Design and the Elastic Mind. February 24 - May 12, 2008. New York.
“Over the past twenty-five years, in tandem with the introduction of the personal computer, the Internet, and wireless technology, we have experienced dramatic changes in our relationships with time, space, the physical nature of objects, and our own essence as individuals.”
“A mobile phone is akin to a watch or a private diary, a name necklace or a pet, a weapon or a coquettish fan, a no-trespassing sign or a secret passageway to the rest of the world. It is a meaningful object that has to work extremely well and be stylistically distinctive. Its interface has to be clear.”
Design and the Elastic Mind (print edition), The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
MoMA’s exhibition focuses on experimental design projects. NTT DoCoMo is one of the leading sponsors of “Design and the Elastic Mind”. Some items illustrate thought provoking concepts exploring and challenging today’s cultural conventions. There are a number of design projects providing visions and insights on the work designers undertake to translate technology into user friendly objects, Nokia’s Morph being an example.
Ted Sargent wrote the book’s section on nanotechnology sharing the fact that both designers and nanotechnology look into molding matter. Nanotechnology delivers materials and devices which can assemble themselves chemically. Nokia’s Morph concept explores the opportunities. See the following video:
There is more information on this research project on Nokia’s website. By the way, Rob Beschizza makes fun of Morph by listing 7 weird applications. In any case, the fact is that Nokia is working on this by partnering with Cambridge University in the UK. Speaking of university research, Nokia has built a research center in Palo Alto which taps into talent from Stanford and Berkeley focusing on web and mobile 2.0 and beyond.
Click here to read about Nokia’s innovation recipe.
| J. de Francisco |  |
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| Chicago, 2 March 08 |  |
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