Paola Antonelli, the curator of MOMA’s “Design and the Elastic Mind,” speaks in detail about several of the exhibits, including “The Afterlife,” a system for turning corpses into batteries, robots that act as personal climatizers and DNA origami:watch videoDesign and the Elastic MindThrough 12 May 2008MoMA11 West 53 StreetNew York, NY 10019 map
As they say, the world is getting smaller. Of course, it is also getting bigger. It is also getting more dense, more networked, more mapped (technologically), more shared. At the same time, it is getting less understood, less mappable (cognitively), and less shared.
This week I am in Mexico City staying in Condesa DF hotel which was the first “design hotel” in this city, and it is still going strong.
The next morning after my arrival I went to the patio for breakfast - and run into my friend Boris Groys.
Originally from Russia, Groys is the author of many fantastic books on art and culture. In my view, he is one of the most original minds of our times. Most of his publications are in German, but there are also two in English: just published Art Power and the classic The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond.
The next morning I had even less “statistically probable” meeting - Michael Nyman. He is also staying in Condesa hotel with a few young people who are helping him to create his first hour long film. The film using footage Nymon shot during his travels and his original music. I was invited to visit the room which became an editing suite - meaning three people including Nyman sitting with Powerbooks. We had a nice discussion about metadata, spatial montage, organizing large amounts of media material, and editing principles of Nyman’s film. I showed the group my own Soft Cinema, which, just as Nyman film, was inspired by “city films” of the 1920s such as Vertov’ A Man with a Movie Camera.
Wow! I am curious who i am going to run into next…