Homo Sensorium at Dutch Design Week

  • Homo Sensorium at Dutch Design Week 

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    Trigger your senses at Natlab, 19 – 27 Oct

    Experiments, workshops, talks, dinners, tours, films and a Brainwave wedding lab


    Homo Sensorium welcomes you for a sensorial experience, exploring human perception and technology. The program investigates the blurring borders between synthetic and organic, sense and perception, human and machine. By focusing on sensory perception, we get closer to the essence of what it means to be human, while investigating the future of our technologically mediated body. Homo Sensorium presents a mix of experiments, workshops, talks, dinners, performances, guided tours, a brainwave wedding lab and a film program.

    Immerse yourself in a multi-sensory tour based on the industrial heritage of Strijp-S with the Cosmic Travel Kit. Get test married in a high-tech wedding ritual and create your own 3D printed wedding rings in the Brainwave Wedding Lab. Listen to a piano concert and experience music in its most essential way with Piano in the Dark. Create a new physical way to re-connect with nature through sensorial wearables by joining the Facing Nature Workshop. These and other experiences will trigger your senses in the Natlab during the Dutch Design Week

    The Homo Sensorium derives from the concept of Homo Universalis (universal man), a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. The concept aims to remind us, that even though we live in advances and prosperous times, we’ll continuously need to adjust and develop ourselves, re-assess our skills and re-imagine our beliefs and values.

    Program

    Cosmic Travel Kit
    By Klara Ravat, Pieter Verhees and Angela de Weijer
    21, 22, 24, 26 Oct, 13:00 – 17:00
    Free registration

    Come walk with us! Take a tour with the Cosmic Travel Kit, a wearable addressing multiple senses. Baltan Laboratories took the initiative to create an artistic experience built on the rich heritage of Strijp-S. We invited artists Klara Ravat, Pieter Verhees and Angela de Weijer to collaborate on this mission. Together they created Cosmic Travel Kit. The Kit looks like a blend between an astronaut’s helmet and a portable micro-theater. The 20-minute multisensory walk across Strijp-S will lead you past several iconic locations.

    Brainwave Wedding Lab
    By Lancel/ Maat
    19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 27 Oct, 13.00 – 19.00
    (A wedding takes one hour)
    Registration: €20 per couple

    This High Tech wedding experience, developed by Baltan Laboratories together with artists Lance/Maat, investigates future forms of marriage in a technological society. When kissing, the wedding couples’ brain activity is measured with EEG sensors. Two unique data patterns of the wedding kiss are materialized and 3D printed in two (wedding) rings. All sorts of couples can get (test) married at Natlab during DDW.

    Workshop Facing Nature
    By Madeline Schwartzman
    19 + 20 Oct, 10.00 – 18.00 + 10.00 - 15.30
    Tickets: €17,50 (student price €12,50)

    We spend most of our time indoors, staring at digital leaves and animals on our screens. What senses can we develop to re-connect with our surroundings? In this critical making workshop, led by Madeline Schwartzman, you will craft your own nature interfaces. You will develop speculative wearables and facial prosthetics.

    Sensorium Talk
    By Madeline Schwartzman, Sophia Bulgakova and Klara Ravat
    20 Oct, 16:00 – 17:30
    Free registration on Eventbrite

    A series of artist talks around the Homo Sensorium theme, focusing on the blurring borders between the synthetic and organic, the real and the virtual, the human and machine, sense and perception. Artists Madeline Schwartzman, Sophia Bulgakova and Klara Ravat will talk about their practice and projects. How can you influence human perception and hack the human sensory apparatus?

    Love in the 21st Century Talk
    By Lancel/Maat, Design Studio Joes + Manon and Leif Czakai, D’vorah Graeser
    25 Oct, 14:00 – 15:30
    Free registration on Eventbrite

    What is love in the 21st century? Which taboos are still in place? Is a love-contract like marriage still relevant? How does/can technology influence our perception of love? Artists Lancel/Maat and design studio Joes+Manon reflect on the state of love and sexuality nowadays. During the talk, we will explore alternatives for marriage contracts and new ways to celebrate love and intimacy. Together with Joes + Manon, Leif Czakai will talk about De-Co-Date, a series of experimental events in which we decode the diverse shifting values and norms of our love, sex and friendship behaviour in reflection to the societal development in the present, the past and the future. D’vorah Graeser, founder of KISSPatent, will bring up her expertise on contracts and the role of technology in the wedding ceremonies.

