An Artful Wink at Innovation + Design at NYC's MoMA

If you're in the area, New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has a new exhibition about the future of innovation called "Design and the Elastic Mind."

The exhibition highlights many examples of successful translation of disruptive innovation, examples based on ongoing research, as well as reflections on the future responsibilities of design. Of particular interest is the exploration of the relationship between design and science and the approach to scale."Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life," explains the exhibition's introduction.

Curated by Paola Antonelli, the exhibition highlights designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science and history – changes that demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior – and translate them into objects that people can actually understand and use. The exhibit’s accompanying website presents over three hundred of these works, including fifty projects that are not featured in the gallery exhibition.

Our own BIF research advisor John Seely Brown is featured in the “Thinkering” category. Many designers, scientists and artists have turned to design to give method to their productive tinkering or what JSB calls “thinkering.” They all belong to a new culture in which experimentation is guided by engagement with the world and open, constructive collaboration with colleagues and other specialists.

Some of the objects shown range from nano-devices to vehicles, from appliances to interfaces, and from pragmatic solutions for everyday use to provocative ideas meant to influence our future choices. Crazy cool stuff. I’ll have to get myself to New York to check out the exhibit. It runs through May 12th.

Head to MoMA to learn more

(Image is a nanodevice on display at MoMA's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition)