Fuori Salone Milano 2009
| Tuesday 21st April | |
| I’m currently in Milano with Tinker.it!, setting up their piece Hop as part of the Fuori Salone. This is a brief account of the salone as I go. |  |
| Yesterday I was in the Milano Green Art Festival exhibition space. Number 205 in the Interni Guide. There are cocktails on Thursday and Friday night and a party on Saturday night with some live electronic music.
Also at 14:00 on Saturday, Arduino and Tinker.it! co-founder Massimo Banzi will be giving a talk on low-energy, low-cost lighting. |
   |
| In the spirit of recycling and reuse, we have remade our piece Hop, that was on show recently at the Kinetica Arts Fair, in a new orientation to suit the space. |   |
| Wednesday 22nd April | |
| By the end of Wednesday Daniel Soltis and Brock Craft had joined the Tinker team in Milano and helped with the fine tuning of Hop. |       |
| Thursday 23rd April | |
| On Thursday I went for a wander around Zona Tortona to see what was going on. Two friends of mine, Ágoston Nagy and Bence Ádám Kiss were displaying some work as part of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest in the That’s Design section. |  |
| Their piece used a Wiimote that tracked a hand held screen. The movements of the screen could then be used to navigate the content. For example, turning the screen 90º would bring up the synopsis of what the user was watching. Apparently this got the attention of some Nintendo representatives and they were given invites to an exclusive party…I know what I’m doing next year! |    |
| The Lavazza space had a heavenly theme, with soft music, lots of white and blue and these nice halo swings. In the entrance and centre of the room there was a display of past Lavazza designs,…although I got the feeling that most people were just there for the free coffee. |   |
| To the right of the Lavazza space was something that appealed to me. There was an “open workshop”. There was a lot of fine metalwork, including a horse made from copper links and a set of beer hand pumps that looks like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz!
While this was great to see if felt sorry for the metalworkers trying to work with thousands of tourists getting in the way. Also, I actually saw someone taking a picture of a bandsaw…I think people should be exposed to workshops at an early age to prevent this kind of situation ;) |
    |
| After wandering aimlessly for a while I found myself at “Richard Ginori @ Taste Lounge. A very cool space with comfy sofas, magazines and a great selection of food and drinks. It’s in a warehouse space marked with an enormous set of inflatable green cutlery! |  |
| Lots of porcelain hanging above you in the entrance. |  |
| A wall of plates. |   |
| A view of the sofa space with magazines. |  |
| A view of the space from the far end. |  |
| Food was ordered by ticking boxes on a cardboard tray. |   |
| I found a hidden piece of interaction that wasn’t on the Interni Guide! “Mister X: a journey inside the material” had several diamond shaped portals, each with a collide-o-scope that responded when the outside was tapped. |     
|
| Further down the road were some amazing nut and bolt figures, a life-size Alien and Predator…being propped up by some furniture. |    |
| On the way back I saw the bizarre Red Bull car, complete with DJ booth. |   |
| That evening we attended DorkBot Milano, with a small…but select crowd :) |    |
| Friday 24th April |
|
| Daniel Soltis and myself started the day by heading over to the Triennale Design Museum. |  |
| On the way we saw this giant needle and thread which, as I understand, is to signify Milan as the fashion capital of the world. |    |
| The first piece we saw of the design museum was an exhibition of several rare, antique jukeboxes. This wasn’t amazingly interesting to me,…but there was a hidden level to this exhibition. The squares of light on the ground represented hotspots and under each one a different song could be heard. |  |
| We then wandered through to the “Design Camping” exhibit. The one piece that stood out was a large inflatable dome . |    |
| We then moved onto the Japan Design Collection 2009. There were a lot of great examples of Industrial Design from Japan and a few design classics, such as the Yamaha Electric Violin. More info here. |    
|
| We took in a bit of furniture in the MEZZOTERRA MEZZOMARE exhibit. More info here. |   |
| Then we did a bit of “guerilla advertising” and opened up the Tinker.it! homepage on a large monitor! |  |
| My favourite exhibit by far was Tokyo Fiber ’09 Senseware on the first floor. If it’s still going you should definitely check it out. For the full pdf with details of the event go here. |
|
| These were two really nice pieces next door to Senseware, but I can’t find the details of the exhibition. I’ll try and add them later if I find them.
The first is a clock that represents time in a shape of compressed acrylic. The second is a piece of jewellery containing a coil of wire that changes depending on atmospheric conditions outside. |
  |
| We did a lap of the centre seeing these enormous lampshades… |  |
| …some dubious sofas… |   |
| …and some interesting light up, plastic seats. These were quite nice, and they were heated as well, which I’m assuming was unintentionally caused by the lighting. Their one drawback was the huge power supplies attached to them. |     |
| Then we made our way to number 1 on the Interni guide, Milan 2009: Interni Design Energies. My favourite piece is first, Kkann: l’acqua. More details here. |
|
| In there main courtyard were a lot of energy based pieces…as the name of the space suggests. |   |
| Saturday 25th April | |
| I headed back into Zona Tortona to search for the Philips installation by RandomInternational, inside SuperStudio PIU. After a full lap of the building I managed to find it! |
|
| There were lot’s of other things to see at SuperStudio PIU, and just in case you weren’t getting enough caffeine to make it through, Illy was handing out cold coffee drinks as well! |   |
| Some cool paper pulp chairs by Södra. Like giant, multi-coloured, egg cartons. |   |
| Skin. Emotional surface, a touch of extended light made great use of fabric to create a soft organic space and diffuse light. Not sure about some of the pieces that were on show inside it though… |    |
| There was a tower of radios to show off Tivoli Audio‘s range. |   |
| Nice shadows from David Trubridge’s “The Three Baskets of Knowledge”. |  |
| A giant collide-o-scope room produced some great pictures. Shame people weren’t looking at the lamps that were on display inside it! |   |
| There was some great work hidden in the basement in the “Young Talents on Show” and “Hidden Heroes” sections. A light fitting used fibre optics and acrylic to great effect. |   |
| Great animal furniture in A.B. from Robert Marin and Ramona Macarie |   |
| Nice use of plastic tubing to diffuse a light source in Hidden Heroes. |  |
| Not sure where I’d hang it in my house, but I like it :) On display in Hidden Heroes. |   |
| Interesting fetish related furniture from Serhan Gurkan. |   |
| Another of my favourites. Cloudspeaker is a 3D printed object generated from a persons last.fm music profile. Read more here and here. |  |
| On the way out of Zona Tortona we saw a great use of LED striplights with Design4. |    |
| We also passed Pieke Bergmans’ Design Virus. |   |
| Nice place to stop. |  |
| That afternoon we went back to the Milano Green Art Festival space to hear Massimo Banzi’s talk on low-cost,low energy lighting,…and to check that our exhibits were still working. |       |
| Fin! |
[...] http://www.johnnussey.com my blog, portfolio and other things of interest Skip to content HomeProjectsLightworksSound ReactioniTaccsReservoir of SeasonsSnowflakeTwinkleKitchen BudapestMultitouch (Near Interaction)Actuators WorkshopTinker.it TutorialsWireless WorkshopDMX Lighting WorkshopKiBu applicationMultitouchTypographical ClockEtch-a-SketchDancing robotElectric violinEventsARS Electronica Festival 2008Children in Virtual WorldsTransmediale Festival 2009Fuori Salone Milano 2009PhotographyReading [...]