Currently on view in NYC: Desired Sync: Global Crisis & Design ver.1.5

If you're in New York City these days, make sure to check out the exhibition Desired Sync: Global Crisis & Design ver.1.5. Organized by the Korean Cultural Service New York and presented by the Institute of Multidisciplinarity for Art, Architecture and Design (I:M),  Desired Sync is the second of a series of exhibitions honorable selected from the official ‘2012 Call for Artists’ program organized by the Korean Cultural Service NY.

The exhibition enlists twenty-two New York-based artists and designers of I:M and is running through Friday, June 15, 2012 at Gallery Korea of the Korean Cultural Service NY (map).

Desired Sync features works of designers from various professions: architects, landscape architects, interior designers, fashion designers, graphic designers, visual artists, interactive media artists, and it offers fourteen interdisciplinary projects, including one collaborating project by thirteen designers, envisioning people’s desire to overcome various crises confronting current events: Environmental crisis, energy crisis, economical and financial crisis, housing crisis etc. These projects as a collection of ideas and provocations aim to create a network of idea exchange and new models of interactive, synergistic thinking beyond the initial multiplicities of profession.

Exhibition commissioner and curator, Changhak Choi, architect and founding director of I:M, indicates that Desired Sync is an experiment of people’s desire and efforts to resolve current global concerns, which then would be able to surmount when social systems, public realm and design professionals are synchronized together. K-Chan Zoh, architect and co-curator of the exhibition, said that each work offers a unique perspective on issues of global crisis and furthers debates on it with a profound insight.

Jeeyong An and Sang Hwa Lee of Manifesto Architecture present the "Bike Hanger" project, a sustainable re-interpretation of the traditional bike rack typology, in an abandoned urban plot. Taewook Cha of Supermass Studio expounds landscape design tactics in "Mapping the Crisis: Perception & Reality" derived from local ecological and socio-cultural issues. Yuyeon Cho’s "Pitcairn Language" reveals a process book project which preserves a native language of a little-known tribe in New Zealand that is gradually disappearing due to introduction of English. Changhak Choi of Xenogenesis revisits a temporary residential project to provide new housing design paradigm between home ownership and economic crisis in high density city of Manhattan in "Reciprocal Architecture II".

Gahee Ha’s "Flower for Old Woman" discovers losing humanities, apathy and anonymity in the city. Hwayong Jung presents an interactive kinetic object "Voyage", exploring environmental issue in the contemporary city. Dongil Kim and Seojoo Lee’s "Less House" experiment with a new housing type to investigate the relationship between land, housing, infrastructures, urban form with respect to the nature. Jiwon Park offers "1/2 Project", a social venture that aims to help consumers perception of giving to charity, and also proposes a new way of communication with visually handicapped person in "Please Touch". Sue Gyeong Syn offers solace to the present generation living in the sluggish development of mankind caused by the suppressed freedom of dreams in an interactive media project "Immortal Dreams 2". Hangman Zo and Jiyoung Seo of TAAL address the unforeseen future by redesigning nuclear shelters in "Fear40-D.I.Y. Fallout Shelter", "Fear4,000,000-Five Star Fallout Shelter".

The exhibition furthermore features "6+13+21", a collaborative pavilion project experimenting the six crises which is the expressive result of 3 month interdisciplinary discussion of the 13 designers and artists. A creative director Hangman Zo and a project coordinator Dongil Kim explain the meaning of the collaboration project. “The work presented by young design professionals, who are sensitive to their own identity as well as painful social issues, is not only a result of significant research on fundamental inquiries of the human nature with facing matter of crises squarely what we are confronting these days but also worthy achievement of full-time employed designers beyond the boundary between the professions and limitation of time and space through the interdisciplinary collaboration.”

I:M is an independent non-profit organization that promotes advanced interaction in art, architecture, design, technology and other related disciplines in New York City. Founded in 2011, I:M is dedicated to the speculative research and presentation of contemporary design practice, socio-cultural issues, as well as to identify emerging talents in arts and diverse design disciplines.