We just got back from a trip to London, an actual vacation, where we saw a few wonderful museum shows between visits with friends and family. One of the best was this brand new show at the Victoria &Albert Museum. Luckily for us it was opening day so there wasn’t much of a crowd and we got to play with everything without waiting. When word gets out the gallery will be swamped!
For some reason the curators put one of the dullest pieces at the very entrance, but just to the right is a captivating work of digital nature by Daniel Brown. It’s as close to “art” as anything digital I’ve seen:
Here are a few other pictures of installations from the show:
While the lush tropical garden growing at the entrance isn’t interactive, many other pieces in the show are, including the two shown above. A couple of the data visualization pieces, like Flight Patterns, were seen in NYC at MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind show last year.
One of the coolest pieces is called Exquisite Clock. It’s composed of six screens whose numbers tell the time in hours/minutes/seconds. The numbers are represented by objects, landscapes, vegetables and other things that people have photographed and uploaded to the Exquisite Clock website. The site then feeds the installation in the gallery with images that tell the current time as it changes every second. Here’s what I mean:
17:27:22
17:30:08
Why is this cool? Because you can stand in front of the installation in the gallery and download the iPhone app that allows you to upload a picture from your own phone right to their website or take a picture and upload it. I did this when we were there last Tuesday, and just now saw my picture for #6, a snapshot of the Highway 61 sign, show up on the website clock as I was capturing these pictures to show you.
I could go on. But you should see Decode:Digital Design for yourself. Go to London! While you’re booking your flight, check out the website.
