New York
The National Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum
New York International Auto Show, Jacob Javits Center
Here’s another “creativity road trip,” this time from New York City. The highlight was the second National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the former Carnegie mansion on the Upper East Side just up Fifth Avenue from the Guggenheim and the Met.
Not surprisingly, the first-edition of the Triennial in 2000 served as paean to technology and design – a reflection of a moment in time when technology without underlying stories and purposes often ruled the day. Consistent with these times, however, the current Triennial focuses on “interiority,” advancing simpler, more humanistic and less “tech for the sake of tech” themes. There is a great deal of architecture and interior design, fashion design and crafts, glassware and metalworking to be found here.
However, I loved the work of CSA Studios in Minneapolis. It seems that Charles S. Anderson and his folks are challenging visual stereotypes and, perhaps, reinventing the stock-photo business. They poke fun at the typical images of always-diverse and politically-correct business people in meetings “high-fiving” each other after some successful action or event. They digitally create or alter images, often iconic advertising from the ‘50s and ‘60s, to remind us how visual (or verbal) clichés and stereotypes weaken communication and fail to differentiate brands.
Tod Machover was featured as well. I’ve mentioned his MIT Media Lab work to you in the past. He designs music. Sure, he’s composed five successful operas and even designed and built the musical instruments used to record the operas. (Now that’s creative convergence!) However, he’s taking sound and music design to the next level, using computers and sensing devices (remember the MIT Touch Lab?) to translate everyday actions – pushing, pulling, tapping, squeezing – into shapes, patterns and musical notes. Imagine how his work could integrate with Pine & Gilmore’s assertions that effective branding enables customers to interact and even shape their specific, individual brand-using experience.
That’s why Ford’s Glo-Car installation at Cooper-Hewitt was fascinating. Remember that I mentioned in my Detroit Auto Show note the dominance of Los Angeles and European designers in the U.S. automotive business? Well, LA-based Laurens Van Den Acker has designed a concept Ford vehicle that uses LEDs to change color, intensity and frequency in accordance with the driver’s wishes. The possibilities are endless, as are the opportunities to wreak havoc on the highways as distracted fellow drivers turn green with envy or red with anger. Funny that Henry Ford once quipped that customers can have any color they want, as long as it’s black.
As for the Auto Show, it is actually a larger and more sweeping event than the Detroit show in January. The only new product that caught our attention, however, was a concept Honda Element called Studio E. (Now who the heck would buy an Element in the first place?) For reasons that both elude and excite me, Honda is thinking about using the Element as the basis for a rolling multimedia studio of sorts. It’s a two-seat version with benches in back featuring a laptop with 17-inch screen, ports for all manner of sound and video recording and mixing and, get this, a 42-inch plasma television monitor. Huh?
Now I can think of uses that we and other branding business (especially the ones featured at the Design Triennial) might have for such a vehicle, as yet priced. Still, I can only image what this will all do to highway safety, especially as artists on wheels shoot and edit images of a Ford Glo-Car changing colors, while both vehicles are moving. Form is not exactly following function in these cases, but they remain fascinating.
The National Design Triennial, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum
New York International Auto Show, Jacob Javits Center
Here’s another “creativity road trip,” this time from New York City. The highlight was the second National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the former Carnegie mansion on the Upper East Side just up Fifth Avenue from the Guggenheim and the Met.
Not surprisingly, the first-edition of the Triennial in 2000 served as paean to technology and design – a reflection of a moment in time when technology without underlying stories and purposes often ruled the day. Consistent with these times, however, the current Triennial focuses on “interiority,” advancing simpler, more humanistic and less “tech for the sake of tech” themes. There is a great deal of architecture and interior design, fashion design and crafts, glassware and metalworking to be found here.
However, I loved the work of CSA Studios in Minneapolis. It seems that Charles S. Anderson and his folks are challenging visual stereotypes and, perhaps, reinventing the stock-photo business. They poke fun at the typical images of always-diverse and politically-correct business people in meetings “high-fiving” each other after some successful action or event. They digitally create or alter images, often iconic advertising from the ‘50s and ‘60s, to remind us how visual (or verbal) clichés and stereotypes weaken communication and fail to differentiate brands.
Tod Machover was featured as well. I’ve mentioned his MIT Media Lab work to you in the past. He designs music. Sure, he’s composed five successful operas and even designed and built the musical instruments used to record the operas. (Now that’s creative convergence!) However, he’s taking sound and music design to the next level, using computers and sensing devices (remember the MIT Touch Lab?) to translate everyday actions – pushing, pulling, tapping, squeezing – into shapes, patterns and musical notes. Imagine how his work could integrate with Pine & Gilmore’s assertions that effective branding enables customers to interact and even shape their specific, individual brand-using experience.
That’s why Ford’s Glo-Car installation at Cooper-Hewitt was fascinating. Remember that I mentioned in my Detroit Auto Show note the dominance of Los Angeles and European designers in the U.S. automotive business? Well, LA-based Laurens Van Den Acker has designed a concept Ford vehicle that uses LEDs to change color, intensity and frequency in accordance with the driver’s wishes. The possibilities are endless, as are the opportunities to wreak havoc on the highways as distracted fellow drivers turn green with envy or red with anger. Funny that Henry Ford once quipped that customers can have any color they want, as long as it’s black.
As for the Auto Show, it is actually a larger and more sweeping event than the Detroit show in January. The only new product that caught our attention, however, was a concept Honda Element called Studio E. (Now who the heck would buy an Element in the first place?) For reasons that both elude and excite me, Honda is thinking about using the Element as the basis for a rolling multimedia studio of sorts. It’s a two-seat version with benches in back featuring a laptop with 17-inch screen, ports for all manner of sound and video recording and mixing and, get this, a 42-inch plasma television monitor. Huh?
Now I can think of uses that we and other branding business (especially the ones featured at the Design Triennial) might have for such a vehicle, as yet priced. Still, I can only image what this will all do to highway safety, especially as artists on wheels shoot and edit images of a Ford Glo-Car changing colors, while both vehicles are moving. Form is not exactly following function in these cases, but they remain fascinating.