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Experimental collaborations between designers, artists, scientists and technologists are not just about speculation and provocation. A growing community of makers is translating ideas from science fiction to the real world.

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Words Veronica Simpson

There's a brave, new, multidisciplinary, collaborative and innovative scene happening in design right now, and getting involved has never been easier - not just via Google, YouTube and email but through a rapidly expanding range of opportunities for sharing ideas, inspirations and skills at ground level. From a proliferating menu of worldwide makeathons through dedicated, multidisciplinary workshop spaces (Bristol's Pervasive Media Studio, London's Makerversity at Somerset House) to global and interactive conferences and festivals, what today's Skype-happy, digitally connected, creative community seems to like best of all is an opportunity to have some face time with as broad a spectrum as possible of potential collaborators and conspirators.

A pop-up city, City Fictions 1 was part of the 2014 Future Everything annual festival. Photo Credit: Maddox Media

When the Future Everything festival launched in Manchester 20 years ago, it was a lone creative voice in the unremittingly techie geek wilderness, exploring the cultural and social implications of this fledgeling phenomenon. Now, Future Everything is a major yearly event on the experimental digital artist/hacker/maker calendar, with offshoots in Moscow and a thriving portfolio of consultancies and co-creations bubbling along nicely. Future Everything founder Drew Hemments - along with other digitally-minded British designers, artists and innovators - is regularly sent out (Brazil, India, Russia) by the British Council's impressively zeitgeist-grabbing, creative economy unit to showcase the UK's skills and homegrown talent in a field that Hemments describes as 'the most urgent, interesting, significant movement or space in design globally.'

From The Unseen are sculptural feathered capes in black leather impregnated with atmospherically sensitive chemicals that change colour with shifts in conditions. Photo Credit: Lauren Bowker

For some time the UK has been at the movement's epicentre, believes Hemments. 'The most interesting and challenging work has come out of a group of studios which are using design as a tool to think about futures in different ways.' The studios Hemments name checks - Superflux, for example - are among the leaders of the speculative design pack, which provoke and interrogate social and cultural issues through design fictions and pithy installations at conferences, exhibitions and symposia (see Blueprint 336, September/October 2014). But there is also a growing body of designers and studios using experimentation and exploration across disciplines to create products and services that are bringing genuinely new and exciting dimensions to art, music, education and entertainment, or solve practical, everyday problems.

Fully realised projects range from the avant garde to the everyday. For the avant garde, the go-to innovator of the moment is Lauren Bowker, whose extraordinary couture creations come laced with chemically enhanced pigments that allow them to change colour according to environmental factors, from wind and light to heat or humidity. Bowker, via her studio and lab The Unseen, has brought her alchemical skills to bear on a fascinating array of projects, from testing the wind resistance of Formula 1 racing cars to assisting neurological research with her heatresponsive Swarovski helmet.

Psoriasis, from Tamsin van Essen's Medical Heirlooms, and a piece from her Erosion series, respectively. Van Essen's work as a ceramicist has been inspired by human disease and decay. As part of the Crafts Council's Parallel Practices initiative, she spent three months in the labs of Guy's Hospital, investigating muscle and cell development. Photo Credit: Tamsin Van Essen

For the everyday, you couldn't get much more practical than a jacket that helps commuters fight the risk of infection from flu-laden fellow travellers: this spring sees the launch of innovation consulting firm gravitytank's Germinator Transit Jacket - an antimicrobial fleece. It was developed as a speculative idea through in-house research just over a year ago and is now ready for pre-order (for this May), thanks to being snapped up by San Franciscan clothing company Betabrand.

One of a number of established American innovation consultancies, gravitytank appears to be unusual in prioritising its own research and development. And this is what marks out the most exciting practices in the field. They are led by curiosity, by the desire to answer questions that they find arresting, arising from the way we live today, the fascinating possibilities opening up in areas of science and technology, or from their own particular passions - just as artists and crafts practitioners do - rather than being driven by the kind of commercial, client-facing approach typical of the design industry at large.

