What is a wish?

A wish is a person’s desire for something to happen, a subjective thought connected deeply to a person’s psyche and emotions. Our intention is to tap into these desires and see what the world truly wishes for. Puddle is an interactive installation that allows the exploration of literally thousands of people’s wishes that are submitted anonymously. The installation will be on display at the Imagine RIT Creativity Festival. The Festival is on May 2, 2009, on the Rochester Institute of Technology campus.

What can you do?

Submit a wish! Just go to ritPuddle.com

Where to get more information?

Check out each step team Puddle makes at their blog.

A fun new exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, that opened last week, offers a look at the versatility and creative opportunities that come with working with felt. The exhibition, “Fashioning Felt”, includes the work of over 20 designers spanning products, furniture, fashion, and even architecture.

If you were wondering how to bring more felt into your life, this is without a doubt the exhibition for you!

But in all seriousness, the exhibition offers the opportunity to see how felt-making techniques are transformed into surprising results. Like the exquisite felt necklace with coral beads by Brigit Daamen, a necklace that shows both the durability and fragility of felt… or the very surprising Felt Rocks by Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen that will give your pet rock some competition.

The exhibition can be found at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in New York City:

2 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128

More information is offered on the Cooper-Hewitt’s website for the exhibition: http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Fashioning-Felt/

[Images from http://exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org/Fashioning-Felt/]

Before taking a look at more of his work lets take a look at Natrop’s background.   Natrop recieved his BFA in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a merit scholarship.  Since then he’s been featured at a multitude of galleries and has been invited as a guest lecturer to the School of Art and the University of Tennessee.  Not to mention the Vincent Prince Art Museum.  Natrop’s work features installations of fibrious paper cut outs that immediatly give the feeling of soft fabrics and spiderwebs.

Not of all his work consists of these paper cut out installations.  His work encompasses a multitude of forms and the paper cutouts can easily become static, wall-mounted pieces of art.

If you want to see more of his work make sure to check him out at http://www.chrisnatrop.com/ Creative Fluff definitely reccomends him.

Speaking on Friday (tomorrow), at 10:00 AM at the New School at Wollman Hall, 65 W 11th St., will be media artist Victoria Vesna. After doing a little more research I found her projects extremely interesting and I was actually surprised at myself that I had never heard of her prior to this circulating email from the New School. Vesna’s design background holds a huge number of projects and exhibitions involving identity, technology, and systems.

Below, an exerpt from her biography describes the nature of her work:

“Victoria Vesna is a media artist, professor at the department of Design | Media Arts at the UCLA School of the Arts. She is also director of the recently established UCLA Art|Sci center and the UC Digital Arts Research Network. Her work can be defined as experimental creative research that resides between disciplines and technologies. She explores how communication technologies affect collective behavior and how perceptions of identity shift in relation to scientific innovation. Her most recent installations — Blue Morph, Mood Swings and Water Bowls, all aim to raise consciousness around the issues of our relationship to natural systems. Other notable works are Bodies INCorporated, Datamining Bodies, n0time and Cellular Trans_Actions.”

Though I’m not sure if non-New School Students will be able to attend tomorrow, Vesna is definitely a designer worth looking up, as she deals with issues beyond the visual realm of art and design. If any of this sparks interest in you more information and images are available at http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/