PUBLIC MARKS with search moma

“Talk to Me” is no exception. The starting point is that digital technology is enabling objects to become so complex and powerful that we now expect to interact with them. If you hand an unfamiliar object to a small child, he or she will instinctively search for buttons or sensors to operate it.

This exhibition presents eleven architectural projects on five continents that respond to localized needs in underserved communities. These innovative designs signal a renewed sense of commitment, shared by many of today’s practitioners, to the social responsibilities of architecture.

In order to understand why we have chosen to acquire the @ symbol, and how it will exist in our collection, it is necessary to understand where @ comes from, and why it’s become so ubiquitous in our world.

Beijing-based artist Song Dong (b. 1966) explores notions of transience and impermanence with installations that combine aspects of performance, video, photography, and sculpture. Projects 90, his first solo U.S. museum show, presents his recent work Waste Not. A collaboration first conceived of with the artist's mother, the installation consists of the complete contents of her home, amassed over fifty years during which the Chinese concept of wu jin qi yong, or "waste not," was a prerequisite for survival. The assembled materials, ranging from pots and basins to blankets, oil flasks, and legless dolls, form a miniature cityscape that viewers can navigate around and through.

Aaron Koblin is an an artist specializing in data visualization. His work takes social and infrastructural data and uses it to examine cultural trends and emergent patterns. Aaron’s work has been shown at international festivals including Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, OFFF, the Japan Media Arts Festival, and TED. He received the National Science foundation's first place award for science visualization and is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. As Technology Lead of Google’s Creative Lab in San Francisco, Aaron helped to launch Chrome Experiments, a website showcasing JavaScript work from designers around the world.

MFA Design|Media Arts UCLA

The Lettera 22 was the pinnacle of 1950s typewriters (MoMA even have one in their permanent collection), a true luxury item, and the manual testifies to this. The copy is peppered with proud sentiment, and includes gems like ‘The Olivetti Lettera 22 is quite clearly a portable typewriter of the most up-to-date design and fine workmanship’ and ‘A few minutes spent in reading this book will enable the novice and the experienced typist alike to get the very best out of this excellent typewriter’. It refers to itself as a book!