represents about 8 percent of all calls overseas. The second most-called city from Manhattan is Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with more than 5 percent of all calls."

Makes you think...

P.s. In the first image/link, I love the time of night--must be like 4am or something, when the communication dies out altogether for like a split second. Incredible.

Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson - FUNKY FOREST

Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson (both Parsons Communication Design + Technology Alumni) - FUNKY FOREST

Emily and Theo worked collaboratively to create the interactive installation, 'Funky Forest' which premiered at the 2007 Cinekid festival in the Netherlands. 'Funky Forest' is an interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The health of the trees contributes to the overall health of the forest and the types of creatures that inhabit it. The piece was executed using openFrameworks.

See FUNKY FOREST and more of Emily's work at: www.zanyparade.com

Theo's work can be found at: www.muonics.net

Augmented Sculpture - Pablo Valbuena

http://www.pablovalbuena.com/augmsculpt_condeduque_web.mov

This projection/sculpture installation takes a leap much needed to test the boundaries for digital work. In this movie, watch Pablo make digital and tactile surfaces coexist. I wish I could see this phenomenal illusion in person!