Splendour Lender

Jelle Mastenbroek is a Dutch artist interested in the “true meaning of objects”. With his design studio, he creates unusual and playful products reflecting on society, money and the human condition.

Quite a few of his works, such as the here pictured Splendour Lender, Money Back Guarantee 1 & 2 amongst others, take status and money as the concept.

How important is status in times of declining moral standards? In times where financial markets collapse, economies are shrinking and money tend to become a goal in itself? With this project I want to express the real nature of money and tell the true story of status; happiness. The splendour lender brings porcelain to life and shows the original function of money as a medium to exchange goods and services. By putting a euro coin you’ll experience a joyful moment. After usage the coin will be returned so the circle can go round.

I love the playfulness and delicacy of the work, and the fact that it is very transparent and can appeal to a big audience!

Solid Vibration

According to Wikipedia, Archaeoacoustics is “the use of acoustical study as a methodological approach within archaeology”. As sound is fleeting, it is pretty logical that the aural isn’t the focus of archaeology. In recent years, there has been more attention to this, primarily in the field of acoustics, architecture and archaeology. There has been a lot of controversy around sound encoded in ancient artifacts, such as a pot or a vase with ornaments that can be “read” like a gramophone record. Back in 2006, Mythbusters found out that while some acoustic phenomena can be found on pottery, it’s highly unlikely that one would find pots or vases with sounds like voices encoded into them. I am not sure if Ricky van Broekhoven had this in mind when he thought up Solid Vibration, but it sure reminded me of it a whole lot!

Ricky van Broekhoven’s SoundShapeLab designs sound and music that “exceeds perception with merely our ears”. For Solid Vibration, he worked together with designer Olivier van Herpt. Using Olivier’s ceramic 3D printer and a speaker, they are able to influence the printing process with sound. By letting the pottery wheel vibrate with a speaker, the creation is influenced and the vibrations are made visible.

We’ve seen different ways of visualising sound in tangible objects before. Never before something one can actually use, though. I wonder if van Broekhoven’s thought of a way to turn them back into sound again!

clinamen

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot is a French artist who started out as an avant-garde composer before he turned to making long-duration large-scale acoustic installations like he’s been doing for the last two years. His most well known work might be From hear to ear, in which birds fly around the exhibition space, and plugged-in guitars serve as perches for the birds. A lot of his work showcases chance and indeterminacy in highly controlled environments.

With clinamen, one can see this fascination for chance in composition, as well as his interest in creating musical sounds with objects which are not primarily meant for that task (the porcelain ceramics).

Undercurrent in the water makes the porcelain float across, the clinking of the ceramics makes for a composition with aleatory form.

clinamen is currently on display at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France until the end of September.