The installation Exquisite Clock has been invited to Maison&Objet, the prestigious international design and furniture fair taking place in Paris from 22nd to 26th January. Exquisite Clock is a clock made of numbers taken from everyday life – seen, captured and uploaded by people from all over the world on a web 2.0 website.
At Maison&Objet, Exquisite Clock has been presented as part of the event "Hybrid – Nature, Techno, Urban", envisioning the convergence of nature, design and technology in today's world, where social, economic and environmental issues significantly push architects and designers to provide solutions that reposition the essence of domestic life. Exquisite Clock was presented as a gigantic projection displaying time formed by vegetables: the core message is how nature transforms time as seconds go by.
Exquisite Clock has been developed also as iPhone application as is currently shown also at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, within the exhibition "Decode. Digital Design Sensations" (until April 2010).
Maison&Objet, 22-26 January
Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre
Hall 3
Fabrica has been invited to Transmediale, a major festival taking place in Berlin and focusing on how new technologies and global network practices can influence culture and politics in today's world. On 4th February Andy Cameron, Fabrica's Executive Director, will moderate the conference “Creativity as an Economic Resource”, exploring the relationship between art and capital. He will illustrate the vision of Fabrica, the creative laboratory of Benetton Group, founded in 1994 with the aim of combining culture and industry and offering young people from around the world an opportunity for creative growth and multicultural interchange. On 5th February Cameron will participate in the "Futurity Long Conversation", an encounter among 21 leading experts from the fields of art, industry and science such as Bruce Sterling and Conrad Wolfram, to discuss and explore the abstract and qualitative elements defining what we conceive of the future today. Cameron will illustrate the project "Future of Retail", born in partnership with Telecom Italia Future Centre, Ars Electronica FutureLab (Linz) and the London College of Fashion. The project's aim is to improve customer experience in clothing stores, investigating the new approaches and opportunities offered by yet unexplored digital, interactive and network technology.
During the Cologne's Design Week, the Sisley store in Ehrenstrasse will feature Bizarre, a collection of ceramics, especially created by Sam Baron for Sisley, re-inventing one of the best Portuguese traditions through a contemporary vision of the old "savoir-faire". The collection assembles a futuristic approach of souvenirs inherited from the past, merging details of a long tradition of nature-inspired shapes with classic vases and tableware pieces.
Consisting of five limited-production objects, which will be sold in the Sisley store during the Design Week, the Bizarre collection is a range of vases and tableware in classic shapes with industrial-production ceramic figurines used as three-dimensional decorative details. A way of “populating” our home with strange, hybrid creatures: from a vase which hosts a family of swans or with indiscreet rabbit ears that create floral motifs, to the plate that seems to have a fish swimming in it, or the salt and pepper set where a bee has settled gently. The ceramics are made by hand and produced by Olfaire, in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal.
18-24 January 2010
Sisley Store
Ehrenstrasse 45-47
Cologne, Germany
From 10th to 15th December Fabrica hosted the workshop "Making Things Move", held by the American artist and computer programmer Zachary Lieberman.
The workshop results, presented on the last day, inspired a critical contribution by Alessandro Ludovico, media critic and chief editor of Neural Magazine.
The workshop results, a video interview of Lieberman, as well as the essay by Ludovico will be soon available on http://www.fabrica.it/workshops/index.html