Psoriasis, from Tamsin van Essen's Medical Heirlooms, and a piece from her Erosion series, respectively. Van Essen's work as a ceramicist has been inspired by human disease and decay. As part of the Crafts Council's Parallel Practices initiative, she spent three months in the labs of Guy's Hospital, investigating muscle and cell development. Photo Credit: Tamsin Van Essen

So, it is fitting that the Crafts Council is one of several leading UK arts institutions that has stepped forward to stake its claim on the movement. As far back as 2011, the Crafts Council hosted exhibitions which explored this fascinating territory, such as Lab Craft - Digital Adventures in Contemporary Craft, and The Power of Making (with the V&A). In November 2014, it launched the first of its biennial conferences dedicated to experimental, cross-disciplinary making, under the banner Make:Shift, accompanied by a weekend of workshops under the Make:Shift:Do heading. Annie Warburton, creative programmes director at the Crafts Council, says: 'In one way, I think [this movement] is new. In other ways I think it's always been happening. Makers have always been experimenting with processes and materials.' She points to Nineties' explorations of recycling and sustainability. But Warburton agrees that 'there's an acceleration of makers both innovating in their own practice and working across sectors -- such as biology and tech, medicine, engineering and architecture. Makers are facilitating and catalysing innovation because of the making skills they have in their hands. That's something 3D designers don't always possess.'

At a weekend Make:Shift:Do workshop, part of the Crafts Council Innovation Programme aimed at providing opportunities for cross-fertilisation between disciplines. Photo Credit: Annalisa Simonella

Make: Shift is part of the Crafts Council's Innovation Programme, intended to increase opportunities for craft makers to cross-fertilise with other disciplines. Another new strand is the Parallel Practices residencies, run in partnership with the Cultural Institute at King's College London, partnering makers with medical and scientific academics. Tamsin van Essen (see Incubators' profiles), a ceramicist whose vessels have long explored the aesthetics of decay and disease, has been working in the lab at Guy's Hospital with Professor Malcolm Logan and his team, looking at limb development and cell patterning, staining samples to examine different stages of growth to reveal exciting transformations as tissue structures are revealed. Her three-month immersion has given her 'a rich library of stuff to draw on'. Residencies of this length are a luxury, she says, in that 'you develop a relationship with the people you're working with. You're not hovering on the edges'. In turn, her models and casts helped to visualise, clarify and give three dimensions to processes that usually take place in a petri dish, arousing conversations and mutual insights along the way.

The Communication Quilt, designed to help children cope with a long stay in hospital, is being developed by recent graduate Josh Barnes, funded in a residency by Pervasive Media Studio. Photo Credit: Pervasive Media Studio

For any visual artist, time and opportunities for experimentation are vital. For those at the craft and art end, the journey of discovery is as important as the end product. But for the majority of designers, it's an uphill struggle to translate experimental output into viable products. This is where the UK's Design Council hopes to step in. Last December it launched its Spark initiative with an event at the Science Museum in London. The idea is to nurture and launch a new wave of British inventors with a £300,000 innovation fund and accelerator programme.

This spring, the Spark investment panel will announce a shortlist of 10 products from an expected 200 applicants. The 10 shortlisted teams or designers will receive a £15,000 investment sum, and go through a 20-week programme of mentoring and support, at the end of which three finalists will be handed processes and materials.' She points to Nineties' explorations of recycling and sustainability. But Warburton agrees that 'there's an acceleration of makers both innovating in their own practice and working across sectors - such as biology and tech, medicine, engineering and architecture. Makers are facilitating and catalysing innovation because of the making skills they have in their hands. That's something 3D designers don't always possess.'

Make:Shift is part of the Crafts Council's Innovation Programme, intended to increase opportunities for craft makers to cross-fertilise with other disciplines. Another new strand is the Parallel Practices residencies, run in partnership with the Cultural Institute at King's College London, partnering makers with medical and scientific academics. Tamsin van Essen (see Incubators' profiles), a ceramicist whose vessels have long explored the aesthetics of decay and disease, has been working in the lab at Guy's Hospital with Professor Malcolm Logan and his team, looking at limb development and cell patterning, staining samples to examine different stages of growth to reveal exciting transformations as tissue structures are revealed. Her three-month immersion has given her 'a rich library of stuff to draw on'.

