Thursday 8 November 2007

Nebula and Phillip Delamore

Phillips Nebula Project

I've been researching light...and the Phillips Nebula Project is very similar to my project. I'm making bed lighting to soothe people to sleep - dimming like dusk. Nebula is interactive though, people can project any computer image or message on to the ceiling, they can scan anything in.

Emotionally durable design - it can change continually and personally.

My design falls down in that respect. However I do intend mine to be a beautiful, well made piece of functional bed-decoration. The dimming light should be a part of the users bed-time routine. In being a beautiful, comforting, daily part of the users life I hope it would not be gotten rid of. Anyhow, I will be thinking of ways my design could be interactive.

Also went to talk by Phillip Delamore - designer/researcher at LCF - about Digital Futures.

Similar to Cradle to Cradle he spoke about how our vision of the future hasn't changed since the 50's - but he sees a soft, organic, furry future.

One of his projects was an enormous repeat print, so big that no two garments had the same patterning - mass individualisation - meeting individual needs on a production level. Other examples were moving prints projected on to garments, photographs were taken and the customer chose from the stills which print they actually wanted.

Computers can simulate how a real product will behave, where it's weak points are etc. Can simulate the individual (bodymetrics/avatars) and these can be used for product development and seeing how clothes look on a person. The longer things are kept digital before being made real the less waste there will be. There is even research being done in to virtual touch! It reminds me of The Matrix.

Second life - virtual life, real business takes place in this virtual world.

If individuals begin designing for themselves everyone is a designer - perhaps the designers role will change - designing ways to design?

A digital future could be emotionally durable as it makes individual needs easy to meet on an industrial scale. It also cuts down on material waste. We wouldn't want to lose the creativity of doing things by hand though. Although much of my work is digital, I'm aware that digital work has a very different quality to hand-crafted.

Thinking back to Cradle to Cradle - does it mean we should eventually lose our history? There's alot of amazing design that is cradle to grave - I keep thinking about this and then realising it's silly - we will probably never acheive a completly cradle to cradle system, and the cradle to grave stuff is stuck here - it's not going to degrade, that's the whole problem. But. . .I can't stop confusing myself thinking about it.

Interactive Design

Phillips - Nebula

Philip Delamore

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