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IOHANNA NICENBOIM PORTFOLIO 2015
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ABOUT .7 PROJECTS .9
OBJECTS OF RESEARCH .11 DATA DOMESTICATION .17 DEALING WITH .21 RETUNE .25 CONTEMPORARY PROPHECIES .29 BREAD LAB .31 FORM FOLLOWS DATA .37 OBJECTOLOGY .41 MUSIC MAKERS .47 LETTERS FROM THE FIELD .51 HIGH-RISK/ LOW-TECH .55 REFOUND .59 LIFE: A USER’S MANUAL .63 EINSTEIN’S MASTERPIECE .65 ISRAEL MUSEUM RENOVATIONS .67
CONTACT .69
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ABOUT
Iohanna Nicenboim (MA) is a designer and researcher, focused on creating meaningful interactions with emerging technologies in our daily lives.
Holding a Master in New Media from the University of the Arts in Berlin, and a Bachelor in Industrial Design from Bezalel Academy in Israel, her practice has developed in different scales and formats – including food, curation and speculative design. For the last years, she has worked in projects which overlap design, science and data, developing a critical approach within technology. Her recent work is concerned with networked devices and the social and ethical impact of the Internet of Things. She investigates what would be our role in the new connected houses and weather we are becoming the objects of the systems we have created. In this way, she encourages a reflection on the current models of the Internet and the use of data in our daily lives.
iohanna.com
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PROJECTS
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OBJECTS OF RESEARCH IOT, RESEARCH, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, UDK 2015
The MA thesis focuses on tools for addressing the Internet of Things (IoT) in a critical way. Around the question: Who is the object in the Internet of Things?, I created four artifacts, which reveal some of the challenges we might face in adopting this technology. As the Internet of Things has the potential to deeply influence every aspect of our lives, it can also impact on the way we perceive objects, as well as ourselves. Thanks to their connectivity, objects are expected to become more autonomous – adjusting to complex situations and even anticipating our needs or acting on our behalf. In fact, from the perspective of the information imprint, objects are already becoming indistinguishable from humans. What are the implications of these changes, and what is our new role in these systems? Looking at the current trends in technology, where we quantified ourselves, as well as the models we use for consuming digital content, this project raises the question whether we will be the actual objects of the Internet of Things. With four fictional appliances, I explore the scenario in which objects could manipulate information and conduct research on us. From this scenario, I extract tree paradigms: the house as a lab, objects as services, and humans as objects.
http://objects-of-research.iohanna.com/
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DATA DOMESTICATION MEASURING INSTRUMENTS, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, UDK 2014
The project explores how to create meaningful interactions in the adoption of environmental sensors in the domestic environment. In contrast to computers, humans are not good at remembering numbers, but rather very good interpreting vital signs. Therefore, this project’s aim is to create a more intuitive and personal interpretation of data. Looking back at nature, and especially how animals were used as measuring systems in the past, I propose a series of petmeasuring-devices: an Air-quality Birdcage, a Water-quality Aquarium and a Noiselevel Leash. The pet-devices have animal behaviors and qualities, but the pets are not there anymore, and what remains is just their container. In this way, the project raises questions about the relationship we have with animals and the future of pets in the urban space. In opposition to common electronic devices, the pet-sensors have a calm/peripheral behavior in normal conditions. Meaning, they perform independently in the house. Once something changes, they react to it, changing their habits. In order to notice these changes, the user needs to know them very well. This last, allows the user to develop a close relationship to the device.
http://iohanna.com/Data-Domestication/
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DEALING WITH LEGACY, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, UDK 2014
The project explores the relationship and contradictions we have with old devices and their afterlife. As innovation increases, the lifespan of mobile phones gets shorter every year. At this pace, the “new” becomes “old” and is forgotten very quickly. This phenomenon is clearly evident in our relationship with mobile phones. Although we develop a personal connection with these devices, we forget about them easily once we get a new one. However, it is interesting that most people keep their old unused mobile phones at home. Some of the reasons for it are that many of our memories are stored in them, as well as a lack of information on recycling procedures and the safety of the remaining data. Thus, we aim to raise awareness in the way we discard electronics and at the same time, help people get rid of their phones in an ecological and data-safe way. By adding a ritualistic and performative aspect to that particular moment, we transform it into a cultural and psychological process. According to the diverse scenarios – when the phone is stolen, broken or replaced for a new one – we propose three different rituals, which are based on grieving practices from different cultures.
http://iohanna.com/dealing-with/
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RETUNE ART, TECHNOLOGY, CURATION, CONFERENCE
2014 I was part of the organization team of Retune Conference 2014. The conference, which is directed by Julian Adenauer, gathers together international thinkers and practitioners in the fields of art, design, and technology. Presenting talks and workshops, the conference seeks to explore, shape, and critically question the future of living, working, and expressing with technology. The year’s theme was ‘Inside the Mirror.’ Mirrors allow us to look at the world and ourselves from the outside, enable us to see things otherwise hidden. Giving us the chance to learn something about us and our environment. Today’s mirrors are not made of glass and metal but from silicon. The digital world is like a mirror-world, reflecting events, people, connections and places. Our behavior is being documented by countless data, social network activities, photos, videos and biometric data. Personal and global trends, affectations and reluctances can be analyzed. It is easy to fall in love with the wonderland in the mirror and our virtual self that is easy to reshape. Reflections can be distorted, filtered or blurred without us noticing. It looks so familiar but is yet not the same. Finding out more about the mirror is hard because it keeps distracting us with its reflections. It evades observation, showing something else instead of revealing truth about itself and hiding what lies behind. And in the end what the mirror shows and what we see in it is not necessarily the same. How do these reflections change us? How does technology reflect back on us? How is the reflection reflected in our behavior? How does art reflect these developments?
