London Design Festival 2017 Highlights
The image above was the beginning of this week of interesting workshops, events, exhibitions, and talks during the annual London Design Festival. This was a workshop I did with Hackoustics where we made DIY instruments and were opened up to thinking about using upcycled materials and daily objects to create musical sound and rhythm. I personally really enjoyed this because of my interest this year in sound making and instrument making.
Workshops
There are many events happening simultaneously during LDF, however interactive design is only a small slice with the majority of exhibits pertaining to interior and product design. The 2 other workshops I participated in as part of London College of Communication Uncertainty Playground FutureMakers workshops were making Charlotte the draw-bot with Thomas O’Reilly and testing with conductive and various inks in screen printing with Lisa, screen print technician at LCC. Both were very interesting for me in terms of adding to my toolbox of possible applications for future projects.
I remember last year at this exact time, I had just moved to London to pursue my MA. I walked around London discovering places through LDF 2016 and now, I am walking around again with much better knowledge of the city, having made memories in many parts of this city. I find that one of the things I’ll miss about London is the fact that it is such a big city of never ending cool events and exhibitions, whether its the theatre performances or the inspiring events I’ve attended during my year here. The best is also that most events are accessible to everyone and many are free. This is the reason why I felt London gives opportunity to emerging and learning artists. If you make the effort you can find people and places that will become your tribe.
Talks
So this week, I’ve also seen many designers speak about their practice. I went to talks at the V&A by Es Devlin, the only stage designer I know and am so inspired by, and Dominic Wilcox, one of the most creative and funny designers I’ve ever encountered. Both talks were very interesting in that they are completely different but both contribute to how I want to think about interaction design. I also went to another talk by interaction designer, Daan Roosegaarde who until now, I’ve only been following his projects. He is also such a character and talked about where his work originates from, his inspirations from nature, showing us the anthill colony and space trash which drives his work recently. I could learn how he tackles big wicked problems like smog pollution and how he creates environments to bring people together.
Today, I attended the V&A Digital Weekend event and since I’m planning to make a moving wearable costume for my thesis project, I found this work by Irene Posch, called Handcrafting the Digital. She developed a series of tools for working with wearables and textiles but what’s most important to me is that she showed me how she made textile move from a copper coil, connected to a ball that is magnetized based on polarity, it flips sides based on the positive and negative inputs. This could help me with trying to make small pieces on the costume move and flip.
Here are some other photos from LDF 2017:
There are many more exhibits I could’ve picked but these were mostly connected to my own practice.
