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from ((Gothic Hightech)) to ((Favela Chic)) and Beyond


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Cultureflock: source, Atelier Sophie Krier

50 years after Willem Sandberg defined his vision on curating by inviting the audience to look inside the museum through the windows of his “New Wing”, the SM is in a state of comatose transition towards becoming the future’s best tourist attraction. The old adage “time flies, space stays” does not count anymore. Space moves too and a new generation of digital natives moves with it. About time to think up new directions.

The Graphic Design Museum takes the lead again with the symposium “me and you and everybody we know is a curator” about quality in an age of visual overload, after an idea by Sophie Krier and Mieke Gerritzen. How do we present and preserve quality to this new generation of “digital natives”. Sophie Krier presented this tentative diagram (above) about the main question behind the symposium  “me you…”, namely “what is quality online? – The diagram represents culture as a flock of migrating birds, always on the move, and the connected dots as our mutlifaceted attempts to make sense of that dynamic whole. In her presentation she compares it with the well know “designproces scheme” by Charles Eames in which he presents the believe of the Eames office in working from genuine interest only- in this diagram, he maps the partly overlapping interest zones of society as a whole, of the client and of his office.

The program consisted out of two stimulating culture-philosophical lectures by Bruce Sterling and Andrew Keen illustrated with case studies presented by researchers, artists, designers, critics and of course curators. Among these quality speakers the opinion surfaced that a transformation of space from physical to digital will lead to a revival of the physical quality. I would call it a reassessment of deja-vu in which the internet replaces the subconsciousness.

Designblog provides the links to a summary of the symposium by Liselotte Doeswijk (source designhistoryNL), but like to emphasize the provocative introduction speech of Bruce Sterling (Cyberpunker and blogger for Wired)  “Gothic Hightech in the Future Favela”. download a full transcription by Morgan Currie

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