All the Visual Voltage workshop exploration results, images from the Pecha Kucha and the finissage in Berlin are now available at the Visual Voltage workshop website, www.visualvoltageworkshop.de.
Micro Interventions, Energy credit systems and Energy fasting; results from the Visual Voltage workshop explorations.
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Finissage in Berlin
Last weekend the exhibitions Visual Voltage and Visual Voltage Amplified celebrated a big finissage-party at Felleshuset in Berlin. Before everything was packed up and sent to Beijing, the next stop of Visual Voltage in April 2010, 150 guests followed the invitation of the Swedish Institute, Swedish Embassy and the hosts of the workshop and experienced the energy of the workshop in a public closing session with a presentation of creative results.
39 international participants joined the 1 1/2 workshop session hosted by Christina Öhmann (The Interactive Institute, SE), Johan Redström (The Interactive Institute, SE), Myriel Milicevic (Interactive Design Studios, Berlin) and Professor Reto Wettach (Fachhochschule Potsdam and Interactive Design Studios, Berlin).
Different groups presented 10 inspiring thoughts on how design can turn an invisible activity of energy consumption into a process that can be experienced, and thereby potentially altering awareness and leading to a change in behaviour.
Since the opening of Visual Voltage in the beginning of December 2009 and the finissage on January 23, 2010, more than 12 000 visitors from Berlin and abroad came to experience the Swedish exhibition and its local extention, Visual Voltage Amplified, curated by Dr. Susanne Jaschko, at Felleshuset of the Nordic Embassies in Berlin.
Coming up next: Visual Voltage at the China Science and Technology Center in Beijing, April 8 - May 23, 2010
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Visual Voltage - The Workshop, 22-23 January 2010
Through Design we can turn an invisible activity of energy consumption into a process that can be expierenced, thereby potentially altering awareness and leading to a change in behavior. Following this line of thought, the Visual Voltage exhibition presents a set of objects specially designed to help vistors reflect on how they consume energy.
To deepen the discussion about the topic of the exhibition, Interactive Institute, together with Berlin-based design-research firm IxDS, will be hosting a one-and-a-half day workshop addressing professional designers.
The goal of this workshop is to discuss, share and invent design strategies for raising awareness about energy-efficiency, without imposing the “gloomy feeling of guilt” (Régine Debatty); and for changing our consuming behaviour without making us feel like energy-saving martyrs.
The workshop is hosted by Christina Öhman and Johan Redström (Interactive Institute, Sweden) and Myriel Milicevic and Professor Reto Wettach (Interaction Design Studios, Berlin).
Do not miss the Public Workshop Finissage, on Saturday 23 January and experience the energy of the workshop in a public closing session with a presentation of workshop results and the finissage-party.
The finissage starts at 6pm. No entry fee.
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Mezzo in Berlin
Soon the Visual Voltage exhibition has reached its last week in Berlin and is to move on to next stop. Closing time near, but still some days left for you who haven’t been there yet.
The opening of the amplified extension, the performance and the pecha kucha attracted a pretty good audience, as can be read in the previous blog, but people seem to find the way to Nordische Botschaften even before and after. The Power Aware Cord and the Flower Lamp have their deserved audience but also another installation, Mezzo, attracts people by its effective interaction.
Mezzo is a piece by the Swedish artists Tore Nilsson and Steven Dixon. Nilsson is currently teacher at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm and Dixon professor at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts. They have been collaborating in many pieces before, but Mezzo was created for the Visual Voltage exhibition.
The installation consists of a number of small monitors showing different images and short film clips, that Dixon/Nilsson have collected, and that represent different forms of energy. These flickering monitors attract the viewer to step inside the installation. What happens then, is that the appearance of the viewer triggers a sound, a sound that both attract more spectators and that grows louder the more people that move within the installation.
It’s a noisy installation. The sound is created of recordings of the magnetic field around Venus. The concept suggests that there are many energy phenomena that we don’t regard as energy. Dixon and Nilsson plays with the concept, and create an interactive piece of art out if it, but some of the designers in the Visual Voltage Amplified have noticed the same thing and they discuss how these kinds of energy can be harvested and used. How? Go to the Felleshus at the Nordische Botschaften and find out yourself!
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Opening of Visual Voltage Amplified
Visual Voltage Amplified was opened with a colorful program on January 7th and is now accompanying the Swedish “mother exhibition” Visual Voltage until January 24th 2010. Despite of the winterly weather conditions outside, more than 200 interested visitors found their way to Felleshuset of the Nordic Embassies in Berlin.
The exhibition Visual Voltage deals with the mayor subject “energy“ from the perspective of Swedish designers and artists. Both climate change and pending decisions on the European energy politics motivate also artists and designers from Germany to respond to this subject with their work. These responses are now presented in the exhibition Visual Voltage Amplified.
