Category: Interviews and features

Alumnus Lukas Valiauga on Fabrica residency and work after graduation

Lukas Valiauga graduated from the BA Design course at Goldsmiths in 2015, and he is currently a resident at Fabrica, the Benneton Group-financed communications research centre based in Treviso, Italy. Lukas tells us a bit about his work on the residency and his other projects since graduation:

What kind of work are you doing as part of your residency? 

Personally, the residency is an amazing opportunity to work developing research into how technologies shape our modern living, culture and communication.  Part of the work (and freedom!) is in experimenting with ideas, theories and research-led assumptions as well as specific technology.

Fabrica is at a unique intersection between worlds of art and commerce. Rather than as briefs, projects come as partnerships open to every resident to pitch their idea for; that way shaping and defining what an overall project will be like. A lot of personal research materialises into tangible output this way.

For example, for an exhibition at Milan Design Museum, I’ve presented an installation measuring Milan’s sky colour comparing it to the colour called ‘sky blue’.
Also, together with Jonas Eltes we made a painting which grows its value depending on its popularity with gallery visitors.  We are currently working on a several of web-based information experience projects. Continue reading “Alumnus Lukas Valiauga on Fabrica residency and work after graduation”

Musée des Refusés exhibition, MA Design Expanded Practice: Disrupting mass surveillance

2017 was the year the Design department at Goldsmiths launched its new, post-disciplinary MA in Design: Expanded Practice. For their first brief on the programme, students were asked to work in teams and approach museums from a different perspective: Musée des Refusés, a space in which what is rejected by museums, cultural institutions and/or by society as a whole may claim attention.

One of the teams decided to take a deeper look at mass surveillance in public spaces and how it could be disrupted. Fivos Avgerinos, Riya Gokharu, Wonji Jeong, Erin Liu and Anastasiya Vodolagina created masks that can ‘trick’ facial recognition software used in surveillance cameras, and in the process, help us question why we have become so accepting of mass surveillance in the first place.

What does the mask do, exactly?

Erin: “Biometric facial recognition works by mapping certain landmarks onto your face which are called nodal points, measuring the distance between the eyes, the width of the nose, the shape of the cheekbones and the shape of the jawline. The mask tricks facial recognition software into believing those landmarks are elsewhere, which gives them false results.” Continue reading “Musée des Refusés exhibition, MA Design Expanded Practice: Disrupting mass surveillance”

MA alumna writes about her experience as artist in residence in Taipei

Alumna Wendy Lau (MA Design: Critical Practice 2017) recently spent six weeks as artist in residence for the Guandu International Nature Art Festival in Taipei, alongside several international artists. Wendy wrote to us about the experience and its significance to her life and career:

“I have learned and experienced so much in this residency, in both aspects of my profession and personal philosophy. Designing creations for a nature park was a new challenge for me, because I had to consider artwork existing in an outdoor context as well as using on-site materials which should not be harmful to that environment. There were limitations at the beginning, but then I managed to turn them into my inspiration, and re-directed my initial approach to a more explorative one. Continue reading “MA alumna writes about her experience as artist in residence in Taipei”

Dewi Uridge on the process of making this year’s Goldsmiths Prize trophy

BA Design student Dewi Uridge, who created this year’s Goldsmiths Prize trophy (eventually won by Nicola Barker), provides us with some insight into his process:

“I was fortunate to be asked to design and make the trophy for this year’s Goldsmiths Prize. I had one guideline to stick by: to ensure the logo of the award was present. The shape of the logo was discovered from an eighteenth century novel by Tristram Shandy, and was created to represent the movement of a wand swaying in the air.

I wanted to transform the shape from its two-dimensional quality to a 3D object. I began by drawing the shape on Rhinoceros (a CAD software) to create it into a 3D form. I extruded and pulled different parts of the original shape to make it more ‘life-like’, and once I had the shape 3D-printed, I was able to visualise what potential the shape had to then turn into a trophy. Continue reading “Dewi Uridge on the process of making this year’s Goldsmiths Prize trophy”