f.city

img src: Justin Marshall

An f.city exhibition from Fast-uk and folly

29 September – 21 October, 12 – 5 pm, Mon – Sat

CityLab, 4-5 Dalton Square, Lancaster LA1 4PP,

“Between 1999 and 2003 Fast-uk contributed biennial exhibitions to the international Intersculpt project in the Northwest of England. For 2006 Fast-uk and folly have partnered to present the exhibition, ‘Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders’ which moves on from the legacy of Intersculpt, to explore the possibilities afforded to artists, architects, designers, and others for the creation of new types of objects, buildings, and products stemming from the increasing use of and integration between digitali technologies for design and fabrication. The converging and blurring of traditional disciplinary boundaries is made possible by these technologies, from rapid prototyping to the use of generativei and algorithmic software for design. With ‘Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders’, Fast-uk and folly present the work of practitioners at the cutting edge of these developments.”

Cyclone.soc is a projected installation that brings together two contemporary phenomena: severe weather and the polarised nature of debate that occurs in some online newsgroup forums. The project maps live conversation from political and religious newsgroups onto the isobars of hurricanes and the complex structure of the weather is used to visualise the churn and eddies of newsgroup debate.

Gavin Baily’s work has focused on developing conjunctions of software-based visualisation and the data traces of social processes. Tom Corby’s research is concerned with challenging received assumptions about the role of software/computer codei as a platformi for 'productivity' and 'functionality'.

Blackmore’s custom-built LSD Drive is able to read lost data on apparently useless CDs, and process it using a program written in the Open Sourcei software, SuperCollider. Light Sensitive Disk Drive is a fully functioning prototype hardware/software product that explores ideas of technological progress, technological waste and its environmental impact. CDs in various states of degradation can be played on the drive to produce different sounds from the lost areas of data.

Blackmore is based in Manchester. Since 2001, he has been reinventing the function or image of culturally iconic objects and products to make sculptures that are presented in a range of social contexts. Projects include converting a caravan into a gallery, making audio laptops from logs, making a machine to play a guitar according to the weather and turning a pole lathe into a musical instrument.

Sheep Jet Head is a computer generated map of a passing jet plane flying across a sheep's head and body as it stands in a rural landscape. By capturing invented scenes in a believable but slightly skewed setting, Bunkley illustrates his view of globalised modern life.

Bunkley is Head of Sculpture and a lecturer in digitali media at the Quay School of the Arts, UCOL in Wanganui, New Zealand. He began using computers as a design tool for public sculpture in 1992. His work uses various 3D rapid prototype printing technologies, traditional castings and CNC milling. Brit Bunkley exhibited at SIGGRAPH - Intersections, Boston in 2006 and is represented by the Mary Newton Gallery, Wellington.

Lionel T. Dean continues the Future Factories theme of organic growth with a design that’s in a constant state of evolution. In Holy Ghost, the back and arms of an iconic chair design have been morphed to create a very different view of an everyday object and a new object of desire. Dean has frozen the real time generation of these new forms to create two ‘hard copies’ of the design using Rapid Prototyping technology.

In 2002 Dean was appointed Designer in Residence at Huddersfield University and began working on Future Factories, a digitali manufacturing concept for the mass individualisation of products. Future Factories has had exhibitions in London and Milan. Previously Dean worked as an automotive designer for Pininfarina in Italy, before launching his own consultancy business.

The Grandma Player is a new prototype product developed for this exhibition that plays the sound of grandma cooking her favourite recipe and sharing culinary tips in real time. Its reassuring form reminds us of the need to preserve the knowledge of the older generation and encourages stronger social connections to be made and maintained within families.

Human Beans create provocative concepts. They make fictional products by hacking commercial culture and design new services by working with real people. Their work is disseminated through spami, media, shop shelves and exhibitions. Human Beans is a collaboration between advertising creative and designer Mickael Charbonnel and design strategist Chris Vanstone. Their work was recently included in the HearWear exhibition at the V&A, London and Safe: Design Takes On Risk at MoMA, New York.

This rotating timepiece was designed for the six-storey rotunda of the Great Eastern Hotel, London. Its protruding warped forms, built by digitali manufacturing, cast upright shadows of numbers to tell the time when each form is aligned with the light.

Husslein has worked on product design, interfaces, digital fonts, timepieces and furniture and now brings these diverse influences and practices together as a creative designer. He completed his studies at the Fachhochschule Darmstadt in 2000 and has designed for offices in Munich, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Working with Hannes Wettstein in Zurich, he managed projects for clients like BMW, Panasonic and Sony. He is currently studying towards a Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art in London.

Using a data glove and micro scriber the artist has made three dimensional drawings that describe objects in space. The results have been output using CNC (Computer Numerical Control) milling, before being moulded and realised in materials such as glass or ceramic.

Jørgensen’s projects merge traditional methods in furniture making, ceramics and foundry work with new technologies such as Rapid Prototyping, Digitising and Motion Capturei. The aesthetics of his work reflect the construction process used to make them. Jørgensen is currently Research Fellow in 3D Digitali Production at the Autonomatic Research Cluster, University College Falmouth, where he is exploring new interfaces between human gesture and computer-aided design (CADi)/computer-aided manufacturing (CAM).

Jewellery is a personal communicator, a container of significance, meaning and memory. The objects we choose to wear every day are of particular importance. This has not been addressed in the design of wearable technology to date. It is the ability to record and store that is often the primary focus of computing, and Ludlow examines how personal technology can mediate and help us reflect on the significance of what we wear. Remember to Forget? proposes conceptual designs for jewellery pieces, which contain RFIDi (radio frequency identity) tags and other hidden technology.

These sculptural forms, the echoes of a bird taking flight, at first appear ambiguous. By capturing the first five seconds of take off, these solid forms are indeed a frozen moment in time. By materialising movement, Mann aspires to the impossible; rendering the unsustainable into permanent states..

Mann trained in 3D Design at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen and studied Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art, London. He works as a product artist, digitali consultant and lecturer and his current research focuses on creative ways of ‘humanising’ the processes of digital production. Mann has recently exhibited at Pinakothek der Moderne Germany, New York Central Library USA, Bombay Sapphire Blue Room and at this year’s International Festival of Glass