The opening exhibition at the newly relocated Design Museum ‘FEAR AND LOVE: Reactions to a complex world’ traverses, via multimedia, a spectrum of current affairs. From a ‘Brexit’ inspired living room, to a movement sensing robotic limb, to 3D-printed death masks, this inaugural show stunned me with its roster of incredible designers and thought-provoking subject matter.
The space for the exhibition is one large room, and completing a circuit can be done in a very short amount of time; but, as I find is the case with the best exhibitions, it takes a long ponderous wander to fully embrace. Take the architectural installation work of OMA, on the surface it appears to be a quintessential Design Museum piece – harking back to their old Shad Thames home, where founder Terence Conran would implement the design experience he had acquired as the owner of ‘Habitat’. However, to move one’s self closer to the work would reveal the true issue at hand. Each element of the living room is taken from one of the 28 EU countries, against the backdrop of OMA’s member state bar-code office style blinds – the UK portion being laid to rest across the floor, carving the space of what otherwise would have been a perfect showroom scene.
This professional and interactive reaction to the modern world is matched by Madeline Gannon’s robotic limb, known as ‘Mimus’ (pictured below). The cyclopic mass of metal conveys eerie levels of innocence and curiosity as it tracks the movements of passers by. On her website atonaton.com Gannon insists “Robots are creatures, not things” and explains how ‘Mimus’ has been programmed to express excitement and boredom among other anthropomorphic, or at least zoomorphic, traits. Rendered stationary at its base by means of its very design, this installation intrigued and confused me. Are we being told to fear this innocent child, before it grows into something that will cause us danger? Conversely, should we pity this caged being that simply wants to observe? Perhaps it is much more complex; Gannon’s research aims to improve our communication with robots, so maybe the excitement and childish nature of ‘Mimus’ is meant to emphasise that the robot is at ease in its surroundings, but – despite the truly amazing feat of producing such a mammoth installation – we cannot converse with him. In a developing age where jobs will inevitably be lost to robots, who will begin the inter-species dialogue, if not the designer?
With each turn of the head the immortal words of Monty Python “and now for something completely different” ring true. Propaganda documentarians and Wikileaks merchandise creators ‘Metahaven’ provide video commentary on the illogicality of dolphin culling alongside the amelioration of artificial intelligence, whilst Christien Meindertsma piles vibrant fabrics in her physical exploration of clothes wastage. The overlap in issues between ‘Mimus’ and ‘Metahaven’s work here was rather obscuring to me, as the latter group clearly emphasises the negativity of our infatuation with AI, when we do not even understand why dolphins are as intelligent as they are. Whereas, the former work wishes to usher in this new robotic era in a show of pseudo-submission. An interesting debate nonetheless.
A similarly futuristic and fantastical part of the exhibition was Neri Oxman’s 3D printed death masks. As is to be expected from an arts professor at Harvard’s MIT college, Oxman’s designs go beyond what I thought was possible for 3D printed design. The masks themselves are detailed on their interior with marble-esque resins, which looked almost like a top-down view of a storm on a different planet. This sense of other-worldliness is reflected throughout all the designs and, perhaps, the rest of Oxman’s portfolio (which I urge anyone at all interested in 3D sculpting to enjoy at her website). The symmetry in the anatomy of her creations is entrancing, and resembles everything good about modern arthouse sci-fi (like Villeneuve’s ‘Arrival‘, which I should like to properly divulge into in another post).
This is a provocative and highly contemporary array of pieces that will rank among the most potent showcases I will witness for years to come.
Joecrastination 