PARIS, FRANCE.-Centre Pompidou presents D Day Design Today, on view through October 17, 2005. D.DAY, Design today, which is being presented at the Centre Pompidou, is a major presentation exploring the vitality of design in a wide variety of fields. It deals with subjects as varied as human welfare, sustainable development, eco-design, communication, consumption, biotechnologies, digital technologies, wellbeing and personal growth.

It brings together a number of projects, for the most part never shown before, conceived by designers representing more than 15 different nationalities. The exhibition, which stretches over 1,200 m2, is split into three acts: political engagements and critical scenarios, experiences of the senses and flavors, and finally, technological imaginings and contemporary transformations.

Act 1: Engagements in the Field
Sensitive to the problems relating to the environment and economic and social inequalities, today’s designers confront the most diverse fields of activity. Non-governmental organizations (NGO) and associative structures, in close dialogue with local participants, develop new design concepts concerning water (Watercone water distiller by Stephan Augustin), solar energy (CooKits and SK14 solar cookers; Lifeline radios from the Freeplay Foundation), or the reprocessing of human and animal feces (Superflex).

Political Stakes
The designers are not indifferent to questions of globalization, and become involved in the political and social field. The exhibition includes a number of examples, such as a medical care structure (Nomadic Clinic by Gaston Tolila and Nicholas Gilliland), redesigning a housing project (Kit of Parts, New York, by Lifeform), simplifying voter access (the Design for Democracy association, United States). It also includes design of every day utensils, usable by all.

Sustainable Development
Sustainable development preoccupies designers and companies. Lafuma, for example, has become involved in eco-design (the Sablier chair conceived for the exhibition), and Map3 designed a communications tower that respects the criteria of High Environmental Quality (HQE).

Critical Scenarios
Pushing forward the frontiers of design, creators often play with hypothetical scenarios. D. Day reveals Olivier Peyricot’s survival platform, Ground 01, while Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby push back the limits of the human species with Evidence Dolls, dolls which store the memories of women’s observations on their sexual partners.

Act 2: Experiences of the Senses and of Flavors
In act two, D. Day shows how contemporary designers reflect upon what is perceptible by the senses. Ferran Adrià and Luki Huber, interested in food mutations, invent new textures, consistencies and taste sensations. Gwenaël Nicolas presents four mobiles made from perfume bottles, which generate olfactory impressions. With Light objects, Carlotta de Bevilacqua transcribes the visitor’s emotions thanks to a luminous and colored space.

Act 3: Technological Imaginings and Contemporary Transformations
Technological Imaginings
Designers often imagine new functions for the technological objects in our daily lives. Some are modified or diverted from their original function in an ironic way (one of Markus Bader and Max Wolf’s Bootleg Objects is a record player transformed into a Radio Frequency ID (RFID) reader, and one of Roger Ibar’s Hardwired Devices is a radio alarm clock connected to two joysticks). Others respond to new practices, as, for example, in Noam Toran’s films in which an armchair’s footrest is equipped with a keyboard, or to new rituals like those photographed by Kyoichi Tsuzuki. Traditional Chinese votive objects are replaced by telephones or televisions made out of paper.

Graphic Transformations
Graphics, another significant field of design, is revisited with the independent American magazine Emigre. Born some 20 years ago, at the same time as the first microcomputers, Emigre brought together the talents of typographers and graphic designers from around the world. Recent digital developments in graphics in relation to music, allow, for example, creative interactivity between image and sound, as in the case of the “visual music”, presented in the exhibition by the Dalbin label.

Imaginary Portables
The portable telephone became an essential item in very little time. A means of communication, it has deeply changed our perception of the world. The object finds itself to some extent overtaken by its success, the subject of two films made in India and Senegal by anthropologist Franco La Cecla. The cell phone also generated the Japanese culture of keitaï (literally portable telephone), presented by the Delaware collective.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Andréa Bergala,
Bernard Delage, Joël Desgrippes and Valérie Guillaume.
Before the industrial revolution, people found their daily markers in natural
sounds. They got up when the cock crowed and ate after the church bell
had rung the Angelus. In the intervening years, the sound environment of
people has become richer, more diversified, and more amplified, arriving
at the cacophony present in today’s cities. But for a number of years we have
been witnessing a new evolution, the birth of a new profession: a sound
designer whose goal if is to make the objects that surround us “talk”
nicely and intelligently – giving sense to our sound environment by creating
sounds that are both beautiful and useful. Along with industrial designers,
sound designers participate now in the global design of automobiles,
refrigerators, telephones or powder compacts, contributing to the construction
of a specific brand image. The automobile and agribusiness industries
have been at the vanguard in this field, having become aware very early
of the importance of sound to their products. Acousticians and psychoacousticians
measure scientifically the intensity of crunch of cereals, while others study the slamming of doors of compact cars so that they will sound “robust” or else create the right snapping sound for a lipstick tube.