Residencies of this length are a luxury, she says, in that 'you develop a relationship with the people you're working with. You're not hovering on the edges'. In turn, her models and casts helped to visualise, clarify and give three dimensions to processes that usually take place in a petri dish, arousing conversations and mutual insights along the way.

The Material Lab studio's premises are in Great Titchfield Street, London. Photo Credit: Pervasive Media Studio

For any visual artist, time and opportunities for experimentation are vital. For those at the craft and art end, the journey of discovery is as important as the end product. But for the majority of designers, it's an uphill struggle to translate experimental output into viable products. This is where the UK's Design Council hopes to step in. Last December it launched its Spark initiative with an event at the Science Museum in London. The idea is to nurture and launch a new wave of British inventors with a £300,000 innovation fund and accelerator programme. This spring, the Spark investment panel will announce a shortlist of 10 products from an expected 200 applicants.

The 10 shortlisted teams or designers will receive a £15,000 investment sum, and go through a 20-week programme of mentoring and support, at the end of which three finalists will be handed £50,000 to take their ideas to the next stage. The suggestion apparently came to the Design Council from an anonymous inventor, who felt that all the development money for innovation was going into digital technology and not enough into physical inventions. Spark programme lead Iria Lopez is keen to ensure that creative teams are given the expertise they need to ensure the success of products - ticking boxes for desirability, viability and feasibility. She agrees that the timing is spot on, given the upsurge in innovative and multidisciplinary making. One of the reasons why this trend is emerging now, she thinks, is because 'the world is becoming more and more complex and approaching such a high level of complexity requires many different perspectives. It requires a systemic approach. You need to understand all the components of the problem.'

For practitioners, one of the most compelling aspects of this new design movement is being able to work with a variety of professionals across a broad range of projects. Nowhere is this facilitated more effectively than at Bristol's Pervasive Media Studio, where engineers, coders, designers, writers, artists, dancers all share studio space, some hot-desking and some permanently based among the 40 desks within the Watershed arts centre (see Incubators' profiles, page 85). Tom Metcalfe, one of the resident designers/producers, says his experience there has proven that 'the more different the expertise and knowledge, the more interesting the output. That [range of potential disciplines] has not really been done anywhere else. Here, it's at the point where it's a given: of course we're going to work with people who are different from us; of course we'll be collaborating.'

'Reciprocal illumination' is the phrase Richard Sennett coined to illustrate the beneficial dynamics of collaborative work. The phrase was repeated by professor Roger Kneebone during his fascinating talk at the Make:Shift conference. As a top surgeon, Kneebone has been increasingly shocked by the lack of manual skills displayed by his otherwise highly educated surgery students, so he devised a programme of workshops with tailors, jewellers, ceramicists (experts in handling 'thin materials on the verge of collapse') and instrument-makers to illustrate how surgery is part science, part craft. The experience - for him and his students - has been transformational. He concludes: 'Cooperation is how best to experience difference. All parties gain from it.'

Practitioners:

Pervasive Media Studio
Bristol's flagship cultural and entertainment venue, the Watershed, has been setting the agenda for multidisciplinary creative collaborations since 2008, when it set up the Pervasive Media Studio to run programmes exploring digital and interactive media within the arts. The studio offers free desk space for a very eclectic community of creatives, from artists and musicians to scientists and pioneers of digital interactivity - including Blueprint Award for Design winner 2014, Chloe Meineck - as long as they are willing to share their skills, knowledge and enthusiasm according to the office ethos of 'professional interruptability'.

From the 40 desks within the Watershed's collaborative workspace, around 120 residents fall under the studio's umbrella, with a third permanently located there and others hot-desking or based in alternate making, office or teaching space. Since the launch of REACT, a programme that brings together practitioners and academics to explore and prototype new ideas, products and services, the collaborative pool has widened dramatically to include the universities of West of England, Bristol, Bath, Exeter and Cardiff. Residents meet daily in the studio or at Friday lunchtime talks and open collaboration sessions.

In this way, practitioners can supplement their own commercial activities with any number of collaborative and experimental initiatives alongside their peers.

