Hello World: Code And Design EXHIBITION

Rebecca Varidel
27th Jun 2018

In 2014, teenager Adrianna Mitchell sat at a keyboard with Barack Obama and helped him become the first US President to code. His modest effort, a mere 17 characters of script, underscored a deeper belief in coding as the literacy of the 21st Century. Once largely viewed as an esoteric and tangential activity, coding has emerged as an essential, world-making practice. But what will this digitally-driven future look like? Are today’s school children destined for lives as software engineers, or will coding become a more diffused set of practices. What will it mean ‘to code’?

HELLO WORLD: CODE AND DESIGN examines the role of code in contemporary design, considering the ways in which designers are integrating computation into their practice. The exhibition gathers objects and technologies from across the design spectrum—from fashion and textiles, to the moving image, graphics and the handmade—in order to reveal the social, economic and critical impact of code and design.

The exhibition shows twenty-two designers printing, sewing, assembling and hacking in order to free code from the computer’s dark interior. In the process of prising open the lid on modern technology, these designers are experimenting with new ways of being digital. Low cost electronic components, and the physical computing and maker cultures they’ve spawned, now see code at work in everything from simple household items and toys to weapons and wearables. Additive manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing mean once invisible and immaterial processes are emerging into the tangible world of objects, while industrial processes move from the factory to the home. From Defense Distributed's 3D printed gun, The Liberator, to Golan Levin’s Free Universal Constructor Kit (F.U.C.Kit), and Iris van Herpen’s 3D printed clothing and accessories, the material world is becoming increasingly fertile. Code is reshaping our social, political and economic lives in profound and often unanticipated ways.

HELLO WORLD: CODE AND DESIGN exhibition
Curated by Aaron Seymour
July 24 – September 14, 2018
Opening: July 24, 6pm - 8pm

CURATOR Aaron Seymour is a designer and Lecturer in the School of Design at UTS. He has designed audience experiences for the Australian War Memorial, National Museum of Australia, Historic Houses Trust, Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image amongst others. His short films have twice been nominated for AFI awards, screening internationally in festivals, on television and in commercial cinema releases. As a designer his clients have included the Sydney Dance Company, Björk, Sydney Opera House Trust, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Levis Europe and London’s Wellcome Collection. Aaron curated the exhibition Graphic Material at UTS Gallery in 2010. His current research interest focuses on experimental graphic applications of new material and fabrication technologies.

DESIGNERS A2-Type, Aaron Koblin, Ben Fry, Ben Roberts, Defense Distributed, Golan Levin, Helen Yentus, Humanoid, Iris Van Herpen, Josh Roseberg, Kouhei Nakama, Leah Buechley, Reinoud van Laar, Shawn Sims, Shih Wei Chieh, Studio Pinaffo-Pluvinage, Takashi Kawashima, Tristan Perich, Universal Everything, Wang & Söderström, Ying Gao, Zeitguised

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