I'm in Tokyo! Happy days. Of course I've wasted no time in heading straight to the Museum of Contemporary Art, to catch up on whatever creative wonders Tokyo always offers. In some freakish accident of perfect timing, the currently showing exhibition entitled 'Usagi Smash' or 'Bunny Smash' represented 21 different designers whose work take a alternative perspectives on design and its placement in culture and society.
I was amazed and delighted to see the E.Chromi and Growth Assembly projects of my ultimate role model Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg sitting right alongside the Life Support work of one of my course tutors Tuur Van Balen. These 3 projects have probably dealt the heaviest influence on my design thinking, so it was great to see it all up close in person.
Another designer represented at the show was smell artist Sissel Tolaas, who I've been constantly seeing on the periphery of my research. Tolaas has been doing all kinds of things that remind me of my own experiments, including mapping out the smell-scapes of a city, and collecting the sweat of anxious men and comparing their chemical makeup and odour differences. It was all fascinating and fun to interact with, fostering this weird tension between the yuckiness of smelling an anxious stranger's body odour and the intrigue of learning about smells and pheromones. I definitely think this factor is something to remember for the presentation of my own work, balancing this yuckiness, curiosity and interactivity.
I wish I could go into detail about all the work from the show, from the beautiful to the clever to the crazy, but I would just end up writing a catalogue of the thing. If anyone reading this happens to be in Tokyo, Bunny Smash is my current primary recommendation.
