Written by Anne de Haij

Ever thought of your favourite party dress affecting your behaviour? Or your daily breakfast determining your mood? You won’t find these rather simplified illustrations of design influencing your daily life on the main exhibition of the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF). Nevertheless the exhibition is truly all about the power of things. Skip the highbrow attitude and mega intellectual explanations and you’ll truly learn how art, design, fashion, music, science and technology can help solve current social and cultural problems in a very futuristic and high tech way. From nano-art to pigeon poo to ice sculptures.

Notion Motion

One of the exhibition’s most famous artists is without a doubt Olafur Eliasson, the Danish-icelandic artist known for his large-scale installations that use elemental materials like water to enhance the viewer’s artistic experience. The installation belongs to the Boijmans van Beuningen collection, but unfortunately there it is not permanently on display. So now take your chance and don’t miss this incredibly beautiful installation. Next to having an incredible experience, you’ll actually get to know something about people interrelating with the natural elements of wind, water, light and temperature.

A Mushroom Death Suit

Where ‘Notion Motion’ has this obvious aesthetic aura, Jae Rhim Lees ‘Mushroom Death Suit’ has a completely different, say bizarre and macabre appearance. The suit is covered with fungi, which facilitates the decomposition and partial toxin remediation of corpses. The first thought that comes to mind is of course a ‘spooky’ one. But when you read further,the suit actually starts to make sense. When Lee found out that human bodies can contain up to 219 toxic pollutants, she wanted to find a way to prevent these heavy metals and pesticides in corpses from polluting the earth. By using the force of design and Mother Nature herself, she came up with this rather scary but perhaps very sustainable suit.

Unique sheep

Although we are exploiting Mother Nature’s products more often then we think, we tend to forget the origin of the products we use. And according to Christien Meindertsma, we don’t only have ourselves to blame. In her installation with five real sheep, she shows that every single sheep has its own unique appearance in wool. Instead of using these beautiful and unique qualities of every single sheep, modern production processes mix different types of wool from several types of sheep and thoroughly obscure the relation between the final product and the original natural ingredients.

Soapy pigeon poo

Besides making better use of its qualities, we could even turn Mother Nature’s downsides into profit. At least, as long as we believe in Tuur van Balen’s rather provoking propositions. In ‘Pigeon d’Or’ he refers to ‘pigeon poo’ as one of the annoying problems in urban environments. Instead of combatting the producers of this poo; rather unpopular birds also know as ‘rats’, he came up with the idea to use them to fight other urban troubles. He found out that you could design and create a bacteria that is as harmless to pigeons as yoghurt is to humans and, when fed to them, turns their poo into soap. Besides the power of both science and nature, Balen wants to point out political implications of science and design as well.

Sealed

After all these futuristic and intelligent statements, you should definitely end with ‘Sealed’ by Jessica de Boer. Besides the installation being an experience on its own (you have to enter a mega freezer wearing white winter jackets and white boots) this is truly one of the most simple and serene artworks of the exhibition. Inside the freezer, you’ll find a rather simple block of ice containing a ten kg solid salt crystal. Starting as two separate entities, the melting process of the ice will force the salt and ice to mix, resulting in a beautiful visual image of two natural materials bonding together.

The Dutch Electronic Art Festival is a 4-day event presenting workshops, lectures and performances in Rotterdam. The main exhibition will be on display until 3 June 2012 in the former main post office of Rotterdam. 

Photos courtesy of DEAF