ecopolis

he Berlin-based Pictoplasma project has been following developments in contemporary character design for nearly a decade, promoting the visibility of this new figurative phenomenon, initiating creative networks and establishing a lively exchange of ideas. Its numerous publications and events have made Pictoplasma a character-design platform with international acclaim.

In March and April 2009, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and other venues will host the Pictopia Festival, the world’s first ever large-scale presentation and celebration of the phenomenon, including the 3rd Pictoplasma Conference, the Pictoplasma Animation Festival and the large scale Pictiopia Exhibition.

The program starts on March 17 with the opening for the Pictoplasma Character Walk, a series of exhibitions ind more than 30 Berlin galleries, including the DISK/CTM related project space General Public (see below 2).

DISK/CTM has been invited to set-up two nocturnal clubbing events at Berlin’s Tape and Weekend clubs (see below 3 and 4) . On top, DISK/CTM co-organizer Remco Schuurbiers under the name of Mobiletti Giradischi spins records under at Haus der Kulturen der Welt on March 19 alongside Candy Hank aka Patrick Cataini. See you all there!

More on www.pictoplasma.de

Nicolas Nova at LIFT Conferences 2009.

Lift09 (Geneva, 25-27 Feb. 09) will look back to look ahead, exploring topics like change, solidarity, love, or design, during three days of intense networking and inspiration themed around a simple question: “Where did the future go?”

We were told the future would be about mechanization, computerization, 1984-like nightmares or robots. What did and did not happen? What can we learn from the predictions that never materialized to better look at the future?

Lift gathers international entrepreneurs, artists, managers, researchers, investors, CEOs, designers or ethnologist, people who come to be inspired and meet those who make a difference.

Symposium on Urban Trajectories in Cairo
January 16th -17th, 2009
Rawabet Theatre
3 Hussein Al Me’mar Pasha Street
off Mahmoud Basiouny Street
Downtown, Cairo

The Kharita symposium is the first public event of an ongoing initiative that explores multiple urban orders simultaneously at play within Cairo.
In recent years, suburban complexes and town centres have been emerging along the outskirts of the capital at an unprecedented scale. These real-estate developments are under construction in parallel to an incessant proliferation of informal settlements across the city’s districts. Meanwhile, educational institutions, multi-national corporations and government apparatuses are moving out of the centre and into those new zones.
Through a series of interviews, lectures, videos, panels and performances, we look at how the circulation of power operates within the city, while inscribing our notions of value, difference and desire. We approach the current moment of building cities as a potential site for articulating new positions vis-à-vis sentiments of nostalgia and the function of criticality. The Kharita symposium considers the impact of cities-to-be on art practices and discursive activity in Cairo.
Pericentre Projects- Nida Ghouse, Malak Helmy & Shahira Issa

Contributors:

Amr Abdel Awi, Sherif el-Azma, Hisham Bahgat, Clare Davies, Eric Denis, Marwan Fayed, Markus ElKatsha, Alaa Khaled, Aglaia Konrad, Samir el-Kordy, Akram al-Magdoob, Omar Nagati, Marion von Osten, Katja Reichard, Joseph Schechla, Peter Spillmann and Brian Kuan Wood.

The Kharita symposium is programmed by Pericentre Projects, in Collaboration with the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary art.
Symposium Program

Official press release
September 24, 2008

Turn hand drawings into real life things with Ponoko’s Photomake
San Francisco, CA – World leader in product individualization Ponoko has today launched another world first. It’s a service called Photomake. You can use it to turn digital photos of hand drawings into real products simply by uploading them to the Ponoko website.

Ponoko has established itself as a place where you can shop online for one-of-a-kind goods direct from popular and upcoming designers, or design and make them yourself. The company is on a mission to make it super simple for anyone to make anything that is on their mind, at low cost.

Previously at Techcrunch40, Ponoko launched Designmake for designers to make things on demand – over 10,000 have signed up. Earlier this year, they also launched Ponoko ID for shoppers to request goods to be made just for them by these designers. Now with Photomake they’re inviting creative people who don’t know how to use design software to participate simply by sketching what they want on a piece of paper and uploading a photo of it to get it made.

Chief Strategy Officer, Derek Elley says Photomake is child’s play. “It’s great for crafters, makers and artists,” he says. “One of the cool things about Photomake is the quality of the result – it’s truly hand drawn. Because digital making is so very precise every tiny bump in the hand drawn creation is picked up and made for real. This gives a very natural and human feel to the things you make.”

All you need to get started with Photomake is a felt tip pen and piece of paper. Just draw what you want to make, take a photograph of it, upload this digital photo to the Ponoko website (no login required), get an instant online price to turn your drawing into the real thing, then click to make. Your product will be delivered to your door in days.

CEO Dave ten Have says Photomake is made possible by some very clever file conversion technology that is more accurate than anything that has come before it. “It is designed so that what you draw is what is made, without any touching up required in a design software program,” he says. “It is also 100% online, so you don’t need to own a design software program to use it.”

And for those who know how to use Microsoft Paint and popular photo editing software like Photoshop and GIMP, Photomake is the perfect tool to turn creations designed in these programs into real things too. This is because Photomake accepts common jpg, gif and png files.

