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Artwork by Jerry Luk
Author: Arseny Vesnin. Corrector: Kieron Welch. Photo materials presented by Flickr user on Creative Common License and by OFFF Press. It is not allowed to copy or distribute the text without authors permitions. You can link the article by http://designcollector.net/offf2009/en/first-day
«On the 7th day of May, in early year of a decade not too long before the discovery of the unknown element (EK2-900), a group of individuals capable of abstract reasoning, introspection and language were called upon to rendezvous in Oeiras » 38 41' and 9 19'
The OFFF 2009 main titles directed by Ilia Abulkhanov, Prologue studio, started from these words. The deep atmosphere of a movie materialises the implication of an audience to the whole festival idea.
By the way, titles were shown at the end of OFFF 2009 Oeiras festival. These three awesome days at former Oeiras foundry were not lost on everyone who entered the spacious halls of the venue.
Because of the efforts of many people, Designcollector was accredited as the Media partner of a festival and I got a Press card, thank you all. As soon as I sneaked in, half an hour before the official start, I had time to look around. The organization of the venue impressed me by it's simplicity and accessibility. Roots - is the heart of the festival: the main stage where presentations, keynotes and live performances take place. More than 20 artists and collectives that represent the cutting edge of contemporary visual culture, commenting on their ideas and creative process, and inspiring the crowd with their words. Loopita - the place for experimental electronic sounds. A comfortable area to listen to live performances of electronic music by the most important and innovative names in the international digital arena. Essential for music lovers who enjoy getting lost in sound, and of course for those creative professionals, - from filmmakers to motion graphic artists- who find in audio an integral component of their design projects. Openroom - the area for the new names in the digital scene who are developing inspiring independent projects on the web or through digital technologies, have a unique opportunity to use OFFF as a platform to grow and promote their work. Mercadillo - The festival area for independent collectives and artists who want a space to sell their works, and other products like books, magazines, CDs and DVDs, merchandising...
Good to know that the space of the festival was not enclosed only by the venue walls, the invisible space between the audience and the scene was the main value for organizers during the festival. I bet there is no other place on Earth these days with such a huge concentration of design thoughts, problems, discussions and spectacular shows. This year the festival theme was «Fail Gracefully».
"We fail. We all do, and our failures often say more about us than our successes do. But we hide failure, we are ashamed of it and we often just deny it altogether. For almost a decade the Offf festival have featured successful digital creators in design and experimental sound and have celebrated the cutting edge of digital aesthetics. This year, we shed some light on the dark side of success and discovered the dynamics and aesthetics of failure." - Florian Schmitt from Hi-Res and Mushon Zer-Aviv.
So all 3500 visitors were prepared to get a new experience from the OFFF festival.
And OFFF 2009 started with Neville Brody.
Flickr photos | Website
Neville Brody opened his presentation (the key Speaker of the whole fest) with the words "Make Trouble". Following his main idea the role of modern designer somehow placed between front-line news-maker and a person ready to dole out for charities. The main keywords followed by many clever clogs on screen were "take risks", "be responsible" and "do sustainable design". The designer must keep in mind that he is not an ordinary worker suffering by faking peoples freedom in tough and proprietary advertisement. He should "break free from freedom", from this kind of commercial "freedom" that is surrounding, thrusting faked opinions on us and at last having full information about us. These thoughts remind me of a picture of a dog biting its own tail.
Neville reminds to take a chance and make changes, not to sell out our creative minds and to create things that you will consume us and you can suggest to your best friend. Otherwise, at my personal perspective, quit the profession. I advise you to take a look at the book"Do good design", hence it's common sense was spinning in my head during Neville's presentation.
The second part of Neville's presentation was a story about "Research Studios", founded by him, his latest works. The key showcases where the Times redesign and Kenzo packaging. The Times magazine redesign was a concentration on details, revised grid, updated typography, kerning, margins, everything that makes sense even you can't discern it. It reminded me the cite "God is in Details" from Torgrim Eggen's "Decorator" book. The Kenzo packaging was just a fabulous collaboration between studio and the customer, the results were worth any gallery exhibition. Undoubtedly, Neville Brody presentation set a tone for the whole day.
Flickr Photos | On Flickr | Website | on Vimeo
Four young Catalans took the relay race of the first OFFF day. "Multitouch Barcelona" came to OFFF with an interesting presentation and with the real installation based inside the venue hall.