The Pervasive Media Studio's project Shadowing in Bristol recorded and played back the shadows of those who passed underneath the city's lights. Photo Credit: Farrows Creative

Recent studio initiatives include Shadowing by Jonathan Chomko and Matthew Rosier, which 'gave memory' to Bristol's city lights, enabling them to record and play back the shadows of those who passed underneath (part of Playable City, another Watershed strand). Also in 2014, studio resident Laura Kriefman (aka Guerilla Dance Project) developed the performance Kicking the Mic, along with composer Lee Malcolm. Wearing a fully reactive LED dress while dancing, and incorporating feedback and manipulation of the sounds gathered while she was performing, Kriefman and Malcolm created a three-way conversation between the audience, the dancer and the environment.

Research and arts grants play a key part in supporting the programme. For example, the EPSRC funded the recent Being There project deploying cutting-edge robotics in public spaces to interact with passers-by and encourage people to meet and share ideas.

The studio also funds residencies, including a recent three-month one for Josh Barnes, a recently graduated 3D designer who is developing his Communication Quilt project. Designed to help alleviate the loneliness and boredom of children spending long stays in hospital, the Communication Quilt uses Augmented Reality (AR) technology to facilitate peer-to-peer communication. Each animal embroidered on the quilt can be linked to a friend or family member, who can leave messages via a smart device. Barnes recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to develop a specialist app for this project.

The Unseen
The Unseen is a 'materials exploration house', according to its founder Lauren Bowker, but it's something far more intriguing. From its shop in Somerset House - a white, classical room filled with antique desks, stuffed birds, ancient books and the scent of burning sage - The Unseen promotes an extra sensory but invisible connection with the material world around us.

Having studied fashion initially, Bowker was drawn to the world of chemical engineering and, with the help of Prof Raymond Oliver - head of interactive materials at Northumbria University - she has developed a range of chemically enhanced pigments that 'can sense the world around us', including the award-winning carbon emission-sensing PdCl2.

Lauren Bowker's The Unseen studio is producing more affordable goods, such as candles, that change colour according to heat, light or atmospheric shifts. Photo Credit: Lauren Bowker

Displayed in the shop are sculptural, feathered capes of black leather impregnated with atmospherically sensitive chemicals that make the leather change colour with shifts in environmental conditions.

Since launching the shop and a basement studio in Somerset House's Makerversity complex last year, Bowker has assisted with F1 racing technology - coating a car with atmospherically sensitive ink to reveal where wind impacts on the design when it is blasted in a wind tunnel. More recently, Bowker's team has created a decorative headpiece in collaboration with Swarovski, impregnating Swarovski crystals with heat-sensitive inks that react very differently according to the brain energy patterns of whoever is wearing it. This has led to a piece of research with King's College Neurology department to see what is causing these diverse reactions.

Future Everything
Future Everything calls itself an 'innovation lab for digital culture and an annual festival'. It began in Manchester in 1995 as an artist-led festival for exploring digital technology and has grown to become a cultural leader in the field, championing the role of grassroots innovation in the digital creative economy. Founder Drew Hemments is regularly despatched abroad to represent the British Council creative economy team, and recently launched a shared events and exchanges programme in Moscow under the Future Everything banner.

During the Future Everything festival weekend last year a pop-up city appeared in NOMA Manchester, which imagined aspects of a future city. These included a public realm investigation (Hello Lamp Post) of sentient street furniture. Photo Credit: Maddox media

Hemments and his team are now working with the UK's Met Office and international climate science groups to create better predictive 'climate services' to assist business and industry. Says Hemments: 'It's about what will be happening next summer or in 10 years' time. That matters for investment, for farming, for construction or forestry. We're the only non-science group in this project, bringing our expertise as artists and designers to areas that have massive social impacts.'

In March 2014, Future Everything helped set up Manchester as the third city in the world to create its own Smart Citizens - a bottom-up, open-source community - after Barcelona and Amsterdam. Using free sensors, via sponsor Intel, Mancunians have been trained to harvest data from their homes - primarily environmental data such as air composition, light intensity, sound levels and humidity - but with the potential to expand their reach across the Smart Citizen network and eventually tailor aspects of the programme to suit their own particular needs or those of their city.

