rafael lozano-hemmer.

I love these amazing light installations by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Combining sculpture, design, and installation art into a type of “relational architecture”, he creates experiential art that takes one of the most fundamental entities in the universe – light – and connects it with something even more fundamental: our own bodies. Altered by our movement, our presence, and even our very own heartbeats, Lozano-Hemmer creates visually arresting installations.

With “Homographies”, “144 robotic fluorescent light fixtures controlled by 7 computerized surveillance systems” move in response to the presence of human bodies. As people travel throughout the space, the lights re-orient to graphically connect people to others in the room.

Lozano-Hemmer also explores creating a visual connection to the biology of our bodies in three different works: “Pulse Room”, “Pulse Spiral”, and “Pulse Front” (which was part of Toronto’s 2007 Luminato Festival). In all three, hand-held sensors take the actual rhythm of particpants’ pulses and convert them into patterns of light. It’s like the travelling of the light is a parallel for the movement of blood through our bodies, creating life and heat as it moves the same way that light itself creates heat. Just like light travels in wavelengths, those frequencies can be re-interpreted by the rhythm of a human heart beat.

I particularly love how all three works take something so subconscious and inherently familiar to each of us, the feeling of the beating of our own heart, and transform it from a physical, tactile sensation into a visual, illuminated one. A transferal of our own bodies’ functions from one sense to another.

“Pulse Room”

“Pulse Spiral”

“Pulse Front”

Thanks to Kirstin for the tip!

sang hoon lee: “sip of light”.

Not that most people need an excuse to get a soda, but now once you’re finished you can turn the cup into a lamp. Koren product designer Sang Hoon Lee’s “Sip of Light” is an ingenious little straw lamp – bend it down and the single LED inside turns on, bend it back up and it shuts off. Created with help from co-desginers Soo Jung Kim and Sung Kyu Nam, the (somehow very narrow) battery is housed down at the base of the straw, and it’s weighted so that you can stick it inside any cup.

I’d like to try and make some sort of case for the practicality of this, saving your eyesight and all that, but really it just looks fucking cool. And it provides a good argument to get a Big Mac meal…

Via the kick ass Cool Hunting

twitchen: lampshade.

Daddy likey. I realize that to some this might tread a little too close to a 1989 Blanche Deveraux nouveau Miami vibe, but to me the quality of the print gives just the right organic feel. If anybody would care to donate $325 to me so that I can buy it, feel free to email me.

Check out the lamp’s specs (or buy one) here.

Via BLTD

rafael morgan: light drop + indigestive plate.

Brazilian designer Rafael Morgan is one of my new faves. Not only does he have a modern aesthetic that I clearly enjoy, but his work explores the intersection of the organic and technological (another one of my weak spots) and social awareness. Forward-thinking design with a globally inclusive message – what more could you ask for?

First up is “Light Drop”. The tap is steel, the “water” is silicone, and the intensity of the LED light is controlled, intuitively, by the tap. Turn it higher, more light. Turn it doesn, less light. Morgan says ” the Light Drop is supposed to make people think about how we are
dealing with our natural resources, in this particular case, the water, which is the main source of energy for every living organism in this
fantastic world. Water is energy indeed.” I love this guy.

The 3rd place winner in designboom’s Bright LED design competition, “Light Drop” was originally a concept piece, but keep your eyes peeled as it’s going to be produced and up for sale some time in 2008 from Belgian design firm Dark.

On more of a social awareness tip, Morgan’s “Indigestive Plate” plates are deliciously subversive in how they deliver their message at the most opportune time. A collaboration between Morgan and Ben Collette, hard-to-swallow facts about world hunger are printed in Victorian script on porcelain plates. Created with heat-sensitive ink, the messages (like “Every day 16,000 children die from hunger related causes” – how ’bout them apples?) only appear once hot food is plated. That gives the message time to appear, so that just while the eater is finishing their meal they’ll discover what’s underneath.

Like Morgan himself suggests, it would be amazing to re-stock a restaurant with “Indigestive Plates” and then watch what goes down before dessert is served.

daniel firman: suspensions + neon.

An edited version of this article appeared on Josh Spear.

I’m a sucker for neon. It’s bright, colourful, glowing, and often directs you towards something hedonistic like “Beer” or “Open All Night”. When you think about neon sculpture (and who doesn’t) think of French artist Daniel Firman.

His work is a diverse bunch of opposites. When it comes to neon, it looks like there’s always an attempt at perfection that doesn’t somehow make it. The multi-coloured lines tend to radiate out from a central point in an attempt to create a perfect shape, but they all deteriorate at a point. Near perfect circles have one line that goes a stray. Not a technological failure, but more like an organic neon form with a genetic defect.

His life-sized body cast plaster sculptures stand in impossible formations – balanced on each other’s feet or crawling upward into an inner tube. Clothed and proportioned, but with faces always hidden, their apparent realness is shocking at first.  He plays with the visual trick of making each mannequin look real but defy the laws of gravity at the same time.

He achieves the same effect with Suspensions – fully dressed bodies held in the air or flopped over metal bars. It’s clear that these aren’t static situations – a moment of action has been captured. Not the jump-off or the landing but some instant in between. Better still is when all the balances are incorporated together into one installation…

One of his current exhibitions, at La Galeri des Galeries, is a celebration in honour of the 20th anniversary of famed French couturier Christian LaCroix. Appropriately, rather than form the body sculptures from plaster he not only dressed them, but formed their very bodies, from Lacroix’s clothing.

nick foley: …and a partridge in a LED pear tree.

Wednesday. The universally-loathed bastard child of the week. And time for another edition of obsessed with… Wednesdays.

My obsession this week delves futher into my love for the collision of the organic and the modern. Equally cool is when the organic is re-created by the modern, like in this simply awesome Pear Light by American industrial designer Nick Foley.

The steel tree is hollow hand-forged steel (I don’t even want to think about how long that took) and bears three individual LED pear lights. Connected with rare earth magnets that enhance the realism of the tree, the pears can literally be “picked” and taken anywhere. They stay lit for about an hour on their own and can be recharged just by being magnetically reattached to the tree. Ah-may-zing. If any generous benefactors (or if you’re just stupid rich) are reading this and would like to buy me my very own Pear Light, please email me. I’ll totally put out.

Via enviro-friendly design site Inhabitat

makoto hirahara: faking it.

Windows are so 2005. Set up the Bright Blind by Makoto Hirahara and you’ve got that “lazy, hazy sunshine through the window slats” feeling no matter what time of day, or year, it is.

Via Core 77