Digital Crystal / Swarovski at the Design Museum
It’s odd to think that Facebook photo albums are replacing the leather-bound real things¾ the thought of scrolling through digital archives seems so much less immediate than digging through a decayed shoe box of bad disposable camera photos. Regardless, the truth is undeniable: in the modern era, memory is the Internet’s domain. “With the demise of the analogue era,” says Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum, “our relationship and connection with personal memory, photographs, diaries, letters, time and ephemera is changing. The personal possessions we once held so highly are now online, or gone in an instant.” Digital Crystal: Swarovski at the Design Museum is an exhibition intended to explore that changing relationship with memory and objects.
Blur by Philippe Malouin for Swarovski / Image courtesy of David Levene
Curators at the Design Museum asked emerging talents of contemporary design to explore the future of memory in the digital age through the medium of crystal. Participating designers include Ron Arad, Maarten Baas, rAndom International, Yves Béhar, Troika and Fredrikson Stallard. The public is invited to contribute to the exhibition by tweeting memories to Arad’s installation Lolita, which converts the tweets to LED messages bouncing around crystal. Alongside the specially commissioned pieces will be a select number of updated works from the Swarovski archive.
Digital Crystal /Swarovski at the Design Museum
Digital Crystal will be open to the public from 5th September to 13th January. For more information visit www.designmuseum.org.
