bunnyfish adventures

objects and art

A bunch of us (14+, mostly IO) went as a mob to a small design exhibition in Rotterdam this past Saturday.  It seemed to be very focused on jewelry – droog design had a small exhibit, but it was stuff I had already seen in Amsterdam.  Also some other familiar chairs and furniture from Dutch Design Week showcase.

I’m not sure for whom the exhibit was, possibly more targeted at a wealthier crowd who would actually consider buying products this expensive.

I grabbed the floor plan for Art Rotterdam, but it was getting late and we went out for food at the New York Hotel Restaurant that even served “American Cheesecake.”  I ordered a side of sourdough bread, but whatever I got clearly was not sourdough.  Cry.

I went back the next day to see Art Rotterdam, this time it was just me and Lu, a Taiwanese girl who is studying DFI (Design for Interaction).  While we had expected it to be bigger due to the larger number of corporate sponsors in comparison to Object Rotterdam, I severely underestimated the task of looking through the 75 galleries were there (including some from London, New York, Milan, etc.).  Clearly Art was the Big Mama event, not Object.

At first I didn’t take any pictures, because of that general rule of not taking pictures at art museums or other events, but then I think the rule seemed to be universally bent when it came to 3-D works rather than 2-D.  Still, I marked down a bunch of names and will post what pieces I can find at the end.

So there was a lot of works to look at, but not a lot of it was mind-shattering nor was it even stuff I liked.  That’s the thing about art-ish events: I like going to them, but I don’t often like or am affected by what’s there.  Perhaps finding the couple things that strike you is worth the couple hours of indifference.

But there were three things that I was reminded that I prefer in general or for when I ever have my own exhibition:

1) Interaction – I like being able to touch products and play with things.  A lady showed us how to control the dimming of a gold lamp by just touching it, and after I was testing to see how it worked for 5 seconds she was like “Okay, well don’t play with it now.”  Rubbish.  When I make my Nauseo coffeemaker, everyone can have a cup.

2) Photographs – People should be able to take them.  If the real value is from the actual interaction experience, they’ll buy it.  There’s no real harm in having photographs taken of it.

3) Stories – It’s important for me to know where a piece of work comes from.  However when under bombardment and overstimulation as was the case here, it turns into more of an eye-catching or first impression game.  Lu was much better than me at looking at everything more attentively and catching things I didn’t the first time around.

Then it took us 3 hours to get home, because there was a power failure and no trains were leaving Rotterdam (it usually takes 20 minutes).  In short, we tried to find a bus, found the real station under construction, then found out the bus wasn’t running that day, then went to take the light rail to Den Haag (past Delft) to catch a train to go to Delft. Whoops.