Tonight, the Core77 welcomes Trevor Blake to the first Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club for 2012 hosted at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with us online for the live broadcast!
Between 2009 and 2011 Trevor walked the length and breadth of downtown Portland. When he found a memorial, he transcribed what it said and where it was. Portland Memorials includes all the memorials in downtown Portland. Trevor entered this book into the public domain for the same reason Joseph Shemanski gave Portland the Shemanski Fountain: "to express in small measure gratitude for what the city has done for me." Trevor will discuss the book and the remarkable memorials he found while writing it.
Trevor Blake was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and moved to Portland in 1992. He works as a freelance sign language interpreter. Besides 'Portland Memorials,' he is the publisher of OVO (1987 - present); author of 'The Buckminster Fuller Bibliography'; contributor to 'The Journal of Ride Theory Omnibus' (Portland, JORT 2003); 'In Extremis' (Athens, Survival Kit 1994); 'Pozdravi iz Babilona' (Ljubljana, KRT 1987); and the literature of the Church of the SubGenius.
Several weeks in the making, Art Hack Day took place just over a week ago and was by all accounts a sure sign that the digital counterculture is alive and well in 2012. From from January 26–28, Brooklyn's 319 Scholes—an exhibition space in the no-man's-zone between Williamsburg and Bushwick—hosted the 48-hour hack-a-thon, which started on Thursday night. By the time I had a chance to stop by on Saturday afternoon, it was all hands on deck as organizers Lindsay Howard, Marko Manriquez and Igal Nassima were rallying the troops in anticipation of that evening's one-night-only exhibition of the pieces, projects and collaborations by all variety of tech-savvy creative type.
Incidentally, I ended up reporting on NYIGF just a couple days later, and it was essentially an antithetical experience. From the product-driven premise to the oppressive interior of the cavernous convention center—not to mention the alternately aggressive or disinterested attendants lurking amid labyrinthine booths, hawking their latest injection-molded doodads—suffice it to say that materialism was on display throughout the tradeshow, in stark contrast to the ingenuity and imagination that characterized Art Hack Day...
Former Core77 intern Marko Manriquez was on lasercutter duty, contributing signage (above) among other precision-cut objects for his fellow art hackers. His new-ish plaything also allowed him to explore his interest in "Ecology without Nature," a.k.a. moss graffiti:
Made using laser cut stencils and a "moss milk shake" blend of moss, beer, water and water retention gel. Moss Graffiti serves dual functions to beautify urban spaces and as camouflage for tiny sensors (C02 & VOC) embedded for monitoring air quality and vehicle exhaust for upload to IoT sites such as Pachube. As eco-graffiti or green graffiti, moss replaces spray paint or other toxic chemicals and reactivates liminal, junk space where moss "paint" grows on its own as a hybrid form of guerrilla gardening.
David Stolarsky's "SwimBrowser," for which he won the 2011 OpenNI Developers Challenge, was nothing short of brilliant. Although the GeorgiaTech Masters student (in Computer Science, of course) created the kinesthetic UI nearly a year ago, it was definitely one of the more impressive pieces on display:
Stolarsky also created a brand new work to show for the occasion (as did dozens of other art hackers, after the jump)...
We're excited about our trip to Dublin this week for the 2012 Interaction Conference, produced by the good folks at IxDA. And of course, we're most excited about hosting the second installment of Coroflot Connects on Thursday night, a great evening of shmoozing, meeting/greeting, networking and connecting. Joining us at this year's event will be:
If you're in the market for a new job, check the links above. For those lucky enough to be there in Dublin, make sure to stop by, say hi, grab a drink and meet you new boss/employee.
If you're unable to join us in person look for updates and dispatches from the conference this week. Or take a look through some of the interviews we did with presenters from this year's conference:
Creative Front Cambridgeshire is a UK-based business network for creative industries, based at Cambridge's Anglia Ruskin University. They've been selected by the UK's Design Council to kick off Design Icons, a series of national design events, this February.
The Design Icons Exhibition Launch Party is slated for February 9th and will celebrate local design talent, with pieces like Alex Driver and Carlos Peralta's Moss Table, above, which turns the moss in biophotovoltaic energy generators strong enough to power the table's lamp.
Nineteen other Cambridge-designed objects, ranging from housewares to medical devices to consumer electronics, will be on display. Click here for more information on the exhibit and see Creative Front Cambridgeshire's weekly schedule of design-, manufacturing- and business-related events.
