AGIDEAS Conference

Trends & Designers 

A trend that I noticed when attending AG Ideas, was how far designers were pushing the element of technology in their work – bringing an element of awe and disbelief to us viewing in the auditorium. New and exciting ideas, that were almost futuristic, were made possible by these designers when I'm sure a lot of us didn't even think of them to be possible.
Examples of these trends include:
Joachim Sauter, who spoke from Art + Com. 
Art + Com develops "works of the future: New Media", as described on their website. They create innovative media installations, highly complex and highly mechanical. 
Such as the "Kinetic Sculpture" that was created in 2008 for the BMW Museum in Munich. A series of metal spheres were attached to long pieces of wire, and each one was programmed separately. They were choreographed to dance around each other, and eventually form the shape of a car. Not only was it aesthetically pleasing, but it was bringing design to a whole different level thanks the the technology that was used. It turned simple metal spheres, into an interesting three dimensional display.
Another piece of work he showed, was called "Mobility" and was created in 2010 for the World Expo, in Shanghai, China. 
They built their installation of the idea of light reflecting off of mirrors, kind of like when you shine the light in someones eyes once it reflects off your watch. 100 prosthetic hands were created, each holding its own mirror. Similar to the kinetic sculpture - these sculptured hands were programmed to choreograph movement. The reflections that the mirrors gave off, made lights dance across the walls, and at the end of the show the lights moved towards each other and merged together to Chinese character, that represents the word mobility. 

Concept Evaluation 

The Red Tree is a story book that is written and illustrated by Shaun Tan, and is one of his most famous works. 
His illustrations are very intricate and detailed. Highly textured techniques have been used to create the characters and the backgrounds and each page has a colour palette of its own. Every inch of the page is covered with illustration. The characters are over exaggerated nor realistic, they are small and delicate, with very simplistic faces. A combination of oil painting, varied drawing techniques and collages were used to create the artwork. Type had been cut out and sprawled across the page, in different point sizes and fonts, almost like a ransom note. 
The concept behind "The Red Tree" was to create a book without a story. There was no real case of events behind what was happening, it was just happening. That idea itself has a sense of emptiness to it, and the drawings reflect that. The scale of the imagery is played around with to show certain characters small and insecure compared to big towering elements of the composition. The book can be interpreted in all kind of ways, which is was made it successful. As Shaun Tan mentioned in his speech, psychologists use the book with patients of all ages, from the young to the elderly and each has a different opinion and interpretation. 
Even though the content of the book could be seen as dark and ominous, the imagery is still magical and shows elements of fantasy and whimsy. Each page is a whole new world, and each page also has small little red leaf hidden somewhere through out it. 

Bibliography 

http://www.artcom.de/en/home/

http://www.shauntan.net/books/red-tree.html