Curious in Berlin

Bas van Abe, creative director of the Waag Society and one of the organisers of Makers Lab, spoke to us about the ‘next industrial revolution’, which will be the distribution of making knowledge and open-source design.

Taking massproduction techniques and applying them to smaller communities’ needs, these conscientious designers have created CNC machines. The machines bring the process of making directly to the end-user so that people can produce their own designs for their particular needs. The Waag society provides an open platform for designers to upload and share their blueprints.

We spoke to Luis Berrios Negron, who is another organiser of the Makers Lab. He proudly showed us the Turtle Two – a recycled and recyclable system of boxes for display, which dominate the Makers Lab space.

We were very impressed by the work of the digital media design class of the University of the Arts, Berlin, especially the Perpetual Storytelling Machine by Benjamin Maus and Julius von Bismarck and the Vanity ring by Markus Kison.

The Perpetual Storytelling Machine translates words of text into patent drawings, so illustrating a never-ending story. The Vanity ring is connected to a search software that estimates the number of Google search hits your name has had and shows that figure instead of a precious stone, perhaps giving a value more appropriate for our times.

We liked as well the work by BTK school, Berlin – Motion Design. We enjoyed playing the Touchless audiovisual controller by Kolya Karcher, which reproduces electronic samples. The user may alter and co-ordinate them via the sensors and the visual display.

We were particularly impressed by the Miners’ jumpers displayed in the stall of the Polish HAJA collective by Asia Sowula. Another craft project which we like is the organic furniture and jewellery by Gabriela Horvat from Buenos Aires, part of the CMD Collective.

It was interesting to see the display called My Bauhaus Is Better Than Yours, a platform for young and ambitious designers, from the famous school in Weimar. They are trying to reconsider the legacy of the institution presenting their ‘latest trumps in music, poetry and crisis’.

 
We at Goldsmiths Curious set ourselves the task to dedicate each day to extending one of our projects. On Thursday we took the Artificial Synesthesia project by Max Kropitz, who has made individual devices to amplify and restrict the senses. We took this idea further and made a communal Chinese whisper object.