a combination of music video and documentary, massive attack’s video for ’saturday come slow’ is intriguing on many levels. from the general information on sound, over the recounting of music/sound usage for interrogations in guantanmo bay by a former detainee, to the beautiful images.

opening on friday july 9th at the yerba buena center for the arts in san francisco, TechnoCRAFT explores the changing boundaries between designer and consumer. curated by yves behar, it investigates the current trend of open design around the six subthemes of crowdsourcing, platforms, blueprints, hacks, incompletes, and modules.

included in the show is my shaded lamp, part of the un-readymades series, my own exploration in the area of design democracy and personalization in 2007.

some additional info can be found at dexigner.

another take on crowd-sourcing by a new company called stylefactory. focusing on modern furniture and accessories, it uses community feedback to narrow down a pre-selection of designs to then source them from high quality manufacturers.

full disclosure: one of my own designs is currently included in their pre-selection. anybody care to vote for it? ;-)

tobias wong passed away early morning sunday, may 30, 2010. some info at core77, archinect, flavorwire, designboom, inhabitat, treehugger, hint, dezeen, mocoloco. and just coming out, an obituary at the new york times.

update 6/26/10: new york times article with some additional information

i met him once when he co-judged a competition i was in (thanks again for making me best-of-show). so don’t have too much to add. but here are some of my favorite pieces by him:

gold pills – pure gold leaf passes straight through the body and ends up in your stool…so your poop will glitter

coke spoon 1 + 2

his take on karim rashid’s ‘i want to change the world’

  new york city twin tower matchbook, 2010

phase design gave the same design brief to 5 different designers/design groups: design a candleholder based on a solid american walnut block (12” x 9” x 1.75”) with turned brass inserts. same starting point, but very different results.

Bearing – Claesson Koivisto Rune	Luna – Khodi Feiz
Block – Arik Levy	Bias – Mike & Maaike
Ziba – Phase Design/Reza Feiz

via design milk

looking at it a while ago, shapeways seemed like just another rapid prototyping service. but in addition to the standard collection of different plastic materials, they also offer models in stainless steel. and until the end of this month, even with an optional gold plating. seems like a great way to design and build jewelry.

mentioned here before, cloudFab recently came out of beta and released a new version of their site. by working together with different service providers offering a wide variety of processes and material, the site now automatically generates production & shipping costs for every 3D printing process.

based on the three mechanical products pulley, clamp, and caster, future perfect is curating an ICFF show called ‘lift hold roll’. utilize any of these and submit your work. more info at the future perfect blog.