BE OPEN: Sound Design Talk

BE OPEN: Sound Design Talk

Ekaterina Vekova

Source: wallpaper.com

The debate in Covent Garden last night was a sound argument for a sonically enhanced future. Can intelligent, personable sound design encourage us to spend more in retail environments? Could sound help the older generation feel more comfortable? Will electric cars soon be jamming our streets, all playing the same sonorous ‘G’ note from beneath their bonnets? Can a better understanding of sound and our sensory systems help us design anything from household products to skyscrapers that can breathe, grow and ‘think’?

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BE OPEN: Awards

BE OPEN: Awards

Ekaterina Vekova

Source: wallpaper.com

Last Friday night at London’s Earls Court exhibition centre, a panel of prestigious design-world figures put together their creative minds to select three future-thinking young designers to win the 2012 BE OPEN Awards. The awards programme, launched earlier this year at Milan Design Week, was set up to support emerging design talent by the BE OPEN foundation, a creative Think Tank headed by Russian entrepreneur and philanthropist Elena Baturina.

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BE OPEN: Sound Portal Lunchtime Talk

Ekaterina Vekova

Source: wallpaper.com

‘Do you remember the very first scene from “A Space Odyssey”, where the monkey picks up a bone and whacks the other monkey over the head with it?’

Ben Evans, London Design Festival director, is describing the inspiration for the design of the BE OPEN Sound Portal, an audio installation that was placed in the centre of Trafalgar Square during last week’s Festival. ‘In the background of the scene,’ he continues, ‘there’s a big black obelisk and no one explains to you what it is. It appears again at the end of the film as a metaphor for the past, present and future.’

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Review of BE OPEN Sound Design Talk in Association With Wired Consulting

Ekaterina Vekova

Thursday 20 September 6-8pm
The Hospital Club, 24 Endell Street, Covent Garden

BE OPEN hosted a panel discussion in collaboration with WIRED Consulting (the bespoke events arm of the internationally renowned magazine WIRED UK), on Thursday 20 September at London’s Hospital Club. Tom Cheshire, Associate Editor of WIRED UK,  moderated a panel of leading design minds, including celebrated designer Tom Dixon, Roland Lamb, Matthew Herbert, Lauren Stewart and Benjamin Koren.

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Sound and Sustainability Are the Winners at the BE OPEN Awards

Ekaterina Vekova

London, September 21, 2012 – Today the winners of the BE OPEN AWARDS, an international scheme for the promotion of young creative talent, were announced at 100% Design.

The winner in the CAST category is Alexandra Kharakoz from the UK, with Sonic Landscape, an interactive, real-time, sonic sculpture designed to heighten awareness about how sound is produced.

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BE OPEN Space at the Dock

BE OPEN Space at the Dock

Ekaterina Vekova

Tom Dixon’s west London canal-side HQ was the venue for BE OPEN’s first off-schedule event at the 2012 London Design Festival. Described by Dixon as a flash-market showcase of young design talent, BE OPEN SPACE consisted of eight site-specific raw-wood stands conceived by designer-engineers Pan Studio and JailMake. Their solid, practical construction made reference to pine art-transport containers while also echoing the old trade stalls of Florence’s Ponte Vecchio.

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Endless Interruptions

Ekaterina Vekova

Designer Sam Bernier’s starting point is the ultimate contemporary dilemna. “After finishing the content of a mason jar… I always clean it and keep it for later use. I quickly realised that I had almost no opportunities to actually reuse them unless I decided to turn my kitchen into a canning manufacture,” he writes. Bernier’s response was to create customised lids  using low cost 3D printing for the jars. He uses the popular phrase ‘upcycling’.

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BE OPEN Awards Shortlist Announced

Ekaterina Vekova

Nine talented young designers go forward to the finals of the BE OPEN Awards, which will be presented as part of the think tank’s activities during the 2012 London Design Festival.

“BE OPEN is about ‘intellectual development’, investing in the creation of added value for future generations. Our programmes are about generating original thinking from the most promising young minds of our time”, said Elena Baturina, founder of BE OPEN.

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What Will the Future Sound Like? BE OPEN Sound of the Future

Ekaterina Vekova

Imagine the world of tomorrow and imagine the soundscape. Will it be beeping computers, electric cars, giant wind turbines and spacecraft?

Will it be a noiseless, utopian world of clean, environmentally friendly machines, where humans can travel, communicate and experience life through the limitless possibilities of the internet, or noisy and frenetic, where nature and humanity come second?

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