Design Real at the Serpentine Gallery

26th Nov – 7th Feb

I haven’t been yet but this exhibition promises to be good – catch it now before it finishes on the Feb 7th. The exhibition has been curated by Konstantin Grcic and focuses on mass-produced objects designed in the last decade.

The Serpentine are also running a Design Real seminar series discussing themes relating to the exhibition, the next one on Thursday 21st January will be by Alex Rich, who was a collaborator on the exhibition design, and Tim Parsons.

It’s taken quite a long time to get around to this post. The end of term has been pretty busy and exciting – we’ve had the best Christmas Ball ever, the third year BA students did an amazing job organising a brilliant party to raise funds for their degree show: the Ball included the amazing University of London Big Band that made the night feel extra special.

Second year students finished their Anti-Social brief, from a quick look around the studio there are some brilliant results.

Final year’s finished a tough term with ‘work in progress’ presentations – the range and depth of work was really encouraging. A lot of effort has gone into the development of their projects. Only a few weeks ago we saw Quique Corrales come to Goldsmiths to run a film making workshop. The brief was broad – explore your final year project through the medium of film. The results were great. Students had three days to design and produce their movies. Below, are a few examples of the difference type of film made:

Film Week: Paper Fictions from christopher waggott on Vimeo.

Democracy: Deptford from ben barker on Vimeo.

material from Jane Ellen Taylor on Vimeo.

Recorder Made Easy from Matt West on Vimeo.

I’m Not Superstitious But… from Ellie Edwards on Vimeo.

Jo Godwin, BAEd Design & Technology graduate 2009, was awarded the Technical Textiles first prize in the Drapers’ Company/Industrial Trust competition. Jo entered the Higher Education category during the summer when she submitted her detailed study of Quantum Tunnelling  Compound (QTC) and it’s application within textiles.  The ceremony took place at the Drapers’ Hall on Tuesday 10 November an institutional award was made to Goldsmiths and received on behalf of the department by Prof. Kay Stables. Well done Jo, brilliant stuff!

Info on the event: http://www.industrialtrust.org.uk/

Info on QTC: http://www.peratech.com/

For anyone who missed Tim Parsons talk at Goldsmiths the other week you have another chance to hear him talk at a free event at Metropolitan Works as part of their Creative Dialogue series. It sounds like the talk will cover the same ground as for our Design Means seminar. If you don’t go keep a watch on their events anyway – they get a lot of interesting speakers as well as offering incredible digital workshop facilities and training courses.

Creative Dialogue Tim Parsons

Thanks to Albena Yaneva for a great presentation on her ethnographic studies of OMA and architectural practices at the Objects of Design and Social Science seminar series. Audience responses were lively and covered topics including the material resistances of architectural models; ethnography and the anonymisation of visual and material field objects; the procedural shortcomings of ANT; the politics of architectural objects as well as their front-staging. In response to a question posed concerning phenomenology, architecture and ethnography Albena has provided an essay, co-authored with Bruno Latour, entitled “Give me a Gun and I Will Make all Buildings Move”: An ANT’s View of Architecture.

"Give me a Gun and I Will Make all Buildings Move": An ANT's View of Architecture

Download Essay in PDF Format

Download poster

IN SEARCH OF INSPIRATION

9th november 2009

4 – 6 pm

Room137a, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths

Dominic Wilcox is an artist, designer, inventor and thinkeruper who works within the territory of the ‘everyday’. Everyday objects, environments, buildings, human interaction, no area of normality is out of reach. His work, which is usually layered with an ultra dry wit, places a spotlight on the banal, always adding a new, alternative perspective on things we take for granted. [Words by Matt Ward]

All ‘Design Means…’ lectures are open to the public.

A quick update about the seminar today with Albena Yaneva. We had some requests from researchers and students in Limerick and New York to webcast this event, and we’re going to try to use Ustream. You plug in a camera, configure your broadcast in a webpage, then publish a URL. This is the 2nd seminar in The Objects of Design and Social Science (PDF) seminar series, and you can watch it online here from 4-6pm today. Thanks to Lizzy Burt who is helping with the filming, and to Mira Vogel at learn.gold who recommended Ustream. Let me know if you’re streaming your own event, and would like to hear how this one went.