Our friend Marko Manriquez and his fellow creatives at 319 Scholes are pleased to announce that they are hosting a "huge interactive hacking event"in their 3,000 sf exhibition space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Art Hack Day is (somewhat contrary to its name) a 48-hour marathon of digital creative activity—"part happening, part hackathon"—featuring "many prominent hackers, netartists and geeks in their respective fields will spend 3 days straight creating amazing works of interactivity, digital fabrication and DIY."
Art Hack Day is an event dedicated to cracking open the process of art making, with special reverence toward open-source technologies. Between January 26-28, artists and collaborators will inhabit 319 Scholes to create and explore the participatory nature of technology, bringing together hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is technology. The event will be streamed to online audiences, who will be encouraged to participate through various platforms to be listed on the ArtHackDay.net website. Visitors are invited to engage and interact with the projects online throughout the hack, as well as join the teams on Saturday night starting at 7:00pm for a closing exhibition, live performances, and a massive party.
Rendering of the space
The general public is invited to attend the closing party on Saturday, January 28; RSVP on Facebook.
Reporting by Carly Ayres; Photos by David O'Connor
"Life code is going to change the world in some pretty fundamental ways, including the world of design."
-Juan Enriquez
Juan Enriquez was the inaugural speaker for the Rhode Island School of Design's three-part Presidential Speaker Series, "Shared Voices," which kicked off this past Thursday evening. The series is intended to provide a forum for artists, designers, activists, scientists, and other scholars to come to RISD and engage in thought-provoking conversation that will hopefully influence and inform their own work.
The chairman of Biotechonomy LLC, fondly profiled as "Mr. Gene" by Fortune, Enriquez seemed like an unlikely presenter at the art and design school. Following a campus tour led by John Maeda, however, Enriquez said he saw parallels between the average RISD student and a pre-med student in the "sheer intensity of the work, single-minded determination, and focus on discovery." The urge to discover something that people haven't seen or discovered before was something he saw in both fields, a path that required experimentation, numerous iterations, focus, and "a degree of arrogance." Specifically, "the process that you are using here is 90% incredibly hard, focused work, and 10% incredible creativity and inspiration doesn't look to me very different from what a bio lab or a physics lab or a chemistry lab does."
New York City's Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) recently announced the 2012 season of "The Home Front: American Design Now," the second edition of a lecture and event series that "brings together a variety of respected voices to examine the current state of object design in the United States."
Last year's program surveyed the challenges facing the contemporary furniture scene from a variety of angles—from architecture and retail to education and small business. This year's programming further explores the ideas, developments, and talents that are moving native design forward.
Along with an ever-growing public awareness for contemporary art comes an increased interest in architecture and design. As a result more and more young American designers' careers are being launched not in showrooms, but in galleries, with collectors commissioning interiors and furnishings that finally matches the adventurous spirit of their art collections. This blurring of hierarchies has created a sophisticated new breed of practitioner who effortlessly navigates the worlds of art, architecture, and furniture design. The Minneapolis-based designer Matt Olson of RO/LU and the New York architect Rafael de Cárdenas will be discussing this trend together with the Rauschenberg Foundation's Executive Director Christy MacLear, and collector Adam Lindemann. The panel will be moderated by Felix Burrichter, founder and editor of PIN-UP Magazine.
Next month we'll be heading over to Dublin, Ireland for the Interaction12 Conference, the annual gathering organized by our friends at the IxDA. This will be our first trip to the Emerald Isle, so if anyone has suggestions for can't-miss experiences definitely let us know in the comments.
We're happy to be sponsors of the conference, and also super excited to be hosting the second installment of Coroflot Connects, a whirlwind night of shmoozing, recruiting and networking. What better way to land your next dream job than with a pint of Guinness in your hand!
Coroflot Connects
at Interaction12 Conference
Thursday, February 2, 2012
5PM - 7PM
Banking Hall at the Westin Dublin Hotel
Dublin, Ireland
For those of you attending the conference, make sure to stop by and say, "Hi!" on Thursday night. For those not yet registered—get on it! Time and space are running short.
Join the London design community for the second UK Designers Accord Town Hall in London on Thursday, January 19, hosted by Engage by Design and in partnership with the Design Council in London.
Systems innovation is driving the sustainability agenda; come and discuss how we can create social innovation that generates meaningful change.
Returning for it's seventh year, Design Miami has grown in size with 23 galleries—there were 15 in 2010—exhibiting a mix of contemporary furniture, objects, jewellery, and an increased amount of collectable mid-century design from Europe and North America. If you were under the impression the world's economy is still recovering, it sure didn't feel like it in Miami, according to the organizers this years sales were the strongest ever with a record number of 29,000 visitors.