Elley says that, as with Ponoko’s original Designmake service, designers can use the new service to make cash as well as make things for themselves. “When you make something with Photomake, you can keep it for yourself, give it as a gift or sell it online from your own free Ponoko e-commerce storefront. You can also sell or give away for free your design file templates too.”

So if you’re worried about the cost of Christmas shopping this season, Photomake may be the easiest and most affordable way to give the most personal of gifts – hand drawn and made by you.

http://www.ponoko.com/photomake

The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.
The Designers Accord is made up of over 100,000 members of the creative community, representing 100 countries, and each design discipline.

Adopting the Designers Accord provides access to a community of peers that shares methodologies, resources, and experiences around environmental and social issues in design. Any designer, consultancy, or organization creating consequence at scale should join.

The vision of the Designers Accord is to integrate the principles of sustainable design into all practice and production. Our mission is to catalyze innovation throughout the creative community by collectively building our intelligence around sustainability.

We advocate inverting the traditional model of competition, and encourage sharing best practices so we can innovate more efficiently. We will:

– Provide collective and individual ways for designers to take action.

– Ask all adopters to engage in conversation about social and environmental impact with every client and customer, and integrate sustainable alternatives in their work.

– Create a web platform to enable the conversation about opportunities and challenges associated with creating products and services that make positive social and environmental impact.

Conferenze: 15 e 20 settembre 2008
Oratorio San Filippo Neri / MIAAO
Via Maria Vittoria 5, Torino

Mostra: inaugurazione venerdì 19 settembre h. 18:30
Aperta fino al 27 settembre
Ex-Chiesa Metodista
Via Lagrange 13, Torino

C.STEM 2008 – BREEDING OBJECTS offre, per la prima volta al pubblico italiano, una selezione di visionari progetti che anticipano i futuri sviluppi tecnologici del design.
Che cosa nasce dall’incontro tra design, progettazione software, strumenti di digital fabrication e l’esigenza di una sempre maggiore personalizzazione dei prodotti?

La mostra presenta oggetti progettati con processi altamente innovativi: abiti tessuti analizzando in tempo reale i flussi di news globali, sedie realizzate a partire dai fotogrammi di un’animazione 3d, ceramiche e gioielli sperimentali modellati online dagli utenti, contenitori di legno che riproducono porzioni di GoogleMaps, lampade disegnate combattendo contro un sacco da pugilato, stampanti tridimensionali in grado di replicare se stesse.

L’evento celebra nuove forme, nuove tecnologie e nuovi processi progettuali per offrire un esercizio di immaginazione che possa essere di stimolo al mondo delle imprese e alla design community.

C.STEM sviluppa uno scenario in cui la capacità dei designer di scrivere il proprio software diventa uno strumento progettuale fondamentale per mettere in comunicazione il potenziale delle tecnologie di digital fabrication (prototipazione radipa, taglio laser, lavorazioni a controllo numerico) con le esigenze di un mercato sempre più orientato alla produzione di massa personalizzata.
Le strategie computazionali applicate al design trasformano gli oggetti statici in processi dinamici e liquidi, capaci di adattarsi e di evolvere nel tempo.
Non più oggetti prodotti in serie sempre uguali ma famiglie di oggetti unici e irripetibili: infinite varianti generate tramite software a partire da un progetto/processo aperto interrogano il ruolo e il pensiero creativo dei designer post-industriali.

C.STEM 2008 – BREEDING OBJECTS è un evento che si articola in due settimane con la mostra presso il suggestivo spazio dell’ex-chiesa Metodista e due giornate di conferenze: un’occasione per approfondire il tema attraverso case studies e momenti di incontro con designer, artisti e architetti provenienti da tutto il mondo.

PARTECIPANTI
AEDS – Ammar Eloueini (Francia, Libano)
Ebru Kurbak & Mahir Yavuz (Turchia)
FLUID FORMS Stephen Williams (Austria, Nuova Zelanda)
The Rep Rap Project – Adrian Bowyer (UK)
Nervous System – Jessica Eve Rosenkrantz e Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, (USA)
MOS – Michael Meredith, (USA)
TheVeryMany, Marc Fornes (USA)
1 / 1 – Cait & C. E. B. Reas (USA)
ISOPT – Susanne Stauch (Germania)
Andrew Vande Moere (Australia)
Fabrizio Valpreda, Cristian Campagnaro (Italia)

BBC Two and Philippe Starck are teaming up for a brand new TV series to find the next great British designer.

Internationally renowned designer Starck will be heading up a specially created School of Design in Paris.

Ten aspiring designers with the talent, drive and vision to create the next ‘must have’ products of the 21st Century will be given the unique opportunity to learn and work alongside Starck and his team over a period of several months.
Selection

A shortlist of the most promising applicants will be invited to Paris to be interviewed by Philippe, after which he will select the ten who will be offered a place at the school.
Opportunity of a lifetime

At the end of the series Philippe Starck will decide whom he wants to become part of his ‘tribe’ – the chance to stay on in Paris working in his office for a further six months.
What we are looking for

Production Company Twofour Broadcast is looking for applications from people from all walks of life; you don’t have to have had any formal training, it’s all about catching Philippe’s eye and convincing him your designs can change the way we live – for the better. A background in drawing or a creative industry could be helpful – but we are just as interested in hearing from people who are passionate about design or have a strong visual sense.

Iscriptions here.