http://retune.de/2014/
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CONTEMPORARY PROPHECIES FOOD, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, DATA 2014
Contemporary Prophecies is a street food stand, offering handmade fortune cookies that contain statistics inside. The project explores the thin line between predictions and prophecies and to which extent it is possible to separate both. Furthermore, it raises questions about the role that statistics have in our society and the way we relate to quantitative data as an unquestionable truth. The cookies and the messages are produced on site, with 5 different flavors corresponding with the type of message: coffee for work, chilly-ginger for love, almond for family, lemon for health and chocolate for life. The project was developed in collaboration with Alisa Goikhman and presented at the Public Design Festival at the Milan Design Week on April 2014.
http://www.publicdesignfestival.org/
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BREAD LAB FOOD, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, DATA
2012 Bread Lab was a food installation showing a “population of bread” for the 48 Hours Neukölln Festival, 2012. The neighborhood of Neukölln is known for its diversity in population as well as its bad economic situation. The installation stressed the diversity and the minorities living in the area promoting the cultural differences. Bread is one of the oldest practices in the history of humanity and one of the foods that all the different Western cultures share. Bread has a high symbolic importance and it has been constantly used as a metaphor for basic necessities and living conditions in general. The shape and way of making bread varies from culture to culture. However, because of the industrialized processes, over the years we have been losing our cultural identities to become one global culture, getting to a standard recipe of bread that is efficient, cheap and predictable. The installation brought up the notion of how industrialization in food production tends to make everything look and taste similar, blurring the differences and also the identity. In this process of industrialization, places where the food is produced look nowadays more like laboratories than kitchens. The piece showed 200 unique breads generated by introducing the ingredients of bread recipes in R, an open source program for statistical analysis. The program produced 200 combinations of ingredients distributed as a statistical population. In this way, I not only created a unique piece of bread every time but I also allowed some breads whose ingredients were on the edge of the population.
http://iohanna.com/Bread-Lab/
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FORM FOLLOWS DATA DATA VISUALIZATION, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY 2009
Form Follows Data explored the formal language of personal statistic data embedded in everyday objects. The data sources used were based on my body, my habits and my environment. During a couple of months, I have documented my life in different ways. With that numerical data, I created different objects that expand the definition of contemporary information graphics. The data-based objects include a coffee mug with a topographic map to represent the amount of coffee that I have consume every morning for a week; a set of plates with a stylized pie chart as a visualization of a blood test I did; and a set of glasses shaped as a column graph. The project was exhibited in 2011 at Future Everything Exhibition in the UK and was featured in the book Data Flow 2.
http://iohanna.com/Form-Follows-Data/
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OBJECTOLOGY GENERATIVE DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY 2010
“We are lacking a discipline, perhaps an ‘objectology,’ or an ‘object ethology,’ which allows us to analyse and systematise objects and to formulate the rules and codes of their behaviour ... a discipline which recovers and updates the interrupted discourse of material culture, in crisis since the world of objects was taken over by the world of products and the world of consumption.” Marco Susani, 1992 “Objectology” was my Bachelor’s final project. The research explored the reciprocal relationship between science and design examining the impact of computerized technologies on design in the contemporary world. I used techniques of generative design but chose manipulations which express values related to the evolution and history of the products. Objects and forms were examined within a historic, biologic, genetic and perceptual approach. The study raised questions about the past and future of the objects and thus added a fourth dimension to three-dimensional shapes: the dimension of time. The project examined the transitions and superpositions created between forms, both between different icons in the history of a certain object, and between different objects. Furthermore, it showed that these intermediate states reveal forms which exist from a conceptual point of view, but have not yet been expressed visually. The products of this study were forms which remained in the virtual world in which they were created; they were forms which represent the object as an abstract concept. Gray forms - similar to the display of models in three dimensional softwareraised the question of whether the use of computerized tools in design was not only related to the invention of a tool, but specially to the development of a new paradigm.
http://issuu.com/iohipocket/docs/objectology
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MUSIC MAKERS DESIGN, MUSIC, TECHNOLOGY, ART, CURATION
2012 MusicMakers was organized and hosted by createdigitalmusic in colaboration with our group Platform and SemiDomesticated The idea of the event was to bring together design, art, DIY, and music in the form of a collaborative party and creative exhibition. MusicMakers was a gathering place for people who make things that make noise, who hack, modify, and construct their own tools and instruments for performance, and who make objects, fashion, and art inspired by music and sound. In an age when music threatens to become an intangible commodity, these are artists making it physical and unique. They move from consumption to creation and invention. Through hands-on objects, demos and collaborative jams, live performance, DJs and dancing, MusicMakers is a party celebrating music made by the maker revolution. The event was born in 2007 in Brooklyn at Etsy Labs, a collaboration between Create Digital Music, Etsy, and Make Magazine, organized by CDM’s Peter Kirn. That event grew to a series of events dubbed Handmade Music in NYC and worldwide.
