LABoral sets in motion 'La trastienda', a project investigating new alternatives for the production of objects in design
The initiative is organised by El Último Grito and is being developed in collaboration with La Casa Encendida with the support of the Ministry of Culture. The first workshop/seminar will take place in Madrid, from 13th to 17th February, coinciding with ARCO
During this year 2012 LABoral will develop La trastienda [Back Shop] -a R&D&I project organised by El Último Grito- which will be run as an experimental research platform in the field of national design around questions such as what will be the object of the future and what will its relationship with the Internet be like. This initiative is supported by the collaboration of La Casa Encendida –an educational, promotional and dissemination centre of contemporary culture, dependent on Caja Madrid Social Work- and the support of the Ministry of Culture.
La trastienda is a new concept of a shop-workshop which conceives of design practice and the production of objects as an open and ongoing research process. The collection of objects produced by La trastienda has been designed to be the results from collaborative work by different multidisciplinary work groups, made up of designers, artists and developers who explore and reflect on the potential of online objects.
Framed within the design and digital fabrication line of work linked to fabLAB at the Centre of Art and Industrial Creation, this project’s first seminar-workshop will be held at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, between 13th and 17th February, coinciding with ARCO. The first working group, which has Víctor Viña as its leader, and with the participation of Chris Sugrue, Clara Boj and Diego Díaz from lalalab, Jacobo Alonso de Lucas and Jordi Canudas, aims to engage those people interested in the use of dialogue as a creative tool in the area of material culture creation. During the 15 hours of the seminar the participants, along with recognised designers and other professionals, will carry out research on the possibilities offered by the Internet for creating new ways of commercialisation and for generating open networks which foster cultural, technological and industrial research. In this way, the attendants will learn about the opportunities offered by digital fabrication technologies in order to create new formulas for the production and distribution of objects.
Seminars, workshops, SummerLAB and web platform
La trastienda will also include a second seminar-workshop, which will take place at LABoral, in which the participants will present their proposals for objects and will define the collection as a whole. Additionally, various practical workshops will be held at LABoral which look into the opportunities offered by the digital fabrication technologies for creating new formulas of object production and distribution. Similarly, this year’s edition of SummerLAB has been thought up as a meeting between designers and Fablabs who will investigate new alternatives in object production and distribution in design.
The objects designed as a result of this research project will be produced at LABoral’s fabLAB as an "objects/transactions collection". A catalogue/publication documenting the entire process will also be accessible on a web platform, which will host all the audiovisual material generated throughout the project and used for educational, promotional and research purposes.
THE CURATORS
El Último Grito researches into our relationships with objects and culture, exploring them in a post-disciplinary way through a wide variety of projects which range from industrial product design to installation in public spaces. They teach at the Royal College of Art, Kingston University and Goldsmiths College (London).
MAIN COLLABORATORS
Víctor Viña combines design research, digital crafts, technological tool creation and the social implications of open networks and tools. He has developed teaching and research work at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering and the Institute of Advanced Architecture in Catalonia.
David Pello is the technical coordinator of fabLAB at LABoral. Programmer and designer of electronic prototypes. He has collaborated in free software and hardware projects, distributed networks and interactive installations. He has worked with Hactivist, hackitecktura.net and Derivart, among others, on various projects.
