Neri Oxman, A (Swift) Profile

And other defiant reflections
Neri Oxman MIT PhD Candidate Student Profile

Surf’s Up Santa Cruz

Pel Beyak, Health and Science Reporter for City on A Hill Press reports back from the front lines of Biomimcry in his recent article: Biomimcry Gives Ideas to Artists and Engineers. Cartesian Wax, as it so happens, is now a product! Read more here.
CHP City on A Hill Press
Article by Pel Beyak

ABITARE The New Materialism

The New Materialism is a profile on MATERIALECOLOGY published on this month's ABITARE magazine (the May issue). Read the full online story here (link below). The essay was written by the brilliant Bruce Sterling who is considered one the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. Sterling is interested in exploring the relationship between life and technology and runs a seminal blog for Wired magazine. In 2005 he became the first “visionary in residence” at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Thank you, Bruce, for an uplifting and, indeed, an epic account of hack culture. I swear not to die by it. Make sure to check in seven (good) years.
The New Materialism by Bruce Sterling
About Bruce Sterling
WIRED Magazine
Beyond and Beyond

ABITARE Nature's Logic and Design

ABITARE is now in stores. Check out the current issue for a profile on MATERIALECOLOGY and Natural Artifice. The published article and the online summary is written and curated by Anniina Koivu, as is the editing. In the article we discuss the notion of a Life Architecture. Thank you Anniina.
ABITARE English Link
ABITARE Italian Link

Serpentine Gallery Art Marathon

Neri Oxman will be participating in the Reykjavik Art Marathon. The event will take place from the 16th to the 18th of May as part of a large exhibition that is Reykjavik Art Museums’s contribution to the Reykjavik art Festival in 2008. The project is a collaboration between RAM and the Serpentine Gallery in London and is a continuation of two previous Marathons created at Serpentine Gallery.

The curators are Hans Ulrich Obrist, from the Serpentine Gallery in London and the artist Ólafur Elíasson. The overall focus of the project is experimentation, for which the RAM will become a laboratory in which leading artists, architects, film-makers, academics and scientists will create an environment of invention through a series of installations, screenings, performances and experimental films.

Around 30 scientists and artists are invited to participate in the Marathon and the event will last for several hours. Information on the previous Experiment Marathon London that was held in October of last year can be viewed on the following links:

Serpentine Gallery Art Marathon 2007
Serpentine Gallery Art Marathon 2008
Experiment Marathon Press-Release Document (PDF)
Reykjavik Art Marathon Site
Serpentine Gallery 24 Hour Live Blog

Antonelli on Charlie Rose

Paola Antonelli discusses her recent exhibit Design and The Elastic Mind with Charlie Rose.
Design And the Elastic Mind with Charlie Rose

Lopud Seminar, Croatia 2008

Neri Oxman will discuss MATERIALECOLOGY's recent work in the 2008 Lopud Seminar entitled Let's Go Mental.
Other invited speakers include Alisa Andrasek (architect, BIOTHING), Ben Aranda/Chris Lasch (architects, Aranda/Lasch), Jennifer Allora/Guillermo Calzadilla (artists, Allora Calzadilla), Beatriz Colomina (theoretician, Princeton University) , Klaus Daniels (ecological sustainable architecture), Marc Fornes (architect), Helene Furján (architect, Princeton University), Francesca von Habsburg (chairman, T-BA21), Vit Havránek (theoretician, curator, tranzit Prague), Russell Haswell (artist), Florian Hecker (artist), Carsten Höller (artist), Olaf Nicolai (artist), Mark Oppitz (ethnographer, Ethnographic Museum, Zurich), Boris Ondreička (artist, director tranzit Bratislava), Damian O’Sullivan (designer), Jorge Otero-Pailos (architect, preservation, Columbia University), Barbara Ozimec (botanist) , Antonia Majaca (curator, critic), Marina Mlakar (Rudjer Boskvic Institute), Maroje Mrduljaš (architect, architectural critic), Tony Myatt (MRS York), Christian Rätsch (anthropologist), François Roche/Stéphanie Lavaux (architects, R&Sie(n)), David Rych (artist), Jakob Fenger/Bjørnstjerne Christiansen (artists, Superflex), Ognjen Škunca (UNDP Coast Project), Goran Stojanović (Dolphin Dream Organization), Slaven Tolj (artist) and Mark Wigley (architect, Columbia University). The seminar will be held on May 9th through May 12th in Lopud Island, Croatia. Protocols to follow (and no talk of disciplines!)
tba21 Website
Lopud Seminar 2008

MoMA @ MIT Media Lab

Click below to view the new LabCast on the Design and the Elastic Mind Exhibition now on display at MoMA. The LabCast was filmed and edited by Paula Aguilera.
http://www.media.mit.edu/
http://labcast.media.mit.edu/

Evolo Book is Out

The EVOLO: SKYSCRAPER FOR THE XXI CENTURY book is out. The book presents the best Evolo Skyscraper Competition entries for the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. Introduction by Neri Oxman. Look for PeristalCity on pp. 14-15.
First edition, 2008, Carlo Aiello (Ed.)
Order Evolo Book Online
PeristalCity - Winning Entry, 2006
A Lofty Index : Evolo Book Introduction by Neri Oxman

MoMA and SEED in Expresso

This week at Portugal's weekly newspaper, Expresso - an article highlighting Design and the Elastic Mind and the SEED Design issue.