    Talk | Imagining Superorganisms: Augmenting the Human Body
    by Bich Tran, Lukas Adrian Jurk, Valerie Daude
    23 Oct, 20:00 - 21:30
    Free registration on Eventbrite

    Microbial masks functioning as monitoring wearable, an embedded extra organism substituting smartphones and a direct alteration of the human DNA enabling adaptive skins - three recent graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven present and discuss their graduation projects situated within the fields of body-hacking and biotechnology. How will we develop as a human species? What are the responsibilities for a designer when imagining futures?

    Presented projects:
    Beyond the Human Surface by Bich Tran
    Machina Synthetica Communicatia - The Living Phone by Lukas Adrian Jurk
    Microbial Self by Valerie Daude

    Is het normaal dat? Design Diner /Hungry for sexuality?
    By studio Joes + Manon
    24 – 27 Oct, 19:00 – 21.30
    Registration: €36,43

    Social design studio Joes+Manon put sexuality on the menu. They host a series of experience dinners in which they question norms and behavior in the context of sexuality. You can expect an interactive experience that facilitates the conversation about sexuality in an original and surprisingly delicious way. The orgasm gap will be cut away, taboos will be spiced up and stereotypes will be made into pulp. Come dine with us and go home with a full belly of inspiration, knowledge, connections and tasty food off course.  

    Homo Sensorium Space
    by Raphael Coutin
    19 – 27 Oct, 11.00 – 21.00
    Free entrance

    The Homo Sensorium space lures you into a tactile experience. The visitor is invited to explore barefoot a soft, quiet and multi-textured environment. It invites you to experience a new space with child-like freedom - to kick off your shoes, lay on the floor, wonder about colours and listen to the space.

    Inspired by the graphical identity of Homo Sensorium, the space becomes a way to escape the mundane, predictable and harsh everyday reality. Can it be that in our hyper-visualized and digitalised societies, the wonder and value of touch as a sense begins to fade?

    Inevitably Blue
    by Sophia Bulgakova
    19 – 27 Oct
    Free entrance

    INEVITABLY BLUE is a participatory performance on a swing which deals with imaginary matters. The experience within it allows to transcend from the present environment, travel to where color exists when movement cuts the air, and dreams are intertwining with reality in more than one dimension.

    Piano in the dark
    By David Hordijk
    22 + 27 Oct
    Tickets: €12,50
    (check Natlab website or get your ticket at Natlab reception desk)

    What do you hear when you do not see? Experience the adventurous and cinematic style of composer and pianist David Hordijk in this concert in the dark.

    Film program + Q&A
    Een Gevoel van Zwart /A Sense of Black (2018, 30 min)
    by Gerben Zevenbergen
    23 Oct
    Tickets: €5,-
    (check Natlab website or get your ticket at Natlab reception desk)

    The documentary takes you into the world of blind artist George Kabel (1955) from Eindhoven. George is one of the 800 Dutch people suffering from Usher syndrome. He’s not only blind but will also turn deaf. We follow George in his art practice. A Sense of Black is made in collaboration with Stichting Loslokaal Rotterdam and Mikxs, creative solutions for people with an auditory or visual limitation.

    Film program + Q&A
    Blinde Liefde /Blind Love (2013, 30 min)
    by Jenny van den Broeke
    25 Oct
    Tickets: €5,-
    (check Natlab website or get your ticket at Natlab reception desk)

    How do you find the love of your life if you cannot see? Blinde Liefde (Blind Love) by Jenny van den Broeke is a short documentary film that attempts to answer this question. In Blind Love, we experience love through the eyes of three blind teenagers.

    Homo Sensorium takes place during Dutch Design Week in Natlab. The program is a collaboration initiated by Baltan Laboratories with Broet and Natlab. Homo Sensorium at DDW is part of a multi-year trajectory developed by Baltan Laboratories and kindly supported bu Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven and Provincie Noord-Brabant.

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