I´ve been working on it over one year. My first art direction for a fashion labal including design of product details such as buttons, labels, rivets and shirt designs. It took me a while, also because it´s the first time for me and THE SPOT to produce jeans, chinos and shirts in collection manner. But now, after finding the right producers and fabrics everything is in store since nearly one month it´s time to document everything properly and put it online here.
The whole concept of the design is capped under one claim called “a new order” which is reference to the post joy division band and the idea of constructing ones own world. I tried to find images and lyrics that represent this, crawling through all cultural fields to get what I want. As you see I was inspired by political bootlegging, dymaxation and of course Peter Saville and Falco.
Here we go with a fresh sneak review of last years Fusion workshop. Together with Dominic Kiessling and Alexander Jentsch we set up an overhead projector installation making it accessible to the festivals audience. We hacked some motors to create rotable transparent table to create different moire effects. As projection surface my old van was more than suitable. This year we will tune this system up, with more projectors, more stable motors and better foils and hackings. Thanks Armin for the video!
Again what a beautiful trip and what amazing shows we had in Mexico City during the Cromafest weeks. We showcased two great evenings, one near parque espana in Condesa and one downtown in centro historico on calle regina. The DF people had massive fun shooting messages on the walls and commenting their urban surrounding. Never have been more kids to shows, never been more elder people around, never been accomodated in a more queer area. Thanks Viviana for the hangover, thanks Adrian for the driving, guiding, joking and for generally being around, thanks Cristina for taking care in advance, thanks lucia for keeping track of everything and thanks Isaac for the nice company. I guess we will come back next year, with next level developments and hopefully two DJ showcases.
Before heading to Mexico City and its tremendous Cromafest, my students at the University of the Arts Berlin had to present their term projects. This year there was a lot to see ranging from free studio projects to an ” all around the city” parcour.
The first projectpresentation was a more or less workshop talk about evolvings regarding the design and development of a modular carpet system. The two students did a very good job and I look forward to see the final results end of april.
Then I whitnessed some beautiful approaches in experimental rapid prototyping processes. The design practice group was urged to create tools for uncommon matters, focused on tools for advanced mating for digital natives. Human and social relationships change and erode in the capitalistic mainstream and by overproportional use of social hyper media. I wanted them to go back to reality and design concepts and artefacts that point towards sustainable and deeper relations by taking care of the users unique characteristics. The tools were ranging from a 3D printed fan to subcutaneous bone hacks. Also some milled objects found their way into the presentation. It was again a pleasure to see the students progress in their design and communication skill. I want to thank Holger Jahns for his CAD support and Hanna Wiesener for teaming up with me so wonderfully.
It´s not over till it´s over. Last one finished his presentation we hopped on the rented bus and had a trip through Berlin visiting all the designed shopping windows from our students. The advanced design group had to research and design shopping windows all over Berlin. The job contained the persuading of the shop owner, designing a model of the idea and installing it in the shop to make it last at least two weeks. Also it was duty to hold a lecture regarding urban planning, shop window culture and advertising. All critical and detailed in argumentation andd layout. There were some amazing installations. Some static, some projected, some kinetic and even one interactive. All made up with little budget and a lot of love. Thanks to Sarah Illenberger for being on board and Jörg Höltje for his help throughout the term.
Next week will be big. There will be two presentations of the courses I held at the University of the Arts Berlin. The design-basics course will give its presentation on monday morning starting around 11am. The topic of this term was to create tools for uncommon matters with the focus on mating and related behaviour. Very strange task, I know, but the results are promising and I look forward to the performances. A lot of rapid prototyping and soldering in the game. Straight after the basics, we hop on the chartered bus to make an extended trip throughout the city and make some serious window shopping. 18 students designed 18 shop windows all over Berlin. And we visit all of them, so the students can present in front of their work and we can get some feedback from the shop owners. So if you´re interested, drop by at the University at 1pm to catch a seat in the bus. Meanwhile in the bat cave: some work in progess moods.
Some late update on my workshop at the Muthesius Art College in Kiel. I was invited to hold a one week workshop during the Forum, an interdisciplinary working week. For the workshop I was able to recruit students from free art, industrial design and spatial strategies. The task was to question the form follows function principle and developing it towards a “form inspires function” paradigma. Basicly it´s time to rethink this, anyway. The aim of the workshop was to create a digital ready made out of 3d scanned all day objects. For the scanning we used 123D-Catch. These objects had to be reworked and merged within the 3D-coat modelling software.
The first day I gave brief overview to 123d-Catch and sent the students out in the urban and domestic wilderness to catch some promising objects that are worth to rework digitally. We´ve been facing some problems with the first tries but over the time all students succeeded in capturing real world to data meshes. Very recommendable tool for quick three dimensional impressions.
After this intense phase of scanning everyone began retouching, morphing and transforming their objects into completely new artefacts. From fennel to heart to bike-birthing machines and from battery gun to battery biface… all was possible and preferred option. Over the next three days the objects went through the scraping, chiseling, flattening and resampling of 3D-coat. The approach of not constructing a function out of a need, and instead playing with shapes and impressions led to a new kind of objects: less rational readable and more inspiring.
To round up the process, though it´s a very quick one for beginners, we uploaded the design to shapeways and brought the objects back to real life. By this the students can judge their designs inreal scale and in combination with other “real” objects. For now I only have the photos of the objects in the studio, but i look forward to see the spatial prints in combination and orchestration.
Coming originally from a scanned battery gun and desperatly trying to construct something similiar with 3D- coat Markus decided to leave his solid works path for heading back to stone age. Ladies and Gentleman: a battery driven biface.
Laura comes from a free art and ceramics backround, mostly dealign with bio-mechanics and weird machines. After assosciating her scanned fennel as a heart she moved further to a double heart shaped bike birth machine. Weird? Indeed! But the object is overall beautiful and by holding it against the light one can see the scanned bycicle inside.
This one is very impressing. Hans scanned a flatting iron. After two days of not knowing what to do, he started to mirror and rotating the object and discovered this wonderful modul system. If you look twice, the iron ist still visible.
For any further impressions of the single projects, please see this presentation poster. Click to enlarge!
Christian Zöllner is an always designing, constantly contemplating, rarely hesitating, records spinning, paper filling, several times trying, in the end succeeding, but still struggling … overall nice guy
Get in touch
STUDIO:
glogauer straße 21
10999 berlin kreuzberg
mail(at)christian-zoellner.com
0049 157 757 30 869
Schedule
15.12. - 16.02.2012 SMSlingshot at Croma fest in Mexico City
xx.06. SMSlingshot at Alphaville festival in London UK
29.06. SMSlingshot at Solstice festival at Cleveland Art Museum, Cleveland Ohio
31.08. Projektor Orkestor at Bauhaus Farbfest in Dessau
15.09. SMSlingshot at Fetes des Lumieres in Chartres France
