Last week I visited “Decode – Digital design sensations”, at the V&A in London. Decode showcases the latest developments in digital interactive design, and focused on three themes. Coding, which explored how computer code can be used to create great pieces of conceptual design; interactivity, that looked at work that responded to physical presence, and Network charts or reworks that visualizes stats from its surroundings.

The exhibits were all very conceptual in their approach and they all tried to interact with their surroundings or people in different ways, and this is why I think it was such a great show and why everyone there was enjoying it. Families were creating 3 second video spots for the video grid by Ross Philips, Children were throwing their arms and legs about in front of a canvas to create their own art on Mehmet Aktens Body paint. There were even some of the more senior visitors looking slightly nervous about the amount of data traces that can be pulled from the real world.

There were a couple of pieces of work that really stood out for me. Daniel Rozin’s Weave Mirror. Since seeing this I’ve had a quick look at other work by Rozin and there’s a couple of other great pieces, the mirror’s mirror and the snow mirror are worth a look if you haven’t already seen them, both are his website.

Another piece of work that I was really impressed with was Simon Heijdens “Tree” just because of how simple but great the idea was, plus it had the benefit of looking brilliant. The digital tree reacted to the weather conditions outside, so would blow in the wind. The tree would also shed its leaves which were projected onto the floor and then the users could kick through.

The show was great, I enjoyed reading about all the different projects at the exhibition and seeing how digital design is slowly but strongly expanding from screens and into the physical world. It was also refreshing to see that this wasn’t another geeky digital exhibition, its audience was wide spread the world was being enjoyed by everyone. If you get chance I would recommend you get yourself there, but be quick it’s only on till the 11th of April.

Here are the rest of the photos from my trip to Decode, on our Flickr account.