tobias

Tobias Wong’s website

The artist/designer was featured in an NPR story recently:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5548745

In the blurb about the audio story, he is referred to as an “industrial designer” and an “artist” and the short description of him at his website suggests that he is blurring the lines between design and art.  One press clipping suggests he is using design as his medium.  But Dewey would say that we need to look at the complete package rather than trying to separate out elements.

I think there’s a bit of culture jamming going on here, too, particularly the piece called this is a lamp, which turns a Phillipe Starke Bubble Club Chair into a lamp.  He invokes the name of Marcel Duchamp, who famously signed a urinal, hung it upside down on a gallery wall and called it a fountain.  Wong calls the chair READYDESIGNED because it is the famous chair that makes the piece work.

His piece called stoop is a redesigned entry step into a doorway with pebbles that cause shifting, particularly–as he points out–for those with high heels: http://www.brokenoff.com/stoop.html