‘Pandora’ by Fredrikson Stallard at the Digital Crystal exhibition. Photograph: David Levene
It is, Deyan Sudjic believes, one of the biggest challenges facing designers today: “What do we do now that the digital world is destroying the physical object?”
That dilemma, in societies where we don’t really need wristwatches and where we have fewer printed photographs in our albums and books on our shelves, is addressed in a new exhibition at the Design Museum being staged in conjunction with Swarovski.
Fifteen designers have been asked to use crystal to explore the future of memory in the ever-changing digital age.
Sudjic, the museum’s director, said material objects were almost becoming “an endangered species” in the digital world. “But as a species we are programmed to want to leave things behind, to remember people through things and that is why we have asked designers to think about other ways than the obvious ones.”
The commissioned designers have responded to the brief in dramatically different ways.
The New York-based designer Marcus Tremento has created a 3D photograph – of a crystal – and is convinced that this is the way we will be living with photographs in years to come.
Hilda Hellström has gone down the more fantastical route for her work — a short Romantics-inspired film and a sculpted landscape based on the Tyrolean town of Wattens, home to Swarovski HQ.
Anyone can also become part of the show by tweeting or texting a work by Ron Arad called Lolita.
Arad has updated a work first conceived in 2004 – essentially it is a huge chandelier with more than 2,000 crystals and 1,000 white LEDs, which allow it to become a noticeboard for anyone sending tweets (#DigitalCrystal) or texts [text +44 (0)7860 021492) to it.
Nadja Swarovksi, who represents the fifth generation of what is still a family business, said working with the designers helped keep her company “fresh and young”. She added: “It has been totally fascinating to me that every designer had the same brief but the interpretations are so different.”
Digital Crystal: Swarovski at the Design Museum: 5 September to 13 January
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