Organised by Berlin-based curator Dr. Susanne Jaschko Visual Voltage Amplified shows concepts and documentations of projects which critically reflect on energy consumption or which offer new perspectives on subjects such as energy production or use. The selected projects already exist or are still in progress.
Visual Voltage Amplified presents an inspiring, thought provoking and extraordinary cross-over of projects between design and art. These two neighboured but nonetheless separate disciplines generate the gravity field at which the various perspectives and practices meet and correspond with each other.
During the opening night five designers and artists presented their projects and ideas in an entertaining Pecha Kucha session.
The evening closed with an audio-visual performance by Swedish artist Nils Edvardsson.
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Nils Edvardsson – The Spirit of High Voltage performance, Felleshus Jan 7
Nils Edvardsson – The Spirit of High Voltage
Audiovisual performance at the opening of Visual Voltage Amplified
January 7, 2010, 7pm-00.00am, Felleshus Berlin
On the opening evening of Visual Voltage Amplified, Swedish artist Nils Edvardsson will turn the Swedish power infrastructure into a gigantic musical instrument. He has travelled to different points of interest around the Swedish power line system and recorded the sound of the electricity and the lines near hydroelectric and nuclear power plants.
With special designed microphones, attached directly on the pylons, he has recorded not only the humming and buzzing sound of the electricity, but also mixed it with the wind that strikes the lines as a harp, and the sounds from birds and other background noises from the nature. The result is a very dynamic soundtrack that combines two great forces, the electricity and the nature, to perform a full symphony. A combination that has so far attracted nearly 100000 visitors on a version that Edvardsson put up on YouTube a couple of years ago.
At the opening of Visual Voltage Amplified, Edvardsson will use his sound recordings, together with images he shot of the recording spots, for an audiovisual performance. Certainly a unique take on the energy question, and a transformation of voltage into something visible. Don’t miss it!
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Visual Voltage Eröffnung im Felleshuset in Berlin
Dezember 2009, Eröffnung der Visual Voltage Ausstellung im Felleshuset der Nordischen Botschaften, Berlin.
In der Mitte, Christina Öhman, the Interactive Institute, Ruth Jacoby, Botschafterin von Schweden, Thomas Kaiser-Stockmann, Mannheimer Swartling, Birgitta Tennander, Schwedisches Institut.
Ab 8. Dezember ist die Ausstellung für alle Besucher geöffnet.
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Finissage in Brussels
After exposing at Shanghai and Washington DC, Visual Voltage visited Brussels. More than 1500 visitors were informed about the utility of art and design to increase awareness about energy shortage and sustainability. Among the 350 guided visitors were Brussels secondary school pupils, and students in architecture, industrial design, and sciences from the universities in Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp. In addition, EFTA environmental specialists and the Swedish minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth were guided and informed.
Questions were raised concerning the importance of prototypes, the sustainability of the exposed subjects themselves, and upcoming incentives and smart design objects to reward energy-saving behaviour or punish spillage. Furthermore, visitors debated their willingness to allow sustainability-related measures affect their daily life; the danger exists that people are concerned and aware, but choose not to care. Certainly, the discussion did not stop after visitors left the exposition at the Design Vlaanderen Gallery.
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Neurology and Sustainability
In an inspiring venue that partly works as a tube station daytime and nighttime transforms into a bar and lecture hall a packed solid Pecha Kucha took place in Brussels, 19th of September. The Pecha Kucha format is an interesting challenge to a presenter in terms of telling a story: being entertaining and pushing an agenda. 20 slides 20 seconds/slide, you basically don´t have time to finish a sentence, so keep the slides narrative and present crystal-clear thinking. Hm… Preparing for the Pecha Kucha I looked through a number of projects that I´ve been involved in at the Interactive Institute over the years and compared reflections from partners and people that have come across the projects. And one Pecha Kucha idea emerged: I found similarities between projects in neurology and sustainability research. While researching for a project called Brainball, a game where you compete in relaxation using EEG (Brainwaves) as input, we had a lot of contact with neurology researchers telling us a whole range of perspectives and solutions around the understanding of the human brain. What was very clear was the complexity in the question, but at the same time how we as human beings have a very intuitive understanding of ourselves and our brain. But it was also obviously painful to see that there was a gap between understanding ourselves and EEG-charts. I think that this gap is present in how we understand and act on questions within the sustainability discussion. How do you relate to numbers and figures that are presented to us from science? What does 2000 kg CO2 really means? What does this mean in the bigger perspective. Does my behavior have any impact in the bigger context?
We just see the little neuron transmitting to another neuron, but we don´t have clue what that neuron really does in the bigger context. It is very obvious that if you start to have problems on that level, you will quickly run into serious illness. We are all stuck in the system but on a intuitive level we all know that my little neuron transmission is important and if all the neurons work well together you might do a good presentation at a Pecha Kucha.
The exhibition, Visual Voltage is an attempt to visualize and open up discussions around behavior and understandings regarding energy consumption because everything starts or ends with all the small decisions made on this planet.
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