nextfest
Catching up on some stuff waiting in our ‘drafts’ folder for a little too long, here is a belated post concerning WIRED’s Nextfest festival of last september. With a baseline reading Experience the future, it obviously attracted our attention.
The future of … 12 themes was explored in 12 pavillions, by exhibiting a series of innovative developments – technologies – in the domains of communication, design, education, entertainment, exploration, green, health, play, robotics, security and transportation.
Four videos were posted recently, labeled The future of design, yet it are the technologies developed through design, which are really at the center of attention rather than the profession of ‘design’ itself, its applications, roles, ways and means, tools, methods and techniques, etc. (see also here). Nextfest sees design as ‘the way we shape and communicate with the world around us’.
Lifestyle shows the e-taf automatic door by Tanaka Seisakusho, Alvaro Cassinelli’s Khronos projector (we covered here), the wine-m winerack by ThingM, PerceptivePixel’s multitouch wall (we covered here, here), the YouTube Mirror developed at the Courant Institute at NYU (also by Jeff Han), InformationLab’s Cellphone Disco,
Robotics features Kiyomori by Tmsuk, Chroino by Kyoto University’s RoboGarage, WL-16 bipedal robot by Waseda University in Tokyo.
Transportation features FastTrack’s Amphibian, the WheelSurf, the AirScooter II, Greg Kolodziejzyk’s Critical Power HPV, CuteCircuit’s Interactive fashion (we covered here).
Mind and body shows Aksioma’s Brain loop, StepintoFun’s BodyBug, d3o lab’s D3O shock absorbing material.
Several designs/gadgets seem to be on display at Nextfest for several editions in a row. In this fast-paced world, it is hard to imagine a lack of future-oriented designs to fill an exhibition?
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