Christian Zöllner

Together with Jana Patz, researcher and lecturer at the fashion department of the University of the Arts in Berlin, I will host a project on reading and understanding design theoretical texts. Today we had a first kick off meeting with the students and will start next week when I´m back from the Hannover Industry Fair.

The students will have to read Villem Flusser “gesture of planting” and develop a personally radical approach on design out of it. The resulting design will be laser-cut at our in-house laser router. I´m allready well excited on the projects.

Die Gestalten Publishers released a book on private projects in public space and feature the SMSlingshot I realized with the VR/Urban team the last year. It´s cool to see how things evolve and an audience is appreciating our work. We are positioned right between GRL and Haque design+research, some of my all time heroes.  I want to thank Matthias Hübner, editor of the book how was a good partner in making it all so good in the end. Thanks man! Go and get the book: It´s very inspiring!

Currently we work on a redesign of the SMSlingshot to be fully equipped when it comes to the performances in late summer and autumn. More news soon.

The winter term is over. But nothing is over with out a big show down. So the students of the Rapid Volume project I conducted with my colleague Wilm Fuchs at the University of the Arts in Berlin had shown their result in very good presentation. The students had to design a handy object of everyday use, that is mainly characterized by its volume. So far so easy one might say, but the trick was also to learn to design the object with CAD software. The CAD models had to be cnc.milled and deep drawn to create a real sized mock up that allready can be used.  There was a lot of research, “early-mock-up-ing” and failure but in the end everyone was more than happy with his or her result. The objects range from cup to seat and from lamp to laundry basket.

What an inspiring day. Together with curators and artists from all over europe we held a workshop during the transmediale´s “Free Culture Incubator”. We searched for possible new and allready existing reclaiming techniques for urban and public media screens. Some of the answers were all over impressing, such as the open lab initiative by Prado MediaLab and the urban interventions by FACT Liverpool. The second part of the workshop was about the link up between artistic positions and financial business models. The discussion was lively striding from cultural responsibilities of public media supplyers over the support of artists by those cooperations and the justifying role of artistic content next to commercials. On the table was Christian Vogel of the Wall AG and Andreas Orth of Berliner Fenster. Both companies have massive influence on our image and imagination of public space and know their role very well. It was quite hard to distinguish between their business model of selling public space to coorporate identities and the city marketing by communal officials. If you are interested, there is a mind map documentation of the workshop that I can send to you on request.

Somehow the SMSlingshot has been selected as one of the winners at the Art of Engineering Award. Beside 20 other projects the SMSlingshot is exhibited till the 15th of february at the “Deutsche Technik Museum” in Berlin.

Next to the all of my time munching preparings for the TEI conference I currently work on a concept for a workshop taking place on the 5th of february at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin during the Transmediale Festival. With the Workshop we will try to find new ways of reclaiming digital augmented public advertising screens and discuss possibilities of a democratic access to urban media. Because this will be way to much for me to lift all by myself, Tobias Fischer, brother from another mother, will lead and monitor the workshop with me. It will be a first sneak preview of what we as VR/urban try to do during the media facades festival europe this year.

Wow. I will go to the MIT MediaLab and present the SMSlingshot while the TEI conference end of january. This will be fun…. I can´t believe it. THE MIT!!! And it´s getting much more unbelievable, because there will propably be a workshop I will give, too. Currently I am preparing everything like slides, materials, models and some software tasks, so I might be a bit inconvenient at the moment for other things.

Next to all this, there will be some more stuff going on the InterfaceBlog hosted by Form und Zweck. Right now there has to be some construction and update work done, but from next week on everything is prepared. Like the years before I will report from the TEI conference with interviews, background informations, videos from talks, keynotes and demos to let you know about what is going on in the fields of tangible and embedded interactions. What´s new this time is that I will supported by my friend, former band mate and fellow student Sascha Bruk. At the moment he is researcher at the Dresden based Institute for Design and Innovation working on gestural interfaces. He will bring in a fresh and detailed view on the shown material. I look forward to do this trip with him!

Currently I do work with students from the University of the Arts Berlin on a project to document several interdisciplinary short term projects that are taking place right now. We try to cover all projects containing fashion design, communication design, industrial design, sound studies and architecture that happen on the same time. So everyone of the team is rushing through the city, taking interviews, making photos and publishing it on the go. For that reason we try to work with prezi to present everything less structured than in a blog or wiki. Below i embedded our presentation, to have a look on how it proceeds. Prezi is an OK tool, but very low complex and less acurate to make some advanced stuff. We will present all the projects featured in the presentation on Friday, 8th of January, 5pm at Hardenbergstraße 33 in Berlin