Some of the freshest work we came across was the furniture collection Wilderness by South African design outfit Gregor Jenkin Studio, the pieces make deep cultural references to the hardships of migrant labor and the brutality of the urban landscape. Moss took an interesting approach this year presenting the work of Professor Haresh Lalvani exploring mass customization with digital fabrication—not a new concept to core readers—but interesting to see this topic championed by one of the most influential galleries at the fair. Stand out pieces included Konstantin Grcic's stunning formula 1 inspired table, jewellery designer John Iversen's Mixed Up bracelet, Frederik Molenschot's cast bronze Citylight Chandelier, and the scrap leather work experiments by designer Elisa Strozyk and artist Sebastian Neeb for Fendi's Craft Alchemy exhibition.
On January 5th, the Rhode Island School of Design will be kicking off their inaugural Presidential Speaker Series "Shared Voices" with a presentation from Juan Enriquez, who researches the impact of genomics on society. His talk "Decoding with Life Code" will explore the newest innovations in digital fabrication: building with genes.
Some principles of design are timeless, but a new language, that of digital code, has fundamentally changed how we make, spread, use drawings, paintings, sculpture, music, photos, video, and film. Now a vast new programming language is becoming increasingly available and widespread, that of life. We can now read, copy and re code life, and this too will fundamentally change how we think of, and how we execute, design...
The rest of the "Shared Voices" line-up currently includes Lisa Randall, a particle physicist at Harvard and an advocate for the "art-science connection in our lives," and Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine. Each of the speakers are "a master of his or her domain but is also ready to transcend it." Group discussions will take place after the lectures.
Juan Enriquez's talk is at 7:30pm on Thursday, January 5th in the RISD auditorium, so be sure to reserve your seats here!
What could be cooler than getting paid to invent stuff, full-time, by Instructables? In Autodesk University 2011's Creative Studio we caught up with Instructables Artist-in-Residence Oliver Kreitman, a.k.a. PenfoldPlant, to ask him about the gig and how he got it. (Short answer: Chocolate bribery.)
The Australian press is abuzz with news that native son Marc Newson will be designing the New Year's Eve festivities for the city of Sydney, where Core77's own Glen Jackson Taylor might be from. "I work in such a broad range of industries, I'm always attracted to things I've never done - and perhaps will never do again," Newson told the Sydney Morning Herald.
New Year's Eve has never been ''designed'' before, and there were non-negotiables to navigate... [Newson] conceded it was "quite a tight envelope" to work within, but said a surprising amount could be done creatively. A strict colour palette from his blue, violet, green and yellow endless rainbow logo, festooned on banners all over the city, will feature. And there will, he revealed, be a big countdown with numbers on the bridge before the still-secret midnight "bridge effect."
Glen, what's the secret "bridge effect" going to be?
Last night saw the opening of the Brooklyn Night Bazaar at 149 Kent Avenue in the Williamsburg, a stone's throw from lower Manhattan but a veritable world apart... not least for the availability of massive repurposed industrial spaces. The former warehouse was divided into sections: a marketplace that is open to the public from 5PM—1AM tonight and tomorrow, and a music venue for ticketholders only. (Food and drink are available in both parts.)
The stage was set up at the far end of the venue space
Fabricator's Guild set up their wares on a plywood bleacher designed by Julien de Smedt architects. Stop by and say hi to our Core77 Design Awards intern Marko, who is moving on to bigger and better things as a founding partner in the Bushwick-based digital fabrication startup...
As of the beginning of the month, the IDSA International Design Excellence Awards is open for submissions for its 32nd consecutive year. "With its storied history, impartial jurying process, international pool of exceptional entrants, impartial expert jurors, breadth of categories, and forward thinking criteria, IDEA 2012 is uniquely positioned to shine a spotlight on design genius."
The brief is as timely and relevant as ever:
We live in a global community with unique challenges and opportunities in which great design is uniquely positioned to improve daily life and experiences. Design touches people every minute of every day. It shapes the world, experience and daily lives. Great design envisions reinvents and creates the future we want rather than the one we are handed.
To that end, the IDSA is calling for designers the world over to submit the best of the best: exceptional design that epitomizes quality across design mediums and platforms. Given that IDEA has maintained and honed its reputation as the preeminent international design competition, it should come as no surprise that it is also known as the "Oscars of Design."
Of course, just as the very definition of design continues to grow at an ever-increasing pace, the awards program has evolved over the past three decades, and 2012 is no exception. IDEA2012 features several new categories: Digital Design; Service Design; Social Impact Design; Bathrooms, Spas and Wellness; Gardens & Outdoor; Kitchens; and Living Room and Bedroom. (See the full list of categories here.)
Check out some of our favs from 2011—bronze, silver and gold—for inspiration or head over to the IDEA2012 website for more details and to enter! The deadline for submissions is February 17, 2012.
