*Well. That looks like some harmless good fun.
http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/whatson/dConstruct2010.htm
EXHIBITIONS
Suspending Disbelief
An exhibition by Lighthouse featuring work by Julian Oliver,
Caleb Larsen, Andrew Friend and Becca Gill & Jay Kerry
Lighthouse: 28 August - 5 September
Brighton Dome: 3 September
Opening Preview: Friday 27 August, 1800
Opening Times: 11am - 6pm
At: Lighthouse, 28 Kensington St, Brighton BN1 4AJ
Julian Oliver: levelHead, 2008
The exhibition, Suspending Disbelief draws together works of contemporary art and design which exist in the interstices between the real and the fictional. The artists participating in the exhibition materialise speculative ideas, near-futures, or illusory realities, in a series of verisimilar devices, sculptures, interactive objects, photographic scenarios and installations which challenge our perception of what is plausible. All the works shown in Suspending Disbelief are being shown in Brighton for the first time.
CONTEXT
The exhibition is part of Brighton's major digital design conference, dConstruct (http://2010.dconstruct.org), which each year brings leading names in design and user interaction to the UK. It is organised by the design agency, Clearleft and takes place at Brighton Dome on 3 September 2010, featuring speakers such as Brendan Dawes (magneticNorth) and David McCandless (Information is Beautiful). The theme of this year's conference is "design thinking", a problem-solving methodology which combines empathy, creativity and rationality.
The exhibition extends the notion of design thinking into the physical realm, taking place across two sites: At Lighthouse, the work of Caleb Larsen, Julian Oliver and Andrew Friend will be on display from 28 August - 5 September.
At Brighton Dome, Becca Gill & Jay Kerry will be showing their work for the audiences of dConstruct on 3 September, accompanied by a film documenting the other works in the exhibition, made by Toby Amies.
Suspending Disbelief is a pilot project, developed in partnership with Arts Council England and Clearleft, which looks at the relationship between art and digital creative industries. In 2011, we will extend this pilot by delivering a programme of work which further explores digital culture and the interplay between, artists, audiences and makers, and designers.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
"Maybe there's something beckoning over the horizon that's not design and not futurism but just something we might call speculative culture."
Bruce Sterling (((Yeah, and, uh, maybe not))))
Suspending Disbelief draws from the emerging discourse of "design fiction". The critic and designer, Julian Bleecker describes design fictions as "imaginative conversations about possible future worlds". For him, examples of design fiction are "part story, part material, part idea-articulating prop, part functional software. Design fictions are component parts for different kinds of near future worlds. They are like artefacts brought back from those worlds in order to be examined, studied over. They are puzzles of a sort."
The works in Suspending Disbelief go beyond being mere puzzles: they are reality hacks, conceptual conundrums and physicalised thought-experiments which call into question everyday logic and its interaction rules and rituals. They include a physical sculpture made by American artist, Caleb Larsen, that is perpetually attempting to auction itself on eBay; a series of uncannily real yet seemingly impossible devices created by London-based designer, Andrew Friend; a 3D spatial memory game made by Berlin-based artist Julian Oliver, that takes the form of a digital Echeresque-world; and an installation by Bristol artists, Becca Gill & Jay Kerry where the trickery and illusion of 19th century magic is materialised through pervasive media....
