Being born in a city that celebrates shopping, Dubai born Indian artist Raj needed a break. “My exposure to Art and Design had always been from a commercial angle”, explains Raj,” so the Omkara project was a way for me to break away express myself.”

We nodded with sympathy and decided to be polite:

Sensory: So Raj, what’s the Omkara’s journey?

Raj: The Omkara was an attempt to produce an ‘improvised installation art piece’ that attained meaning and personality as time progressed. On a very philosophical level, it is very much like life where one grows up to becomes who he is because of both foreseen and unforeseen circumstances imposed upon him.

Sensory: Yes but it’s a car..

Raj: The word Omkara actually comes from the Holy Hindu bible BHAGWAD GITA and means – ’ the vehicle to cross the ocean of life ’ Crossing this ocean is the journey one must undertake in a lifetime and henceforth encounter the three basic elements of mortality – creation, preservation and destruction.

Sensory: So the car is the metaphor and it would go through the three basic elements of mortality?

Raj: Exactly.

Sensory: On your website, you’ve said that Omkara is far from over and that you had planned on driving it from the United Arab Emirates to India. Is that part of the destruction and preservation phase? And how’s it coming along?

Raj: It’s not coming along at all… I’ve been very caught up trying to earn money for bread at the moment…. but the Omkara will be revived someday and it will set off on another journey soon. A journey not so extravagant maybe – but possibly unique enough to lower a few windows and invite a few honks!

Sensory: How’s the reaction been so far?

Raj: 60% awe, 25% scepticism, 10% ridicule, 4.5% vindication and 0.5% publicity. While some made fun of the entire project and thought that I was perhaps ‘trying too hard’ to make a point, many others were fascinated by the very scale and process undertaken to complete the project and the mythological concept embedded within. However, it was exceptionally hard to find a media outlet/gallery to exhibit the piece in this country as ‘the Omkara’ was considered a piece too controversial for an islamic country.

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One of things I look forward to while on the blog beat is for the next Royal College of Art showcase where graduates from their various programs show off their work and more than likely you’ll spot something really interesting like the four we hand picked from this year’s:

The title of the most important product this year belongs to William Crawford’s ‘Coolth’ which is a device that creates cooling from heat. It’s been designed as a refrigerator for developing countries allowing the hygenic storage of food in areas without electricity. The device harnesses the energy of a small fire and thus is able to provide cold storage in remote location. It takes minutes to deply and requires only water and air for construction.

Alex Driver, on the other hand, adds added functionality to the shoe box by turning it into a fitting aid complete with a size gauge and appointment in order to help parents make informed decisions about when to buy new shoes for their kids.

Eelko Moorer’s minimal high heels is to die for. Sure, they might not be practical but they are definately a looker.

And finally, Anab Jain’s Sketch-a-move that she developed with Louise Klinker, is a toy car that explores the relationship between small surface doodles and actual physical movements, so if you draw a circle on top of the toy car, it will move in a circle. Fun fun.

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RCA Graduate Showcase 2005

Intoto’s Float

Not a full fledged trend yet (Not like the supersize keyboard key seat), but Japanese based design supergroup, Nendo and New York’s Intoto both caught on the sinking bandwagon with their furniture collection and vase motif.

Nendo’s Sinking about Furniture

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Nendo: Sinking about Furniture
Intoto

Looks like Yves Behar is having a good year. Business week and IDSA posted the winners of their annual Industrial Design Excellence Awards and Yves has a winning entry in four categories – Consumer Products, Design Explorations, Design Strategy, and Furniture, and while I do love his work, some of the more interesting entries we liked were from the students:

For example – The I/O Brush by Kimiko Ryokai and Stefan Marti, is a graphic tool that works like a live digital eyedropper, so you could use it pick up color, texture and movement of any physical object and immediately draw wih that attribute. While it looks like a simple wooden paintbrush, it is actually imbedded with a small video camera that contains lights and touch sensors that translates an object into “ink”.

