LABORAL - CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL

TIPOLOGY / MUNDANE / ANÉCDOTE / FICTION / MYTH

CARL CLERKIN Desperate Measures, 2008

Carl Clerkin spent a good part of last year living in a house without any services. Due to these conditions, heI had to be extra resourceful, mostly with buckets. Here is a collection of buckets made fit for purpose. The aim is to question what we think we want, what we would like and what we actually need, to explore what happens when aspirations are super-seeded by desperation. Once Paul had came back to finish the plastering all the toilets had been removed from site.
“What do you do about going to the toilet then?” he asked
“Just piss in a bucket and chuck it down the man hole” I told him
“What about having a shit?” says Paul

“Same thing” I say
“What bucket?” he asks, in a disgusted tone.
“Your bucket, sorry Paul” I say
“You know the Plasterers bucket is sacred and yet
with all these other fucking buckets around here you shit in my one, why?”
“It’s the perfect height” I say
Paul goes on a mad rant about how “that bucket’s yours now man” and “I don’t want nothing to do with it now”, so I let him go off for a while, then say “I’m only joking Paul, it’s not true. I just connect the toilet back up, shit, then flush with a bucket of water”
This was actually the truth but Paul didn’t believe me, he was convinced I’d soiled his bucket and he wasn’t happy.
Later on I saw Paul out in the garden, he was circling the bucket, then to my delight he mimed like he was taking a shit in it. As soon as his arse touched the bucket he jumped up shouting “You bastard, you did shit in that bucket, you’re right it is the perfect height. How would you know otherwise?”
”I’m a furniture designer, I know these things”
I replied.

www.carlclerkin.co.uk

5:5 DESIGNERS Cloning Vase and Pillow, 2008

Cloning is a service that provides us with objects created at our own image. Inspired by the scientific procedures of cloning, these objects’ shape and form are the results of an elaborated process. Firstly, data is collected from your physical characteristics: the colour of your eyes, of your hair, your weight... Secondly, this data is examined in order to translate it into coefficients that will be applied in the creation of new objects. This approach in the conception of objects is made possible thanks to the flexibility of digital prototype technology together with the savoirfaire of the artisans crafting the objects. The clone object is generated by “injecting” the “donor’s genes” data into what we call the “bearer product”, this being different standard objects.
The results are objects that do not share a consensual aesthetic belief (which is the norm in the industry) as they are a direct answer to our own bodies.

www.cinqcinqdesigners.com

NACHO CARBONELL Pump it Up, 2007

Fascinated by how species interact to create a close bond in order to have a better quality of life, Nacho Carbonell designed objects where this bond is physically manifested. Here you share or interact and have the power to create. Probably the act of giving life to something–even if it’s artificial life–is the most satisfying act for a human being. You become like a creator. You immediately establish an emotional link. These emotions are the basis of relationships and determine human behaviour. They move us to act, to love, to hate...
Pump it Up gives you the opportunity of creating your own personal companion, your own pet, just by the weight and volume of your body. It’s a functional item that awakens your emotions.

www.nachocarbonell.com

ÓSCAR DÍAZ

Cone Clock, 2006

What’s the relationship between objects and space? And between space and time? What if an object changed its position during the day, would it become a clock?
Designed as a personal object, Cone Clock is a clock consisting in nothing but the “hours hand” which also indicates the minutes when rotating around itself. Any table, floor or flat surface becomes the face. The numbers are set by the user, who decides which objects to use as his personal points of reference. Notes or objects can be placed at specific points to make us think about what we have to do as a sort of daily agenda.Ink

Calendar, 2007

Ink Calendar makes use of the timed pace of the ink spreading on the paper to indicate time. The ink is absorbed slowly, and the numbers in the calendar are “printed” daily. Once a day, they are filled with ink until the end of the month. The calendar enhances the perception of time passing in an analogue way. The aim is to address our senses, rather than the logical and conscious brain. The ink colours are based on a spectrum that relates to a “colour temperature scale”, each month having a colour related to our perception of the weather on that month. The colours range from dark blue in December to three shades of green inSpring, or orange and red in the Summer.

www.oscar-diaz.net

INTERACTION RESEARCH STUDIO Plane Tracker, 2007

Interaction Research Studio, Goldsmiths College- University of London

Airplanes continuously transmit information about their journey, and these signals can be captured and decoded at home. The Plane Tracker uses this data to create the imagined routes of individual flights, shown on screen as aerial imagery that flows smoothly from origin to destination. As you watch, you are able to vicariously experience the flights from the comfort of your front room. There is no particular purpose in this—the design
is not centred on any clear task or problem. Instead, the Interaction Research Studio wanted to create a situation that highlights air travel, an issue about which different people (e.g. frequent travellers, environmental activists, plane spotters) might have different opinions. For instance, in some viewers the Plane Tracker spurs wanderlust, whilst in others it raises concerns about the environmental impact of air travel. This is part of an ongoing research on how to design for a rich interpretative flexibility.

