Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects

Moma's expansive exhibit about how we communicate with objects is like show and tell for tech-savvy geeks. Reactions to the many ways of grasping technology's role in redefining communication will be very personal. What comes across as impenetrable noise to one viewer will appear as illumination to another. The pieces on display encompass art, design, and scientific experimentation, all easily bleeding into one another. Visual metaphors for interpreting the world appear alongside technological solutions to problems we never knew existed (like the elevator shoes designed to let everybody look each other squarely in the eye.) Humor figures prominently and is a new generation's response to a dated view of machines once defined in popular culture by dystopian visions like 2001's H.A.L. and Orwell's Big Brother. Among my favorite pieces were the hard drive that rears back on its hind legs to avoid coffee spills, the "talk to yourself hat", and the angry garbage disposal. The multiple layers at play is suggested by the description for a piece that renders 2-d objects from the game Second Life into three dimensions: "Paper representations of digital representations of real objects." Yes, it's come to this and yes, you should go.