September is fast approaching and so is London Design Festival and the Digital Design Weekend!
Now in its sixth year, the Digital Design Weekend will bring together again over a hundred artists, designers, engineers, technologists and of course the public to celebrate and share contemporary digital art and design, take part in interactive installations and labs, engage in conversations, and learn about processes.
Over the weekend we will be taking over the Museum to showcase a huge programme of cutting edge, international digital projects, but also performances, talks, open workshops, labs and family-friendly activities, all exploring engineering, making and collaboration.
Some of this year’s highlights include:
– Pattern Recognition, a visually arresting performance involving a system of moving lights that can track and intelligently respond to the dancers it observes by Alexander Whitley Dance Company in collaboration with Memo Akten.
– Altered Beauty, a Virtual Futures Salon chat with Bionic Multimedia Artist Viktoria Modesta on modern identity, tech fashion and science innovation.
– a selection of projects from Wheatstone Innovation Lab at King’s College London, including internet-connected enamelled automata, hyperuniform- patterned glass and digitally-embroidered muscle sensors.
– SelfReflector, an internet connected mirror able to calculate your age and play music from when you were a teenager.
– A series of interactive installations in partnership with Ars Electronica Linz and the Austrian Cultural Forum London presenting work by KairUs art collective, Stefan Tiefengraber, Jochen Zeirzer, Yen Tzu Chang, Verena Mayrhofer and Dawid Liftinger.
– Bento Lab, a DNA analysis laboratory that can be taken anywhere.
– Silk Leaf by Exhibition Road Engineering Resident Julian Melchiorri, the first man-made biological leaf prototype which harnesses natural photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen.
– The GyroGlove, a life changer device that stabilizes hand tremors using beautifully simple gyroscope technology.
– How to Build a Water Filter: A DIY Tutorial From the Future, a home-made water filter by Vytautas Jankauskas that becomes a symbol of resistance in a future, where limited access to a vital resource becomes part of our identity.
– Machine Wilderness, a collective of artists exploring new imaginations on how to design our technology as being native to our ecosystems.
– Current Table by Caventou, an intelligent living object that uses the property of colour to convert light into energy, like plant photosynthesis.
– and many more!
The Weekend will include many protoyping events and workshops, such as the Open IoT Design Sprint with Mozilla Open IoT Studio & collaborators* to make & share prototypes that serve local communities & celebrate the unique affordances of physical places; a Biosynth workshop to introduce basic electronics and biology interactions by Andreas Siagian from Indonesia’s Lifepatch; a Storm Laboratory with Loop.ph to experience the turbulent nature of geophysical air dynamics, as well as a hydroponic system workshop, a co-design performance workshop and many more.
*participants include the Met Office Informatics Lab, Women Hack for Non Profits, BBC R&D, Centro de Cultura Digital, The Open University & MAKLab Limited, Future Cities Catapult, How To Build Up, Uniform and more.
There is lots for young people and families to enjoy, including, a Build Your Own Pavilion Young Architects Challenge by the Serpentine Galleries and Kidesign challenging budding young architects to design the pavilions of the future; Scan the World by MyMiniFactory, inviting families to help scan the V&A’s collections and see 3D printers in action; a Tanglebot workshop with unruly robots, wool, Lego and Raspberry PIs, as well as many family-friendly installations and other activities.
The Digital Design Weekend is supported by the AHRC, Mozilla, Austrian Cultural Forum, Ars Electronica, British Council, Crafts Council, ELISAVA Barcelona Design School and Engineering, Met Office, Uniform, Centro de Cultura Digital, Wellcome Trust, White Rainbow, AIT Tokyo, Australian Council, Boston University and the Museum for Contemporary Cuts.
The Digital Design Weekend is taking place at the V&A and Austrian Cultural Forum London on Saturday 24 & Sunday 25 September, 10:30-17:00. It coincides with the London Design Festival at the V&A and is part of the V&A Engineering Season. All events are free and drop-in, and available on a first come, first served basis.
A publication – Engineering the Future – supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and designed by Uniform, with contributions by all participants, will be distributed free during the event.
Just wondering what weekend in September the digital learning event is on…..
Thank you very much for this informative article
Dear V and A team,
I know that coming week is a Digital Design Week at V and A, and I have just learned about it, but have an item to exhibit that is an interactive display of 3D VR collection of dresses to be sold for social media avatars as a part of fashion critical practice.
Could you please put me in contact with the organisers of the event and in case if some of the artists expected to participate would drop out, may be I would have a chance to share my project with V and A visitors.
Best regards.