Second is Stephen Hornbeek’s Sink Sponge (Picture A) which makes cleaning cups, glasses, and small containers easier. The product is suctioned to the bottom of the sink, so only a single hand is needed to get glasses sparkling clean instead of the current two hand interface.

Angie Kim on the other hand, improved on the shoe. Her shoe lets a person with physical limitation to put on and take off shoes without have to bend. The shoe opens and closes through an internal mechanism and needs no shoelaces. The natural position of the shoe is the unlocked latch inside the sole causing it to sit slightly arched on the toe and ball of the shoe. This natural, unlocked position increases the foot hole opening, allowing the user to easily slide in the foot. The act of stepping down applies pressure on the mechanism and instantly latches and locks, while visually straightening out the shoe. To remove the shoe, the other foot steps on the back heel lever, which nudges a wedge-like tip underneath the interlocking pieces of the mechanism, opening up the foot hole and allowing your foot to exit.

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Industrial Design Excellence Award 2005

“Flipshelf” is an aluminum shelving system that allows for flexibility. The shelves attached to a light steel frame can each be positioned either vertically or horizontally, allowing for a variety of patterns of screening.

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Peel

Where I’m from, they say someone’s thinking of you whenever you get a bad case of hiccups which, in my opinion, is a great way to distract yourself because you will end up spending the next few minutes trying to make up a list of culprits.

Matty’s “Presence Frames” reminds me of it – They are a pair of networked photo frames that indicate the remote presence of the person in the photo. For example, if your loved one on Planet Mars moves around in front of her photo of you, your photo frame of her will gently flicker and light up here back on Earth, and vice-versa. All thanks to an embedded motion detector and an internet connection.

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Mathlete: Presence Frames

We’ve got more interactive lights courtesy of Greg Trefry and Matty Sallin. Their ornamental lamp detects and “echos” your own heartbeat in realtime. Just place your hands on either side of the lamp base and wait 8~15 seconds for it to detect your pulse, then watch as it throbs to match your heartbeat.

The light is hypnotic and according to the designers, you can watch your pulse slow down by concentrating and relaxing.

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Mathlete: Pulse Lamp

Peel’s new lighting, the Amis, is an interactive LED light object that glows dimly and steadily when seperated but increase in brightness when they come together.

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Peel

Turkish brand, GAIA&GINO’s new “Morphescape” by Karim Rashid is based on a silhouette of Istanbul’s cityscape. It recently won one of the most prestigious design awards at Design Plus 2005 and will then become a part of the permanent collection displayed in the Museum of Applied Arts, in Frankfurt.

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Gaia and Gino
Retro Modern: Morphescape $105
Karim Rashid

Design studio, Cultivate, refreshes the traditional ambient lamp with their Marie-louise lamp. Asking Price – 699 Euros

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Cultivate (via Core77)

Adbusters would love this – Artist Hans Bernhard & Alessandro Ludovico have come up with a model to take over large corporations, or in this case, Google. The idea is to serve up Google Text advertisements, use a script to simulate human clicks and then use the money generated to automatically purchase Google shares.

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Hans Bernhard (via Gi)

Don’t think that leather briefcase matches with your casual denim look? Well then, take a gander at the Dual-Functional (Dual Functional? how? – It stores your files and makes you look hip) ‘La Valise’ by Designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec of Magis Design.

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Magis Design

“Flight” is the latest lighting product from Julian Lwin and Lwindesign Studio. A graphic illustration of birds in flight is represented using optically polished reclaimed acrylic rods embedded in a lightbox. The 3D visual is intriguing and abstract until the viewer is positioned directly in front of the lamp when the image becomes clear.

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Designers Ines Guerra and Vitor Paiva know the importance of juxtaposition, so they built it into the product – Introducing ‘Wallpaper’, a neat collection of lamps accentuated by the wallpaper sampling around it which might have been inspired by the somewhat similar product (pictured below) the company did a year ago.

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Bleach.pt