www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/interaction/

MMMM... Telemadres, 2002-actualidad

Telemadres is a new social model which connects unemployed mothers with people who want to eat healthy, who have no time to cook or lack cooking skills. Through an economic agreement between the parties and regular dispatches of food, the mothers provide their “telechildren” with cooked food and a healthy diet based on fish and meat, vegetables, legumes, fruit and milk. “Telemothers” keep in contact with their telechildren and make sure their fridges are full of food, taking care of their preferences and needs. They even send them homemade desserts, but only occasionally to avoid spoiling them too much. Through the forum http://www.telemadre.com, both telemothers and telechildren can communicate without any sort of intermediary.

www.telemadre.com

ZAUNKA Shoptheplanet

This project is an open reflection on the omnipresence of consumerism in our lives and revolves around various pieces, all in some way related with consuming.

Coches y otros animales (2006) explores the person-car binomial. To a greater or lesser extent, there is an identification between the individual and the vehicle which invites us to reflect on this encounter.
Cuerpo/consumo (2008) reflects on how the human body becomes one of the main products of consumption. And curiously, this happens when personal relationships are more incorporeal than ever before. Computers, TV and videogame consoles interrelate us with other virtual bodies to such an extent that we cannot clearly distinguish the boundaries between real bodies and virtual bodies. But… who cares?
The last piece, Somos lo que comemos (2008), explores some of the most common and usually eaten foods, and how they reveal themselves, almost accidentally, as metaphors of contemporary life.

 www.shopnothing.org (2008)

www.zaunka.com

MARC OWENS Avatar Machine, 2008

The virtual communities created by online games have provided us with a new medium for social interaction and communication. Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view her/ himself as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface. The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead to demonstrate behaviours normally reserved for the gaming environment.

www.marcowens.co.uk

NOAM TORAN & ONKAR KULAR The Macguffin Library, 2008

A term attributed to Alfred Hitchcock, the “MacGuffin” is a cinematic plot device, usually an object that serves to set and keep the story in motion despite lacking intrinsic importance. In Hitchcock’s words, it is “the object, the gimmick, if you will… that the spies are after... The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the object, plans, documents or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters…” Examples of MacGuffins are the statue from the Maltese Falcon, the glowing suitcase from Pulp Fiction and Kiss Me Deadly, “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane, and the monographed cigarette lighter in Strangers on a Train.
The project considers the MacGuffin as a unique object typology, existing solely within the constraints of cinema, and defined in shape and function to achieve the singular purpose of driving a filmic narrative. The MacGuffin Library proposes the foundations for a library of future MacGuffins, produced by first authoring a series of fictional film plots which are used to inform a collection of objects. The film plots and accompanying objects serve to exemplify the repetitive format of cinematic genres, as well as the varying ways these genres are used as instruments of social critique.

 www.noamtoran.com

www.onkarkular.com

NIC RYSEMBRY LandSpace, 2008

Why do we accept being told how to sit? Stimulated by six friends finding six different positions of comfort during a picnic in a park, LandSpace disposes of the dictatorship of modern furniture controlling how we sit and interact. Six different types of resting positions are intended and the remaining transitional elements produce a seating system that demands interpretation and interaction rather than defaulting to the existing.
LandSpace is constructed using over 300 pieces of 100 per cent recycled nine millimetre fluted cardboard.
They are interlocked and mechanically attached to create a 20 square metre piece of furniture that has been tested to hold over 25 people.

www.nicrysenbry.co.uk

URQUIOLA & BERGHINZ Diseño de la Exposición

The Exhibition is a forest that contains ideas, through which the visitor “looses” or “finds” her/his path in a chosen or instinctive way. A “mental adventure” in a space that physically reflects the new liberated relationship between art, design and the individual. This environment is developed by superimposing materials that are taken
from various contexts and have been re-defined. Poor, ready-made materials such as Swedish army nets or industrial adhesive tapes working together in a hexagonal composition that through its diverse height and lengths creates a dynamic space that can easily be multiplied. The graphic on the floor leads the visitors along all parts of the installation. Nowhere/Now/Here invites everyone to make their own interpretation of the space and relate with it in a fresh new context.

www.patriciaurquiola.com