We have broken your business, now we want your machines

Monday’s ‘Design Means…’ talk, by Russell Davies, was great. Russell’s talk centered around W. Brian Arthur’s book The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves. He examined how and why digital technologies are moving into the world and becoming more physical. He took to task the unimaginative use of screens within publics space- ‘posters don’t give you DOS when they fail’- and he described a future a bit like ‘Bladerunner… brought to you by Cillit Bang’.

Although I was familiar with a lot of the content and examples that Russell used, I was still blown away by his humour and presentation skills. One of the most powerful messages was the quote from a presentation he’d given to the Guardian: We have broken your business, now we want your machines. It’s here that we see new forms of media production through novel use and infrastructure leapfrogging. Accessing the highly developed infrastructures of ‘old media’ and opening up well established manufacturing technologies offers new and exciting opportunities – ultimately it could allow for higher levels experimentation and increased innovation. The conversations and questions moved to the pub where we continued to discuss the role and relationship between Design, Marketing and Advertising. I particularly liked the way that Russell described Newspaper Club, although I’m still worried about its ecological impact, I love the way a small idea has become both a viable business and a new medium for social interaction and communication.

Due to the success of it’s primary year, the Design and Social Science seminar series; a collaboration between the two departments, is back this academic year under a new title ‘The Objects of Design and Social Science’.

The first one for the year was Wednesday October 14th with talks by Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael & Alex Wilkie, all from Goldsmiths. The series continues on Wednesday November 4th with Albena Yaneva from the University of Manchester talking about ‘Buildings as Things’.

All seminars run from 4:00pm – 6:00pm and are hosted by the Interaction Research Studio, 6th Floor, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW.

Download poster

More information:

This seminar series will seek to bring into view and explore existing objects of both design and social science as well as draw out objects of novelty for both disciplines. In doing so we will seek to engage with emerging issues and topics in both disciplines such as the outputs of speculative and critical design, participation, engagement and publics as well as addressing notions concerning heterogeneity, process and event. This series will continue to serve as a platform for opening up interdisciplinary research futures. [Words by Alex Wilkie]

Design Means... is a lecture series devised by BA programme leader Matt Ward and Professor Bill Gaver from the Design Department. Every other week or so, a designer is invited in to talk about their practice. The breadth of the speakers is deliberately vast to demonstrate the scale of thinkers within the design industry. Amongst others, in 2008 the series showcased the likes of Onkar Kular, Rory Hamilton from LiveWork, Anne Galloway, Nick Foster and Jack Schulze.

The lectures are open to all and are free of charge.

Seminars are held on Mondays at 4pm in room 137a Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW.

MATERIALISING AND DEMATERIALISING A WEB OF DATA

26 October 2009

4 – 6 pm

Russell was born in Derby, enjoyed an uneventful childhood, did college, all that. 
After failing as a popstar and a joke writer he ended up in advertising and tried to 
do ‘interactive marketing’ way before anyone was interested. Ended up at Wieden + 
Kennedy working on clients like Microsoft, Nike and Honda. Then he went to work for 
Nike as Global Consumer Planning Director. He went freelance in 2006 and works with 
shadowy organisations like the Open Intelligence Agency and the Really Interesting 
Group. He also writes ‘eggbaconchipsandbeans’ occasionally organises ‘Interesting’ 
conferences, plays with things like speechification, dawdlr and slowpoke and does 
columns for Campaign magazine and Wired UK. If asked what he actually does all day, 
he’ll normally mutter something about ‘post-digital’.

[Words by Matt Ward]

THINKING: OBJECTS

12 October 2009

Tim Parsons kicked of the first in the series of Design Means lectures this year which coincided with the launch of his new book:

Image via www.timparsons.info

You can purchase your copy of his book from Amazon.