FUNCTION FOLLOWS FORM | April 19th 2008

Tomáš Gabzdil Libertíny (Slovak, born 1979) Studio Libertiny (The Netherlands, est. 2006) With a Little Help of the Bees vase. Prototype. 2006 Beeswax, 9 x 5 1/2 x 5 1/2" (23 x 14 x 14 cm) Image by Raoul Kramer

At the MoMA exhibition "Design and the Elastic Mind", the ringing message is that design matters. Ariel Ramchandani visits this "science fair on hallucinogens" and likes what she sees ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

"Design and the Elastic Mind" is not your parents' science fiction. No stark white backgrounds, Blade Runner fantasies or post-apocalyptic wastelands. It's no conventional art show either. This is a science fair on hallucinogens--an exuberant garage-sale grab-bag funhouse of the fictional future. It seems the MoMA's talented Paola Antonelli didn't curate as much as accumulate, with exhibits gathering round in choreographed entropy. Try not to blink under the neon glare--you might miss something.

This giant exhibition features upwards of 250 pieces, many of them interconnected. The exhibits are grouped thematically, so internet experiments are displayed together, as are installations that deal with human emotion. But the true organising principle of the show is, "the exploration of the relationship between design and science and the approach to scale."

This may be the first MoMA show where I saw children having fun: touching everything, crawling into exhibits, and then crying when they were kept from playing with the shiny, metallic objects. The sense of wonder is infectious. Geeky exclamations slip out at every turn. A stem-cell suit for a mouse? Gadzooks!

The show successfully illustrates the intersection of science and design, often proving them to be two sides of a coin. As viewers, we revel in the detail-oriented (and often beautiful) craft of these innovators, who are stubbornly incapable of accepting things as they are.

The works range in scale, from tinkerings with miniscule bits and building blocks (genes, pins, screws), to experiments with all that is infinite and nebulous (urban plans, the universe, the internet). This wide net is meant to illustrate the sweeping impact of design--each explanatory tag has a diagram that illustrates how the object mediates between an individual, a group, society and the universe. They're a bit abstract; if you ask me it's better just to look.

Antonelli explained to a lucky group of us on a guided tour that this collaboration between scientists and designers is a productive one, because practitioners in both fields tend to feel inaccessible to the public. Good design can translate scientific innovation into something more digestible, while science can lend design more meaning.

In addition to oscillating between the miniscule and gargantuan, this show also curiously navigates the territory between the hyper-useful and hyper-useless. A vase-looking device that employs bees in early cancer detection draws a stark contrast with a graft of a loved one's nipple, DNA manipulated to create smiley faces (pictured right). Tacky science? Who knew such a thing existed. (Gadzooks, again.) Science goes down, design goes up (zero-sum, in this instance).

What's also fascinating about this multi-levelled science/design collaboration is the powerful and definitive idea of design's importance. We believe in science already; Antonelli pushes us to put our faith in design, too. The show concentrates on the "designers' ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores, changes that will demand or reflect major adjustments in human behaviour, and convert them into objects and systems that people understand and use." Design is not a joke (smiley-faced DNA and fictional futures aside). The art of making functional stuff look nice is not to be taken lightly.

And most of the exhibit looks better than just nice. Chairs immediately moulded from the 3-D printer develop with a sinuous, organic beauty. A digital map of the internet is as lovely as fireworks on the 4th of July, a far away galaxy (pictured right).

"Of course, everyone has a right to beauty," Antonelli quipped during our tour. Objects "that people understand and use" include shoes, drinking fountains and golfballs, as well as computer interfaces, holograms and space suits. Design--lowly, practical design--elevates everyday objects, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Whether you buy into it or not, this is a call for beauty; at any level, at any price point, on every scale, for every person (no wonder kids were trying to reach out and touch it). Ringing through the cavernous space like church bells is the assertion that design matters, that it will help us leave today and enter tomorrow.

Design and the Elastic Mind is at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, until May 12th 2008.

(Ariel Ramchandani is a contributing editor to More Intelligent Life)