Eight Next-Level Things to Do at Sydney Design Festival
Escape a VR panic room, build a bamboo bike, then play with your food.
Eight Next-Level Things to Do at Sydney Design Festival
Escape a VR panic room, build a bamboo bike, then play with your food.
For 19 years, Sydney Design Festival has been putting you face-to-face with the latest developments in architecture, fashion, technology, food and art. Gear up for yet another nine mind-blowing days, coming up on September 2.
This time around, you'll be seeing the Goods Line in a whole new light, discovering the latest innovations from Indigenous designers, hearing from creatives about the fine line between success and failure, exploring artists' responses to the impact of digital manufacturing and cutting up bamboo bicycles. And that's just the beginning. Get amongst it.
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This is the dinner party you’ve been dreaming about since you were six. Enter an abandoned garage and get set to dig into three courses. But, prepare yourself for a slew of surprises because you’ll be doing a whole lot more than simply looking at your food, before eating it.
In fact, Don’t Play With Your Food is more like a Bompas + Parr-like multi-sensory journey. Creative duo Harry + Matt will be bringing you a team of performers, architects, chefs and set-designers, including experiential chef Jordan McKenzie from Oar and Anchor and architect-turned-jellyologist, Jessica Mentis from Mentis Studios.
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If you’re a hacker, tinkerer or bike builder, then this one’s for you. Join Indonesian designer Singgih Kartono (Spedagi and Magno) for six excellent hours of experimentation with bamboo bicycles.
Starting with a Spedagi bike, you’ll be free to come up with ideas as crazy as you like and give them an actual go. No one will be holding you back or heeding caution. You’re encouraged to dream up some brave concepts in advance and even take your own bike along with you. Should your imaginings prove to be winners, you might find yourself scoring a spot at Cementa 2017.
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Having made its international premiere at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), this exhibition has hit the Powerhouse. At its heart is the increasingly intense relationship between digital manufacturing and, well, everything — from art and design to science and architecture.
The computer revolution has changed every part of the process. More than 60 artists are bringing their perspective to the mix. You’ll be seeing works from New York-based sculptor Barry X Ball, Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen who’s collaborated with everyone from Tilda Swinton to Lady Gaga and Israeli industrial designer Ron Arad.
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When you work in a creative field, what does it mean to fail or succeed? What happens in those major moments when you think you might have cracked the big time — artistically or commercially — but can never be sure? And how do you recover when things don’t go your way?
At Pecha Kucha: Sink or Swim, presented by AGDA, seven creatives will get seven minutes each to discuss such matters. You’ll be hearing from artist Ken Done A.M., Houston Group’s Stuart O’Brien, Jess Scully of Vivid Ideas, SouthSouth West’s Andy Sargent, ustwo’s Joel Brydon and Interbrand Australia’s Kieren Cooney.
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Quietly keeping us all tied firmly to Planet Earth, gravity is the mighty scientific force taking centre stage at Penrith Regional Gallery’s latest group exhibition, Gravity (and Wonder) — where art and science make waves. Think three months of artist and scientist residencies, live performances and out-of-this-world digital projections from some of the top guns in both fields.
For the first time, PRG joins forces with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, the University of Western Sydney and Penrith Observatory, bringing together a collision of art and science like Sydney’s never seen before. Blue Mountains visionaries David Haines and Joyce Hinterding will present the first attempt to record sound falling from space, with their haunting audio-visual display Descender, while Amy Joy Watson will get your head spinning with her huge floating installation.
They’ll be mega-scale works from American artist Richard Serra, Dreamtime paintings of The Moon and Universe from Indigenous brother-sister duo Mabel Juli and Rusty Peters, plus a one-day gravity-defying performance on November 5 at the Gallery’s Lewers House (transformed into the exhibition’s House of Wonder). Prepare to have your mind blown.
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A bunch of powerhouse Indigenous designers will be gathering at the Powerhouse for this trio of events. Get there at 10.30am to meet Brett Leavy, who’ll be talking about Virtual Songlines, his virtual reality tool that allows you to see local landscapes before European invasion.
Come 12.30pm, it’ll be time for Deadly Designers Now. Special guests Lucy Simpson (director, Gaawaa Miyay Contemporary Aboriginal Design) and Nicole Monks (CEO, blackandwhite creative) will be revealing what it’s taken to get where they are today. Finally, at 2pm, a roundtable forum will tackle Indigenous technologies in the 21st century, focusing on the ethics of scanning and 3D-printing cultural objects.
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If you’ve been taking things a bit slow of late, get yourself to The Panic Room for a speed-up. This virtual version of the mighty escape room format demands lightning fast thinking, super-efficient communication skills and Einstein-level problem solving.
You and your buddies will be equipped with virtual reality head sets, the clock will be set and you’ll be scrambling around, desperately seeking a way out before time’s up. There are just four sessions of one hour each and we reckon they’ll be pretty damn popular, so it’s a smart idea to book sooner rather than later.
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Since opening in 2015, The Goods Line has helped many a pedestrian scurry between Central Station and Darling Harbour in car-free bliss. But that’s not its only function, as you’ll discover when Really Goods Line Day rolls around for this year’s Sydney Design Festival.
This seven-hour extravaganza will explore the space’s potential through live music, fitness events games, talks, tastings and demonstrations. Prepare to prove your mettle in table tennis tournaments, sample quality coffee, take body balance classes, hear Sacha Cole discuss design, watch marching bands and hear DJ Mase Boogie spin some tunes.
When you’re not getting into the action, fuel up at food trucks courtesy of Agape Organic, De Wafel and Eat Art Truck.
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