The key technology of studio works is NUI - natural user interface, the latest trend in user experience development. The main aim of NUI is the person and its relations with the machine. You don't need to understand the machine responses and visual languages anymore, time for machine to take your requests in a natural way. To clarify the idea Multitouch Bracelona showing their latest work called "Hi (Human interface)". Briefly a man sitting in a glass box and remotely responding to your commands.
Next was "Crayon" project with great examples of natural physics experience.
Some interesting thoughts about materialising Hugs and Pokes in Facebook and complaints about Twitter desaturating the sense of emotions made everyone think about what role the virtuality plays in our own lives.
The next project "Guten Touch" was showcased on the Net few months ago so expecting very interesting and sensual NUI is hopefully the case in the next few years.
At the end they shared thoughts about their installation "Space Invaders". Huge multitouch screen, oldsckool game and buckets of rubber balls turns habits in gaming upside down. The results where clearly heard in the neighboring hall, "Space invaders" was mounted there and collected so much interest and attention from the visitors that quickly became a team-play game.
Flickr Photos | Website
After the beach side lunch in Oeiras we were heading to the next panel - Eva Vermandel.
She spoke so enthusiastically and exciting, sharing her ideas about photography manipulations, that reached the audience even with her soft speech. Her project "Time Capsule" was a layered and manipulated photography based on real and historic shots of a subject or a place.
The common sense of her artworks was based on her short phrase "I take reality and sharpen it".
Flickr photos | on Flickr Website | Twitter
OFFF main advantage over other design festivals was in giving the audience the diversity of themes and topics.
Right after Eva, there was the presentation of "processing art" master - Karsten Schmidt from Toxic UK. As we met him at OFFF 2008, the beginning of the speech was quiet familiar but surely worth to see and listen.
e mentioned few old projects starting with "Random Cards" where he played around "digital cloth" - nice digitally generated textures with a random forming. Following the topic of the festival - "Fail Gracefully", Karsten shown his work on "Type & Form" project. Moulded in 3D-Printer the logotype (created by 3D vector processing) failed few times while "cooking".
The last project he mentioned was the «Social Collider» - some sort of twitter visualisation.
Next panel was the area of the light magician - Jason Bruges and the presentation of his studio. Briefly, unique light engineers and designers creates awesome spatial installations. Jason's ideas in making light with the soul alive in diversity of projects. "The Wind Tower" - natural wind controls the light wave coming through the set of light-equipped fans. "The Pixel Cloud" - a huge chandelier constructed from an RGB elements was mounted in a 8th stores atrium reacting on an air condition with a wave of light coming from top to the bottom. Everyone was impressed by the simplicity of the idea and the final result.
Next was a nice project called "Fast, Faster, Fastest". An interactive athletic outdoor enhancement of a simple park bridge. The idea is very clean, try to overcome Olympics record having a red marker running in front of you.
Legend studio - United Visual Artist is famous for its music videos and live shows for Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, Battles and so on. On the scene, one by one we watched awesome projects - from architectural interactive sculptures to indoor music installations.
U.V.A. is great at everything around dynamics and synchronising with music. They have their own software platform which helps to build live shows on-a-fly like they did for Battles or Chemical Brothers.
Flickr photos | James Paterson Website | Amit Pitaru Website
The atmosphere of motion design was pushed further by InsertSilence or the duet of James Paterson and Amit Pitaru. James started with "Presstube Ecology" an interactive world of moleskine-drawn creatures. That was the craziest project I've ever saw, it reminds me a physical model of a Dream with chases through its layers.
Amit started with amazing "Sonic Wire Sculptor". Awesome interactive installation that let the user draw the music. To get the full idea he invited the kids (on video) and they shown us, elders, how to break the limits of imagination. You can try to be a music sculptor here on http://www.pitaru.com/sws
At the end they shown very nice project - "I am a chain reaction". The cutting edge of choreography, music (the mix on Knifes) and motion design transformed by this talented designers to something special.
The latest, the greatest. Director Chris Milk presented his selected videos. All of them were commercials with a heavy social impact and message.
A bit shocking, a bit provoking - all of them made visitors think.
The day was closed by his latest music video made for U2 "The Saints are here"
The video can be found on http://www.chrismilk.com/saints/
U2 "The Saints are here" make off
FIRST DAY | SECOND DAY | THIRD DAY
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