Please consider this your official invitation to what promises to be the most *Curious* and *Chummy* event of Portland's holiday design itinerary. Come down and chat-up some of our 37 Curiosity Club Alumni - that eclectic mix of local makers, thinkers and designers who shared their projects and insights at our bi-weekly speaker series over the past year. Intellectual stimulation and creative inspiration will be served! (As well as Beer, Soda and Lemon Bars!)
Curiosity Club "Meet the Alumni Party" at Hand-Eye Supply
Tuesday, Dec. 13 2011
6:00 to 9:00 pm
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, Ore.
503-575-9769
A note from the CC hosts:
Over the last year and some odd months we have had no less than 37 Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club speakers at - and each and every one has been insightful, entertaining and of course incredibly curious.
One thing that we have always lamented is the fact that after each meeting we rarely get more than a few minutes to chat as people make their way out. So we have taken it upon ourselves to invite all of our members - everyone who has spoken or will speak to the Curiosity Club and anyone who has attended or will attend - to come down and exchange ideas over beverages and snacks.
The Curiosity Club is an incredible group of people - Our group boasts Designers, Tinkerers, Makers, Writers, Theorists, Open Source Manufacturing advocates, Teachers, a Cyborg Anthropologist, a Historian, a Luthier, a Pinhole Camera maker, a Knife maker, a One-Wheeled Motorcycle designer and developer, a Chef, an Upholsterer, an amateur Rocket Scientist, an Improv Comedian, Cargo Bike Builders ...And the list continues, each area of expertise and persona being equally fascinating.
The Brooklyn Night Bazaar is a temporary gathering of local artists, designers, musicians and chefs who are coming together in for three nights at a pop-up space in Williamsburg. They're building on the momentum they picked up with their inaugural event at Dekalb Market in Downtown Brooklyn just a few months ago in October.
Billed as a hub for creative culture that is conspicuously well-timed for the holidays, 149 Kent Avenue will serve as the venue for over 100 local merchants and food vendors, boasting an interior and bespoke furniture by Julien de Smedt architects, art installations and projections by NBNY, live performances by James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem), the Hold Steady, Titus Andronicus and more.
"Bone" chair by Julien de Smedt Architects
"Stair" urban amphitheater by Julien de Smedt Architects
"Stacked" Shelves by Julien de Smedt Architects
More info on some of the exhibitors we're looking forward to seeing after the jump...
In case you missed it, Core77 friends and family gathered at New York City's Phaidon Store last night to do some holiday crafting. Resident paper craft expert, Daniel Stillman, led the charge with lessons in candy cane construction, miniature Christmas trees and modular pieces perfect for group building. Thanks to everyone who came out for some holiday cheer and for Phaidon for hosting!
New York City! Core77 and Phaidon Store are teaming up tomorrow night to spread some holiday cheer with our free paper craft workshop and holiday party. Hosted by Core77 contributor and resident origami expert Daniel Stillman, we're going to learn how to fold paper candy canes with one hand while partaking in holiday cocktails with the other. Come by and say hello, grab a drink and pickup a new craft for your design toolbox! P.S. Core77 readers will get 30% off purchases from the Phaidon Store NYC flagship tomorrow during the event.
Core77 Holiday Paper Craft Workshop
Thursday, December 8, 2011
7PM - 9PM
Phaidon Store
83 Wooster, New York City
RSVP with "PAPERWORK" in the subject line to: store.soho@phaidon.com
The Carpenters Workshop Gallery had one of the strongest collections at Design Miami this year, and were the only exhibitor with the confidence to display their prices. Dutch designer Frederik Molenschot stole the limelight—so to speak—with his spiraling bronze Citylight Chandelier that would look right at home on any Tim Burton set.
The real crowd pleaser was RAndom International'sYou Fade To Light mirror wall which made it's debut at Milan in 2009. The interactive pixel-tiles react to movement, lighting up with a variety of modes controlled by an iPhone app.
While perhaps not the most economical use of material, another standout piece (yes another a light) was Sebastian Brajkovic'sLathe Lamp made from solid aluminum with a CNC lathe and treated with an anodized finish.
Art collective FriendsWithYou (FWY) presented "Inner Space, the Secrets of the Unknown!" in their poker dot covered gallery/store located in the Miami Design District. Suspended in the buildings atrium is The Phantom, a huge inflatable sculpture spanning 15 feet in diameter greeting visitors with it's Pingu-like stare.