http://musicmake.rs/
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LETTERS FROM THE FIELD ART, CURATION, EXHIBITION DESIGN
2012 Letters from the Field was a group exhibition and publication that I curated together with other eight collaborators, as part of the Node Center for Curatorial Studies 2012 summer program. We conceptualized the whole exhibition as a book, and as the act of writing. We chose to present the preface of the book and its chapter titles to the artists as a starting point, and for each chapter a series of questions. In this way, we collected responses from the artists in various formats and responded to them by writing the chapter’s essays. These elements gradually constructed the contents of the book and are represented in the exhibition space. Functioning as a conceptual framework to the exhibition, we also created a publication that contains artists’ contributions and essays by curators in a series of eight chapters. The book was presented in a malleable format that can be edited by the viewer, with a chapter left partially blank for additional responses. These assembled elements attempt to reveal the process of the production of ideas and critical methodologies.
http://www.nodecenter.org/
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HIGH-RISK/ LOW-TECH DESIGN, CURATION, EXHIBITION DESIGN, DMY
2012 The curation and design of the exhibition was a collaboration between our group PLATform and Semidomesticated. The show was presented at The Wye, Berlin as part of DMY 2012. The exhibition explores how at times of financial and political crisis, young and independent designers make use of their creativity to conceive alternative ways of working, living and consuming. By developing new social networks and ways of collaborating, by reusing and transforming everyday objects into valuable design pieces and by constructing original practices, designers can propose new ways of appreciating and interacting with objects.
http://platform.agoracollective.org/
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REFOUND DESIGN, CURATION, EXHIBITION DESIGN
2012 REFOUND was the first exhibition of the group I co-founded, PLATform. For this time, in collaboration with Agora Collective, we chose to combine new pieces of contemporary design with antique furniture exploring the meeting points between the old and the new. Re-contextualization of the past is a recurring path in design. But nowadays and specially in Berlin, the phenomenon in which new forms retain elements from the past, it became not just a visual language, but a state of mind that promotes alternative ways of appreciating objects. With this as a main point of inspiration, we initiated the exhibition that features pieces from now and yore and the dialogues between them. Stemming from the idea that each piece of furniture has a story to tell, the exhibition brings forth an emotional response between the pieces exhibited and the visitors.
http://platform.agoracollective.org/
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LIFE: A USER’S MANUAL EXHIBITION DESIGN, VISUAL COMMUNICATION
2011 I worked in the design of the exhibition Life: A User’s Manual as part of the studio IDBruno. The concept of the exhibition, curated by Aya Miron (curator) and Smadar Gafni (associate curator) was instructions: guidelines or regulations, assembly kits, recipes for success, etc. The works in the exhibition address the culture of “Do It Yourself” and the role of instructions and regulations in our daily life but in most of the works, instructions are subverted, emphasizing the absurdity and internal contradictions often found in reality.
http://www.imj.org.il/
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EINSTEIN’S MASTERPIECE EXHIBITION DESIGN, VISUAL COMMUNICATION
2011 I worked in the design of this exhibition, which was part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. For the first time, the 46 pages handwritten by Einstein of the “General Theory of Relativity” had been presented in public. The challenge in this exhibition was to preserve the documents and prevent the paper and ink from decaying. In order to do that, we designed a specially darkened room, with carefully controlled humidity and temperature and displayed each page in a different compartment. The idea was to create a magical atmosphere using the big table that was already in the room, placing one page after another in separate boxes. The design brief called for an atmosphere of awe and wonder, conveying a feeling of being exposed to the holy-grail of modern physics, considered by some to be “the most important scientific manuscript of all times”.
http://www.imj.org.il/
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THE ISRAEL MUSEUM RENOVATION ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY
2010 I worked as a project manager and designer of the Israel Museum’s renovation, as part of IDBruno Studio. The project included the repositioning of existing sculptures and archeological elements, the positioning of recently acquired new sculptures and the redesign of many sculpture pedestals in the public grounds of the museum. The project demanded a close work with the curatorial team, carefully matching content, concept and composition. As part of the renovations, I worked also with the sculptor Dror Eshed in the renovation of the sculpture Profil, from Pablo Picasso. The sculpture was built in 1967 by the Norway artist, Karl Nshiar and was in a very bad condition. So the renovation process actually was to create a new sculpture that replaces the old and becomes the original. The process was done by scanning the 5 meter high sculpture, building a 3D model and making a wooden casting mold. The use of new technologies raised questions about at what extent we had to preserve the original form, or if we could fix the mistakes that happened in the original sculpture casting.
http://www.imj.org.il/
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CONTACT
Iohanna Nicenboim +49 17661384978 Berlin, Neukรถlln iohanna.nicenboim@gmail.com IOHANNA.COM
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