Dutch Design Week 2017
I took a visit to this years festival which takes place annually in Eindhoven, and explores a varied range of exhibitions and installations. I felt very lucky and excited to be attending the biggest design event in Northern Europe. Entering it’s 13th year the festival spans a week and features work and ideas of more than 2500 designers across every conceivable discipline of design. Spanning more than hundred locations across the city, DDW (Dutch Design Week) organises and facilitates exhibitions, lectures, prize ceremonies, networking events, debates and festivities. As it would be near impossible to talk about everything I seen, I’ve just shared some of my personal highlights and insights from my time at the festival.
DDW is different from other design events because it concentrates on the designs of the future. The emphasis of DDW is on experimentation, innovation and collaborations. A great amount of attention each year goes to work and development of young talent this was clearly on show at the graduation show for the design academy.
Design Academy Eindhoven: Graduate Show 2017
The Design Academy in Eindhoven is situated in one of the old Philips lamp factories continuing the industrial theme that is ever present throughout Eindhoven. The academies annual graduate show is an integral part of DDW showcasing work from designers of varied disciplines all under the overarching concept of the festival. The graduate show visualised how their curiosity, persistence and engagement, accompanied with the optimism that is inherent to design is a key to change. The exhibition displayed an interesting array of conceptual product designs, many of which have a wider social purpose or meaning.
The works were displayed across the top floor of the vast factory space, the different projects were laid out on plinths with flip pads next to each one, where viewers could rip off the information about the work and provided a practical replacement for a placard.
In this work Jella Lena van Eck re imagines an oracle for the modern day. Much of our lives take place on our phones and this oracle exists on a series of Iphones. She guides you through a journey and answers all of your questions, telling you how you should look and act to become ‘Insta-famous’ complete with a massive social media following. Being adored online, isn’t that what we all want? Putting on headphones the video installation tells it like it is, with callous honesty.
There are 800,000 suicides globally per year and every second twitter is flooded with people telling the world that they want to die. We do not feel the weight of the words on the screen. This exhibition converted digital signals to make a powerful yet silent impact. A tweet uses 0.0054g of carbon as it is transmitted across servers and devices. So for each suicide Tweet registered, 0.0054g is scratched from a large chunk of solid carbon until gradually it is worn down, one sad message at a time. A sad but real reminder of the weight of these words shown by the small pile of dust surrounding the object. We can never really know what someone is going through but it’s important to know we are not alone in this fight. This modern day crisis suggests there needs to be a deeper societal shift that we all need participate in.
This was one of favourite pieces from the graduation exhibition. Bouke conceives the concept of a boy scout designer. By adding value to public spaces, derelict plots, graffiti-covered concrete, empty spaces or paths he shows these are all a canvas for provocative guerrilla interventions. Boy scout Designer is a bottom-up method, mindset and movement. Seizing opportunities where you find them, serving the community as you see fit to create new services, spaces, objects or initiatives. It’s a trigger to roll up your sleeves and get creative with your own environment. It led me to being more observant about various public spaces nearer home thinking of different opportunities that could help revolutionise otherwise neglected public spaces to put them to better use. I think this concept in particular stood out because it encapsulated what the festival was all about. Future thinking and utilising resources we already have in order to do good with design.
Day 2: Industrial/Other Designers
This was a really nice concept for accommodation that can adapt to the different needs of any future inhabitants whether they be families, students or refugees. This kind of architecture hopes to give us a glimpse into the future of accommodation. Each unit has its own personality for the user that occupies it: an orange door to go up, a lime green bit with a hammock, a pastel pink that extends up a few floors, a lemon yellow private penthouse, and a cave but the possibilities posed by the concept are endless.This exhibition helps pose a question: how can architecture facilitate a quickly changing and at times deteriorating world?
This vending machine totally struck a chord with me. In the age of the internet visibility equals influence and income. Companies seem to take advantage of this by selling fake likes and followers you can use to fool the real world. Would you like to have more followers on Instagram or Twitter to strengthen your social media presence or just because it feels good ?
I must admit I did buy a scratch card as a keepsake because I greatly enjoyed this concept. It’s amazing how much we value our online presence in modern day society and this probably says something about our current online culture. I suppose this poses the question of how much value do we ourselves place on our social media presence ? For some in a social media-obsessed era, gaining attention online is the end goal. The vending machine could give you a chance to look like an Instagram celebrity, without putting in much effort in. The psychological effects of our evolving relationship with social media are now being revealed in research showing how a ‘compare and despair’ attitude can have a real impact on our mental health. I think we have definitely all caught ourselves at one point or another comparing our lives to others online, I know I have. Social media can set unrealistic expectations and create feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, it’s important to remember that we can’t compare our behind the scenes life to other peoples show reels. Yeah we see the good but we don’t see the every day struggles and all the other hard stuff that doesn’t go there.
What I saw at Dutch Design Week showed Eindhoven to be full of creativity and inventiveness, and unafraid of looking to the future. These are great values I try to hold to myself in some ways. The focus of the festival was the future and given the context I left questioning many of the societal norms that have come about with our ever evolving use of technology, leading me to be more observant in how this is changing our behaviours through time.
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