The Impact! Exhibition (now closed) at the Royal College of Art generated numerous mentions of the Fair Tracing project-inspired exhibit “Does It Smell Like Fair Trade?” in the media. Some are included below (with specific related text in italics):
‘Sound separator’ among gadgets unveiled at UK show
Martha Linden and Ben Winstanley, AFP
Wednesday, 17th March 2010
A futuristic vision of gadgets that can home in on birdsong in the inner city, cameras that capture parallel universes and even bags of coffee which change colour as they gather air miles was unveiled today as part of a new science and design show.
The ideas were put forward among 16 projects mounted in the Impact! exhibition bringing together Royal College of Art graduate designers working with scientists and other academic specialists throughout the UK…
Other exhibits on show included the Fair Tracing project where researchers have examined the use of digital technology to track and trace products such as coffee and wine from the producer to the supermarket shelves.
Apurba Kundu, of Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, said the design project put forward a futuristic vision of products with a “living skin” translating consumer information into patterns, smells or textures.
He said: “The skin would change like fruit and you would get that instant feed-back in the way that you get from melons or tomatoes.”
The exhibition is the first of its kind between the funding agency for science and engineering, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and the RCA…
Anthony Dunne, head of design interactions at the RCA, said the show was a collaboration between “very creative people and very creative scientists”.
He said: “We hope that it will show how designers can participate in science research, not just by focusing on the marketing end of things but by being involved in the conceptual research side.”
Helen Bailey, of the EPSRC and project manager for the exhibition, said she hoped it would attract a new audience and communicate to people the value, importance and excitement of current scientific research.
See full article at: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100317/business/sound-separator-among-gadgets-unveiled-at-uk-show
and
Sound separator among show gadgets (UKPA)
A futuristic vision of gadgets that can home in on birdsong in the inner city, cameras that capture parallel universes and even bags of coffee which change colour as they gather air miles has been unveiled as part of a new science and design show.
The ideas were put forward amongst 16 projects mounted in the Impact! exhibition bringing together Royal College of Art (RCA) graduate designers working with scientists and other academic specialists throughout the UK…
Other exhibits on show included the Fair Tracing project where researchers have examined the use of digital technology to track and trace products such as coffee and wine from the producer to the supermarket shelves.
Entrance to the exhibition is free and open to the public until March 21 from 11am to 5.30pm at the RCA, Kensington Gore, London.
Copyright © 2010 The Press Association. All rights reserved. See full article at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5j0GDpG-2HP7sT0AW-cGnBhC4GEOg
and
Lie detector to fight smugglers and terrorists
WalesOnline.co.uk
…The system will be shown this week at the Impact! exhibition at the Royal College of Art in London, which runs until Sunday.
The exhibition will visualise the potential impact of scientific developments from the across the UK and examine how they might affect how we live in a future Britain.
Among the gadgets on show will be machines that can home in on birdsong amid the din of the inner city, a scheme to combine wind, wave and sun energy in one energy converter, and even bags of coffee which use digital technology to change the packaging’s colour as they gather air miles.
See full article at: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/cardiffonline/cardiff-news/2010/03/17/lie-detector-to-fight-smugglers-and-terrorists-91466-26049221/
and
Fair Trade at your fingertips
19 March 2010 Royal Holloway, University of London
A radical project, managed by Dr Dorothea Kleine, of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, which would enable shoppers to access the ethical credentials of products at their fingertips, has been selected from thousands of projects to be showcased at a special exhibition.
The interdisciplinary ‘Fair Tracing’ Project is one of 16 projects from Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) grants to be included in the EPSRC Impact! Exhibition, taking place at the Royal College of Art, London, between March 16 and March 21.
The Fair Tracing concept brought together researchers from Royal Holloway, Sheffield Hallam University, Anglia Ruskin University and Oxford Internet Institute, who envisioned a digital tagging system that could provide the answers to the dilemmas faced by shoppers about where the goods they are buying come from and how much of their money ends up with the producer.
The idea is that simply by pointing your mobile at the normal barcode at the back of a product, modern smartphones can read the code, link to the internet and connect to information covering every stage of the chain linking the producer of the goods right through to the consumer – enabling people to make more informed decisions on what they are purchasing.
Engineering and physical sciences research has huge impact on the economy, on public policy, on culture, and on our everyday lives but it often goes unnoticed by the general public. To communicate the impact of the research EPSRC fund, the Research Council is working with NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and the Department of Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art (RCA), to co-ordinate an exhibition of original design proposals which explore the relationship between science and society, looking at the different types of impact engineering and the physical sciences have on the world.
In preparation for the exhibition, designers worked with the scientists from each project to develop an object reflecting on future impacts of technology. “We really enjoyed working with our designer, Nicolas Myers,” says Dr Kleine, “We are an action research project so we had a good idea what we wanted the technology to do. Nicolas came at it from a very different angle and his exhibit imagines how we can do away with even the mobile phone screen and embed information directly in the surface of the object. That really pushes beyond what is currently feasible and maybe even desirable. But it sure generates debate around the exhibit and our project. It speaks to a different audience than the hardcore ethical shoppers we have mostly been working with.”
Source: http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=70979&CultureCode=en
Unfortunately, the Impact! Exhibition is now closed, but more posts will be put up shortly giving more details and images about the Fair Tracing project design exhibit “Smells Like Fair Trade”.
The Impact! Exhibition catalogue (see previous post) included the following description of Nicolas Myers’ design – “Does It Smell Like Fair Trade?” – inspired by the Fair Tracing project:
