MoMA presents ' Design and the Elastic Mind '

Saturday, 23 February 2008 01:44

NEW YORK CITY - Design and the Elastic Mind is an exhibition about the latest developments in design, and a glimpse into what the future holds. It explores the reciprocal relationship between science and design in the contemporary world, bringing together more than 200 objects, installations, and concepts that marry the most advanced scientific research with attentive considerations of human nature, limitations, habits, and aspirations. The exhibition shows designers’ ability to grasp momentous revolutions in technology, science, and history that demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior, and to convert them into objects that people can actually understand and use.
 
The objects in the exhibition range from images of nanoscopic devices to vehicles, from appliances to interfaces, and from pragmatic solutions for everyday use to provocative ideas meant to influence our future choices. The exhibition, on view from February 24 to May 12, 2008, is organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, and Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

Ms. Antonelli says, “This exhibition highlights current examples of successful design translations of disruptive scientific and technological innovations, and reflects on how the figure of the designer has changed from form giver to fundamental interpreter of an extraordinarily dynamic reality.”

Over the past 25 years, under the influence of such milestones as the introduction of the personal computer, the Internet, and wireless technology, people have experienced dramatic changes in several mainstays of their existence, as well as in their notions of time, space, matter, and individuality. People cope daily with dozens of adjustments of scale and pace: working across several time zones, traveling with relative ease between satellite maps and microscopic images, and being inundated with information. Adaptability is an ancestral distinction of intelligence, but today’s instant variations in rhythm call for something stronger: elasticity, the byproduct of adaptability plus acceleration.

Design and the Elastic Mind includes objects, projects, and concepts by teams of designers, scientists, architects, and engineers from all over the world, ranging from the nanoscale to the cosmological scale, and includes four commissions made especially for this exhibition: a Web-based imaginary city by Peter Frankfurt, Greg Lynn, and Alex McDowell; a Web site by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar that explores Web dating and the dynamic of relationships in a digital world; a transformable structure by Chuck Hoberman; and an architectural exploration of self-assembly and modularity across scales by Aranda/Lasch.

The installation begins at the very small scale, with the display of scientists’ experiments with nanostructures and of designers’ interpretation of the possibilities and implications of nanophysics, biology, and biomimicry. Visitors then encounter a large area devoted to the human scale, with an array of scenarios and design ideas meant to spark debate and reflection on the way people live and will live, as well as to inspire individuals to design future behaviors with equal care and elasticity. The exhibition ends with the large scale, and explores the dimension of the city, the world, and the Internet, as well as the analysis of large quantities of data in genomic research. Within these different scales, there are examples of projects that address particular areas of research related scale, responsiveness in time and space, and elasticity.

The exhibition is supported by NTT DoCoMo, Inc. and Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Additional funding is provided by The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art. The accompanying publication, designed by award-winning book designer Irma Bloom, is vividly illustrated with nearly 200 projects from the exhibition. Essays by Ms. Antonelli, design critic and historian Hugh Aldersey-Williams, visualization design expert Peter Hall, and nanophysicist Ted Sargent provide further insight on the promising relationship between design and science. The book is available at MoMA Stores and online at www.momastore.org . It is distributed to the trade through Distributed Art Publishers (D.A.P) in the United States and Canada, and through Thames + Hudson outside North America. Paperback: 7 ½ x 9 ½ inches; 200 pages; 250 illustrations. Price: $34.95.

The Design and the Elastic Mind Web site, conceived and designed by renowned web designer Yugo Nakamura from tha ltd, features 300 projects, including all of the works from the exhibition and an additional 50 projects unique to the Web site. The projects, the exhibition checklist, selected video content, and links page serve as an archive of the exhibition. Conceptual groupings and dynamic connective links between the works act to visualize the exhibition’s themes and provide users a level of interactivity with the show’s content. The Web site, www.moma.org/elasticmind  will launch in conjunction with the exhibition opening on February 24, 2008.

The Museum of Modern Art and Seed Magazine present, in collaboration with Parsons The New School for Design, the two-day conference MIND Design + Science on Thursday, April 3, and Friday, April 4. The Keynote on April 3 will take place at MoMA and the Symposium on April 4 will take place at The New School. Tickets for the conference are free but are required for admission. Tickets for the April 3 keynote session are available at MoMA’s lobby information desk, the film desk, or online at www.moma.org/thinkmodern . For more information on obtaining tickets for the April 4 symposium, please visit www.mind08.com .