Gravitytank
San Francisco-based Gravitytank is a veteran on the innovative making scene, at 14 years old. With offices now in San Francisco and Chicago, its team includes around 40 designers from across all disciplines, 15 researchers and 15 strategists, with backgrounds in everything from computer science through cognitive science to marketing. In addition to consulting work, it also combines its talent to solve real-world problems via product or service design.

Through in-house research it developed Straphanger antimicrobial commuter clothing, about to be launched by a San Franciscan clothing company. The firm has also attracted the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, winning its Records for Life contest seeking effective child immunisation for developing countries. Its solution, Pasteur, comprises an immunisation booklet with intuitive layout for tracking records, a booklet holder featuring the child's photo and educational cards. The prototype will soon be in use across nine countries.

Gravitytank has developed antimicrobial clothing for commuters, called Straphanger, which is about to be launched.

The team has also brought its design, strategic and user-centric focus to assist the launch of an innovative home-security product, Scout Alarm, a low-cost, highly responsive and tailorable monitor that provides real-time data to its customers via an app. Gravitytank has also spun out its own startup, SkillScout, to reinvent the hiring process for entry-level jobs.

Through an online platform that posts videos of both job description and applicants, SkillScout aims to cut out the blind alleys that so many employers and employees go through before locating the right work/worker.

Tamsin Van Essen
Ceramicist Tamsin van Essen is a multidisciplinary practitioner, with a growing following for her exquisite vessels, inspired by the biological processes of disease and decay.

Her first degree was in theoretical physics, but she then studied ceramics at Central Saint Martins, and then the RCA, attracting accolades for her Medical Heirlooms degree show and dissertation, 'Art and Science, what's the point?' She decided there is one, as she teaches on CSM's new art and science MA and runs workshops at Imperial College London. These are the brainchild of a dermatology professor in response to the current generation of students' typical lack of 3D tactile skills, thanks to an education based entirely on two-dimensional media: books and screens. Through exercises in drawing, sensing and feeling, and being asked to replicate skin conditions in clay, the workshops give them a deeper understanding of tissue behaviour and skin diseases.

Tamsin van Essen's worktable at King's College's Gordon Museum. The ceramicist is collaborating on the show The Making Enhanced, for this year's Collect exhibition, and for another event combining ceramics, choreography and architecture at the Siobhan Davies Centre later this year.

Van Essen has just completed a three-month residency under the Crafts Council Parallel Practices initiative, immersing herself in the Muscle Signalling labs at Guy's Hospital, working alongside scientists staining and examining tissues to identify cell and muscle transformations. Ceramic explorations arising from her experiences were shown on a table she had in King's College's Gordon Museum, facilitating conversations and insights with her medical cohorts.

She is also embarking on a collaborative initiative with crafts practitioners, historians and writers, to explore and mirror each others' approach to research and craft.

Material Lab
You could see it as a brilliant marketing initiative from its sponsor Johnson Tiles, but Material Lab has become a valuable resource for innovation and experimentation for the architecture and design community since it started nine years ago. There is a workshop at Johnson Tiles' HQ, but it's the standalone material library and studio space in central London's Great Titchfi eld Street that has become the main hub for creatives, clients and manufacturers to meet and devise solutions. Some of the biggest global surfacing brands have come on board as collaborators, including Dulux Trade, Formica Group, Karndean Design flooring, modulyss and Tektura.

Working across the spectrum - retail, commercial, residential and hospitality, as well as set design, artworks and installations - the Material Lab team acts as consultant and designer on a wide range of schemes and, in the past two years, has developed both its library of materials and it approach to material research.

The Johnson Tilessponsored Material Lab has become a valuable resource for innovation and experimentation in architecture and design.

It has focused on exhibiting and documenting young graduates and artisan surface designers (all accessible via its website full of useful content and videos), while sourcing new and innovative materials. The team recently developed the pop-up Roadshow Tour, taking its most exciting materials to major cities including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol and London.

It has hosted exhibitions in the studio showcasing British manufacturers, both artisan and established, and has become a strong presence at various design festivals, in the UK and Europe, supplying materials and hosting live making events.