Category Installation Art

Condoms Pompidou

The Centre Pompidou in Paris is being, um, protected by 80,000 condoms. Irish artist Bryan McCormack‘s Preservation is Life lines the iconic staircase on the facade. Brilliant.

Via Feel Desain.

Life is Beautiful (Written in Knives)

Powerful: Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri’s ‘Life is Beautiful’ at the Venice Biennale last year featured hundreds of knives stabbing the walls at the Pinault Foundation’s Palazzo Grassi to spell out the title in script.

Via Swiss Miss and Wallpaper.

Hello World! by Christopher Baker

Hello World!, a video installation by Christopher Baker. Via Designboom, who wrote:

chicago-based visual artist christopher baker’s video installation ‘hello world! or: how i learned to stop listening and love the noise’ is now on display at the duke of york square screening room at london’s saatchi gallery. the artist’s massive video-graphical work consisting of 5,000 video diaries projected upon a wall within the gallery space. the personal video collection of ‘hello world’ was compiled through the use of online self-produced video archive resources such as youtube. … in the gallery space the observer may interact with the soundscape in two distinct ways: he/she may focus in upon an individual voice or get lost in the rumble of the thousands of video diaries on display. in this way, the at-once singular and overwhelming quality to baker’s work is consistent with human sentiment towards the internet and democratic, modern media.

Giant Kinetic Racetrack Sculpture

Artist Chris Burden’s “Metropolis II,” a gigantic kinetic racetrack sculpture and homage to bad traffic, opens to the public on January 14th at LACMA in LA.

Via My Modern Met, Design You Trust, LA Times.

Steilneset Witch Memorial

Dezeen reports on a memorial in Norway, dedicated to 91 suspected witches burned at the stake there during the seventeenth century, designed by noted architect Peter Zumthor with artist Louise Bourgeois. In the main seaside structure, a catwalk leads to a suspended interior volume, where 91 naked light bulbs hover behind 91 tiny windows along an interpretive corridor. Shocking, perilous and brilliant. The Salem Witch Trials Memorial of course springs to mind.

Ice Typography

This gigantic, temporary (for obvious reasons) ice typography by Vancouver artist Nicole Dextras goes well with the onset of chilly weather here in New York.

Via Collabcubed, Notcot, and others.

Sticker Shock

Through March 12, the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia is hosting a miraculous installation by artist Yayoi Kusama. Called “The Obliteration Room,” it is part of an exhibition called “Look Now, See Forever.” It’s simply a white room of white things to start, but the whiteness is, well, obliterated by thousands of colorful stickers handed out to young visitors over time. Another testament to the strange magnetic attraction between museum visitors and stickers. See more images over at Colossal.

This reminds me of that panzer-made-from-removable-balloons installation from a few years back, except in reverse. Brilliant!

Help Fund this Interactive Sound Installation

Resolution: IndieGoGo Campaign Video from Stephanie Andreou on Vimeo.

What would you pay to help create a new interactive sound installation about something meaningful? Indie Go-Go, the project-funding site (a competitor of Kickstarter), has a project you might be interested in: “Resolution” by Stephanie Andreou. Her campaign is worthwhile and her video is informative. Worth watching, worth donating. (Link to the campaign after the jump.)

Now Pre-Ordering: New Exhibition Design 1900-2000

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A new book from the same source as New Exhibition Design 01 & 02, but now looking back, is now available for pre-order. Just pre-ordered mine. Due in January. (If you don’t have the first two, get them while you’re at it. Quite indispensable recent surveys.)

UPDATE, 30 Dec 2011: Just heard that the release date has been pushed back to March. Sigh.

Just In: Engaging Spaces

I don’t really need any more proof that the Dutch can out-design us all. But if I did, I could refer to Engaging Spaces: Exhibition Design Explored, a new monograph by Amsterdam “exhibition architects” Kossman.dejong. The book is big, and so are the ideas in it. Highly recommended.

Published by the rather indispensable Frame.

Hand-Embroidered Installation

Spotted recently at My Modern Met: Artist Lise Bjorne Linnert’s powerful installation “Desconocida Unknown Ukjenthas” uses more than 5,500 unique hand-embroidered (yes, embroidered) names on pink gallery surfaces to represent female victims of violence.

Reactive, Motion-Activated OLED Mirror

The images I’ve seen of this Design Miami installation by London-based rAndom International are hard to put out of my mind. The video speaks for itself. It’s lovely. (Note to self: hire modern dancer for next portfolio shoot.) And apparently all it took was:

1064 warm white Philips Lumiblade OLEDs, black custom circuit board back plane, aluminium suspension, custom driver software, camera based motion tracking system, custom motion tracking software by Chris O’Shea, computer, iPod touch remote control

Via Core77.

Gaga + Twitter + Barney’s + Lasers

From Dexigner:

“Constellation Gaga,” the only interactive installation in Gaga’s Holiday Workshop Windows, enables visitors to Barney’s to Tweet their Holiday wishes to Gaga’s Constellation, where they will be streamed live on the Prysm laser phosphor display (LPD) and hosted on a website.

And why not, really.

Guerrilla Art Crochet Attack

OLEK AND THE CHARGING BULL ON WALL STREET from olek on Vimeo.

Yet more proof that crochet-based installation art will take over the world (as if crochet coral wasn’t enough).

Just In: Scenography / Szenografie

I was recently in Germany and picked up “Scenography / Szenografie”, a compendium of work by the formidable Prof. Uwe Brueckner and colleagues at Atelier Brueckner in Stuttgart. In US stores in February, available for preorder now.

The book is rather spectacular, further evidence of the remarkable progress of exhibition designers around the world over the past generation, particularly in Europe, where Stuttgart is a veritable hive of brilliant firms. US designers would do well to get a copy of this book and others.

Image above via Atelier Brueckner.