21 June 2017

Vienna Insight: Opening 'Hello, Robot.' exhibition about art, design, architecture at MAK during Vienna Biennale

Yesterday, Vienna Biennale invited media to the preview of Vienna Biennale 2017 which opened today and runs at various locations until 1 October. Main location is MAK, the Austrian Museum of Appiled Arts / Contemporary Art where several Vienna Biennale exhibitions are on view. Fashionoffice joined the tour through the 'Hello, Robot.' show.

fig.: At the entry, two of the four curators Fredo de Smet (Design museum Gent) and Amelie Klein (Vitra Design Museum) welcomed the guests. Fredo de Smet and Amelie Klein are standing in front of the 'Hello, Robot.' poster which shows geometrical graphics in black and white; the lines form in the middle a robot-like figure. The artwork by Christoph Niemann is also used for the cover of the English written 328-pages catalogue.

The exhibition is entertaining and informative for the whole family. The elders know some items from their own youth, the younger generations are champions in using several artefacts, and some pieces at the exhibition are brand new at the market or available soon. All of them had, have and will have impact on how we are living together.

fig.: The curators lead with 14 questions through the collection of devices, robots of a new society which is surrounded increasingly by intelligent applications and machines. The first question of the exhibition (image right) "Have You Ever Met A Robot?" is continued by survey-like stations which make aware that we are the producers, the directors and rulers of new technologies.

The exhibition is equipped with a huge amount of objects concerning robots, artificial intelligence from toys, original film characters, over architecture, fashion to installations such as an interactive website which provides probable future prospects concerning fields of professions on the question "Will a robot take your job?"

'Hello, Robot.' shows that nobody can answer the question how the world will look like in 20 years. The exhibition opens the eyes for how much todays society depends on artificial intellgence and robots already and builds the consciousness for a future with many possibilities.


By leaving the MAK, Fashionoffice came along a pop-up store with laser cutter and clothes on a rack. The room is the presentation space of the Vienna Biennale Demonstrators Post-Couture Collective and meshit.

fig. below (from left): Martijn van Strien (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) from Post-Couture Collective and the duo Lena Krampf and Ida Steixner (Vienna, Austria) of the fashion design label meshit. Martijn van Strein of Post-Couture explained the extraordinary pattern solutions of the fashion collections. The clothing parts are cut by laser and can be assembled without using a sewing machine (how to do it); some might think of the technique how sleeves were attached during times of Renaissance.

It's announced that Post-Couture and meshit are developing together the 'Vienna Collection' which will be available at the pop-up store at MAK from mid-September. 

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