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9/7/2001

Global tools

Kunstlerhaus, Wien

The title global tools refers to a well known historical design initiative: around 1973 the avant-garde of "Radical Design" (i.e. Archizoom, Superstudio, Ettore Sottsass at all) gathered in Florence under the same name and planned a network of laboratories through which not the material world, but rather, behavioral forms - indeed, the mind itself - would be designed.

Although the historical project global tools soon collapsed under such weighty expectations, it is remarkable how many of its utopian ideas have been realized. In the meantime global tools are omnipresent: they are mobile phones, cheque cards, GPS, Internet-modems etc. and modern design has in fact led to new kinds of social behavior and thinking - and vice versa. Consequently design and "expectation management" are connected cycles. A product can only be designed until the wish for it has been expressed. What are the new developments already expected from us, the consumers? What are the channels of distribution, ways of behavior and functions we are dreaming of?

The global tools exhibition's aim is to present some of those atmospheric planning spaces that are so important today. The search for those visionary options controlling design- and technical departments world-wide today. The exhibition will be as heterogeneous as these "planning spaces" are: It will consider the future in very different scenarios - specifically designed by architects and set designers. Points of orientation are concepts such as: transit, training, neuronal nets, information heat, generating cells, infusion, insights, survival, heroes like us. Each of these presented studies on design, prototypes and exemplary objects will be part of these atmospheres.

Transit
The phenomenon of perpetual "displacement" includes diverse forms such as the world-wide tourism boom, economically motivated migration and the "absent-mindedness" of today's SMS aficionados. (designed by Atelier Schmitzer)

Training
This section deals with tools for practice in managing today's stress culture through play, perception and strength training for a world of heightened stimuli. (designed by Mona Quintus)

Neuronal Nets
The increased significance of technical and organizational networks has 1) led to a strong presence of network-visualizations in everyday life, 2) has decisively changed our perception of self in relation to the outside world, and 3) has transformed the designer as an individual into a node within the network of interdisciplinary teams. (designed by Mona Quintus und Marie Rahm) The students of the University of Applied Arts and the Royal College of Art use the Think Tank, a space sculpture within neuronal nets, as a presentation platform for video projects dealing with the future of the Global Tools (designed by MIT LOIDL ODER CO. GRAZ, video edited by XXKunstkabel).

Information heat
The subject is emotional and physical adaptations of technically new products: equipment that becomes pieces of clothes (i-wear); inversely, anonymous bits of equipment that are clothed in "identity skins" (skinning). (designed by as_architecture)

Generating cells
The Italian designers "Superstudio" and the formation with other groups of "Global Tools" as historical point of reference. (designed by Cristiano Toraldo and Arno Grunberger)

Insights
In ever multiplying forms, pictures are being recorded, produced, developed and digitally transmitted. The spectrum of application ranges from the live-cams of the Internet, public space and the reality-TV-containers to the flow of pictures in lomography, from ultrasound pictures and tele-surgery to the digital postcard. (designed by veech.media.architecture)

Survival
The high-tech world is dialectically related to the vision of the solitary island. What do we do in case all networks break down? The exhibition shows tools for survival tours, apocalypse equipment and low-tech-design. (designed by Ursula Hubner and Tobias Urban)

Infusions
The market is developing the irresistible tendency to liquefy and one gets used to enter the world-wide flow of information and goods. The exhibition deals with the history of credit cards, automated teller machines, mail-order houses, today's electronic banking and virtual trading floor. (designed by holodeck.at)

Heroes like us
A "Personal Digital Assistant" (PDA) as guiding system through the exhibition opens up a new level into a virtual world. These associative spaces were designed by the Austrian artist Martin Walde.

Technical innovations cause social processes. Design is a medium to deal with questions arising within this context and to define possible answers. Design is at the same time exposed to an identity crisis because of digitalization and the development of microelectronics; it has therefore to be questioned with regard to its field of action and its self-definition. Design experts have been invited to talk about this subject and to show their different points of view.

Curators: Vitus H. Weh and Tulga Beyerle.

Lectures
12 July 2001, 6 p.m.: London-based design critic and author David Redhead and the Florence-based foundation member of Superstudio and Global Tools Cristiano Toraldo present the introductory evening.
13. July 2001, 5 p.m.: On this evening many different points of view are expressed. Tony Dunne speaks as the Design researcher of the Royal College of Art, Alexander Grunsteidl as the representative of the international Design agency Ideo and Paul Starrenburg as the manager of CEO Philips Austria and Switzerland.
14. July 2001, 4 p.m.: The last evening is dedicated to young designers whose works raise unusual questions and show cross-border experiences. The designers themselves present their works: UMA/ Vienna, Michael Anastassiades/ London, RADI/ Paris.

Global tools - design in the age of intensive-care units

press conference 10 July 2001, 10 a.m.
opening 10 July 2001, 8 p.m.
exhibition run 11 July - 9 September 2001
location k/haus, Karlsplatz 5, A-1010 Vienna entrance currently Akademiestraße
opening hours daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Thu 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.
lectures 12, 13 and 14 July 2001
guided tours Thursday 6 p.m. Sunday 11 a.m.
catalogue "global - tool - box" (catalogue included)
exhibition curators Tulga Beyerle, Vitus H. Weh
graphic design Alois Schwaighofer, section a
direction Doris Rothauer
exhibition organization Martina Gruber
organisation assistant Thorsten Philipp

press Claudia Kaiser, Astrid Mund
Fon 0043 - 1- 587 96 63-21 Fax: 0043 - 1- 587 87 36

sponsored by: Bundeskanzleramt Sektion Kunst and Kulturamt der Stadt Wien mobilkom austria, Motorola, Philips Design, Compaq Computer Austria GmbH, Austria Card, Klausner Objekteinrichtung AV-Ausstattung GmbH, Abet Laminati, British Council in addition to that lectures are supported by British Airways and Hotel Inter-Continental

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