All is Algorithm

This Friday @ Karl Chu's studio in Columbia University for final reviews.
Karl Chu - Faculty Profile

Art/Design/Technology Trade Fair

Join me tonight at the Art/Design/Technology Trade Fair @ MIT Museum where I will be presenting recent work. Drinks will be served, friends welcome!
Thursday 1 May 2008 5-9 pm - MIT Museum
Description:
The event is a trade fair for innovative work in technology applied to art, design and architecture. It’s a chance to see and show work, network and talk with creators of new technologies, and new applications of existing technologies, in all art and design fields. It takes place at the MIT Museum, with use of the Innovation Gallery’s program facility for performances, video works and other presentations. Part of the Cambridge Science Festival, the event will bring together members of the MIT community and the public.

Bloomberg's MUSE

This weekend on Bloomberg TV watch MUSE Arts to learn more about the Design and the Elastic Mind show, currently on display at MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art. The show will include interviews with Paula Antonelli (Curator of the Design Department and the exhibit at MoMA), Chuck Hoberman (Founder and director of Hoberman Associates) and Neri Oxman.

Online Podcast

Oublier Domino by Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman will be presenting at the Critical Digital conference at the GSD (Graduate School of Design at Harvard University) this weekend under this title and with much more ideology than meets the eye.

Additional information form the website: The purpose of Critical Digital is to foster a dialog about digital media, digital technology, and design and to challenge the basis of contemporary digital media arguments. The intention is to identify, distinguish, and offer a critique on current trends, tendencies, movements, and practices in digital culture. Critical Digital provides a forum for discussion and enrichment of the experiences in this discourse. Through diverse activities, symposia, competitions, conferences, and publications, Critical Digital is supporting dialogue that challenges what is rapidly becoming the de facto mainstream. What is digital? Why should design be (or not) digital? How have practitioners and schools been using digital media? The theme of the first conference is What Matter(s)? As the current theoretical discourse in architecture seems to elude digital phenomena, a crucial critical discussion is emerging as a means to address, understand, clarify, and assess the elusive nature of this discourse. Issues related to virtuality, ephemerality, continuity, materiality, or ubiquity, to name a few, while originally invented to explain digital or computational phenomena, are utilized today in the context of a traditionally still material-based design. What is the nature of their use? Is materiality subject to abstract digital concepts? Is the digital buildable? What matters? As we progress to think and design for the built environment, interactive space, and the body what materializations are actually emerging? What physical manifestations and manifestos are to be promoted? Critical Digital presents and calls for your participation in What Matter(s). Intentionally, the provocation is for both critical writings and projective works which address the issue of the digital within the contemporary design discourse. What matter(s) in terms of work, process, and thought is to be curated and published and to be debated in an open format at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University on April 18 and 19 of 2008.

MATERIALECOLOGY Talk @ SGH

Simpson Gumpertz & Heger (SGH) is an engineering firm dedicated to the design, investigation, and rehabilitation of structures and building enclosures. The practice is located across 44 states and 19 countries in five offices around the world including Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC. SGH’s diverse team members include engineers, architects, scientists, and many other technical professionals. Delighted by an opportunity to present my body of work and reflections on contemporary design practice – I will be giving a talk at the Boston branch this Tuesday, April 16th, 2008. The talk will be moderated by Paul Kassabian, lecturer at MIT’s Department of Architecture. Paul Kassabian is a structural engineer with interests in design, dynamic control, and deployable structures.
Reflections regarding a/the post interdisciplinary discourse (as promised to some of my colleagues) will be posted soon. Naturally looking forward.

Natural Artifice on SA+P

MIT School of Architecture covers the Design and the Elastic Mind Exhibit now at MoMA

MATERIALECOLOGY at AIANY

Neri Oxman will be giving a talk at the American Institute of Architects, the New York Chapter.
The talk is titled: Making Difference and will cover MATERIALECOLOGY's most recent work and research now on display at the MoMA, Museum of Modern Art.

Date: Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
Time: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Location: Center for Architecture. 536 LaGuardia Place (Between Bleecker and W.3rd Street), Main Lecture Hall (Lower Level), NYC
Transportation: 6/F Trains to Bleecker St./BWay-Lafayette (Walk 3 blocks West+1 block North) / N,R Trains to Prince St (Walk 2 blocks West+2 blocks North) / A/C/E/F Trains to W4th St (Walk 3 blocks East+1 block South)
Please RSVP by emailing paul.seletsky@som.com in order to attend. Admission is free.
*This AIANY event has been made possible - and kept free - by the generous support of ABC-Imaging.

SEED's Revolutionary Minds Online

http://seedmagazine.com/
http://revminds.seedmagazine.com/

SEED's Revolutionary Mind

The work of Neri Oxman is featured in SEED's Revolutionary Minds series. Look for the March-April issue. More to come.

Photo: Noah Kalina
SEED Science is Culture

MATERIALECOLOGY in SEED's Design Issue

SEED's Design Issue is out fostering a group of young designers operating at the intersection between design and science. MATERIALECOLOGY's work includes the Natural Artifice series, now on display at the Museum of Modern Art.

SEED Science is Culture