Design Unbound

This afternoon, I visited the Design Unbound exhibition at Stanford University to take a thirty-minute reading break. To my surprise, I ended up spending an hour and a half in the one room exhibit! The room is filled with eclectic design pieces created by graduate students in the arts and design programs. Many of the pieces are students’ personal statements and therefore reflect their broad interests. The exhibit displays everything from a water catching umbrella, to salt and peppershakers on wheels, to videos, and furniture. What separates this design exhibit from many others I have seen is that it is not just about seeing objects but rather about interacting with them.

When you first walk into the room there is a “color box” on your left and this creation is one of my favorite pieces in the exhibit. It is a plastic box with a cubical hole through the side of it. The viewer is supposed to lie down on the ground and stick their head and shoulders inside of this box. Color radiates through the plastic and you are surrounded by an ever-changing progression of color. You become enveloped by color and realize the power that certain colors such as red and sky blue can have over your emotions. Even if you close your eyes the color penetrates your eyelids and you remain engulfed. It is a meditative experience and I recommend that people try it to see how it affects them.

Another one of my favorite pieces is a short movie entitled “Presidential Candidates.” A slideshow displays the most used words in the top 5 hit billboard hits of each presidential period from 1953 until 2003. For example, President Bush’s reign was characterized by words such as love, wanna, and crazy, and Beyonce’s “Crazy” played in the background. The movie appealed to me because it stimulated me on multiple levels, the first of which was visually. The word love remained constant throughout the piece (as it remained one of the most common words in popular songs) but many of the others changed. Each time the words would fade away and give way to those of a new time period, there would be overlapping words and it was like a game to figure out which ones reappeared. It stimulated me intellectually as I connected the words with the president and attempted to recall the history of each time period. Finally, it appealed to me because of the music. Each slide and corresponding song lasted for only a matter of seconds and I raced to try and recognize the songs. After watching the clip once, I stayed and watched it again because I wasn’t able to experience all of its layers the first time I saw it.

The “Morphology Chandelier” by Simon Weiss caught my eye, as it is not only innovative but also professional. It is a modern chandelier composed of acrylic petals rather than crystals. When a button is pressed, the petals move upwards and allow light to diffuse throughout the room. I was impressed by the quality of the piece; it looked as though I could have bought it straight off the shelf at a design store.

            However, not all of the pieces had this level of sophistication. For example, I was intrigued by the function of “Versatile Sofa Table” but not by its form.  “Versatile Sofa Table” is a foam pad covered with wooden tiles on one side and felt circles on the other.  When it is rolled up with the wooden tiles facing upward, it becomes a table. However, when the pad is lying flat on the wooden tiles, it becomes a bed. It is “for people with big hearts that live in small spaces.” The bed cover is decorated with yellow, orange, and red felt circles that are sewn together like lily pads floating in water. The edges of each felt circle awkwardly stick up a few inches off of the bed. The bed does not appear inviting to lie down on because of this felt cover and also because of its irregular rectangular shape. Therefore, in my opinion, this sofa table succeeds as a table but fails as a bed because it is not visually appealing or inviting.

            I was frustrated that a few of the pieces in the exhibit were not functioning. For example the “Visceral Lights Tubes” had burned out and the “Musical Landscape” and “Parallelogram Harp Playing- Bar Code Bench” could not be used. However, overall, the exhibition was fantastic. Each of the pieces had its own purpose, but they all shared one thing in common: that they combine function and form.  There is one piece that I believe embodies the spirit of the rest of the exhibit and that is David Ngo’s personal statement “Extra Ordinary.” In this video, David is in a black room with a seemingly empty suitcase. Inside of it, he discovers a metal tool that looks like a wand. He whirls it in the air and searches the room until he finds a metal piece that the wand hooks into. As he rotates the wand, balloons fly out of the suitcase and magical music accompanies them. At the end of the video, he descends into the suitcase and waves goodbye to his audience. The statement of his work is that ordinary things, such as suitcases, can be extraordinary. I felt that this message extended to the entire Design Unbound exhibit as I saw ordinary things— color, words, a chandelier, and a sofa bed—in new and extraordinary ways.