The latest work includes a number of sculptures and mirror-finished objects exploring the theme of self-reflection, both literally and metaphorically. It's hard not to smile when you enter their artfully crafted adult playground which sucks you in, and happily distracts you from the pressures of the outside world for a moment. A secret door leads to a second gallery with large prints and a small retail outlet with goods for those who can't afford the collectors prices.
Every year at the Autodesk University Exhibit Hall we see at least one piece of technology that blows us away. This year's socks-knocker-offer was Perceptive Pixel's 82" Multi-Touch Display, which was frequently mobbed and saw company founder Jeff Han endlessly being forced to provide demo after demo to enthusiastic crowds. (There were 8,000 attendees, so you do the math.) The display, by the way, is so large that we swear the tireless Han started getting a tan by the third day.
What's different about this new version of Perceptive Pixel's display is that it combines Multi-Touch with stylus-reading capacity, making this an industrial designer's dream come true. Check it out:
Stay tuned for coverage of Perceptive Pixel's desktop unit.
As we noted earlier, this year's Autodesk University had an exciting new emphasis on making things just for the sake of making them, as evidenced in their choice of presenters—we've got an interview coming up with speaker Saul Griffith of Otherlab—as well as in their new products. As the DIY and Maker movements continue to take firm root, Autodesk has noticed and is addressing the market.
This is perfectly encapsulated in their freaking awesome 123D Sculpt app for iPad (which you should download right now, as it's free for a limited time). Rather than being a mere time-killer app where you fling birds or solve puzzles, this one actually lets you create things. It provides you with a series of stock forms in various genres--humans, geometric shapes, sneakers, clothing, et cetera—that you can then sculpt and paint into whatever you envision.
You may have seen the original video demo of the product (shown at the bottom of this entry). We went a step further and got the guy who did that video, industrial designer Kyle Runciman—remember his Alias and SketchBook demos from last year?—to walk us through the program and explain the steps, below. (Automotive designers in particular will want to check out the footage starting at 5:50.)
For those of you who were awaiting the soundless video, it's been fixed. Enjoy!
One of the great things about Autodesk University is the extremely talented speakers and presenters they consistently attract. While we can't tease the entire lineup yet--we're still working out some clearance issues--we're pleased to kick off our AU 2011 interview series with Spencer Nugent, the industrial designer behind IDsketching.com, Sketch-a-Day.com and the design consultancy Studio Tminus.
Sketchmaster Nugent was on hand at the conference to provide classes in Design Sketching, as well as to man a Wacom in the AU Creative Studio space to field SketchBook Pro questions. Here he talks to Core77 about the conference, gives us the brief rundown on starting up the sketch sites, provides some sketching tips for our readers, and sounds off on Paper vs. Digital.
A solicitation on the streets of Chinatown to buy a tiny ziplock bag of goodies? Twenty years ago we would have been thrown in the hoosegow. But this offer is on the up and up, for not only is it First Thursday in our Art-filled 'hood, and not only is it a rare beautiful winter day, but tonight we are hosting Hot One Inch Action at Hand-Eye Supply—where you buy, keep or trade the tiniest of local art limited editions. So instead of heading home later, come on down to Chinatown and score!
Hot One Inch Action reproduces the tiny art of 50 local artists on one inch buttons. At the show, we sell mixed packs of 5 buttons for $5. If you want a specific button, you'll either have to take a chance and buy more mixed packs of random buttons OR trade with the other people at the event. With none of the pretentiousness of a regular art show, everyone interacts out of necessity—"I want that button!"—and the evening becomes a relaxed and fun event for people of all-ages.
Thursday, Dec. 1st
Admission is free. Mixed packs of 5 buttons are $5.
6PM - 9PM PST
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR, 97209 RSVP on Facebook
Ferrari took over 1111 Lincoln Road (the voluminous car park by Herzog De Meuron) to celebrate chairman Luca di Montezemolo's 20th anniversary at the company, and to kick-off the 10th edition of Art Basel in style. The 7th floor was packed with celebrities, designer suits and models everywhere, but that just served as a distraction from the four floors packed with museum-worthy Ferrari's.
We're not sure how much the building increased in value that night and it's hard to imagine another car company pulling off the same kind of party. The entire car park was lit red, video projections showed clips of Ferrari's used in famous movies, and signature red scarves were given out to guests to help survive the unseasonably cool evening.
DESIGN MIAMI 2011
TOKYO DESIGN WEEK 2011
DUTCH DESIGN WEEK 2011
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2011
Rendering of the space
Reporting by 
The marketplace floor
Refurbished typewriters from 
The stage was set up at the far end of the venue space
"Bone" chair by Julien de Smedt Architects
"Stair" urban amphitheater by Julien de Smedt Architects
"Stacked" Shelves by Julien de Smedt Architects
