Icon experiment schedule

In a space designed by architects FAT, the icon experiment presents work from some of the world’s most thought-provoking designers. This is the antidote to home shows, with a daily schedule of performances, interaction design, animation and special projects, from Saturday 3 May to Sunday 11 May.

Click here to download the programme.

Studio Glithero is exhibiting the Big Dipper installation. Resembling a chandelier, a ceiling-mounted machine rotates and repeatedly dips wick frames into a pool of wax, gradually forming 20 wax candelabras. The studio is also showing giant black chandeliers and documentation of a previous performance, Burn Burn Burn. Studio Glithero was co-founded by Sarah Van Gameren and Tim Simpson, who studied together at London’s RCA.

Ted Noten has created a mini funfair with his Mr Claw machine. Mr Claw has 1kg silver bars that you can try and grab, but if you don’t manage there are consolation prizes designed by Noten. The Amsterdam-based designer is the rebel of the jewellery world, creating challenging pieces that combine unexpected elements such as sliced up Mercedes-Benz cars, dead mice and pearls.

Albin Karlsson is showing a clock that tells the time with dripping glue. A machine is attached to the ceiling that drops one gram of hot glue every minute and rotates once an hour, gradually forming a sculpture beneath it. The Swedish designer creates clocks that focus on time’s passage rather than the time itself.

WOW is showing Deco Boco, a wall-based work that combines real elements with video projection to create unexpected happenings. A simple motion graphic, +UNDER, is also being projected onto the wall. Japan’s WOW studio produces video installations mixing high technology and simple, intuitive interactivity, such as the 2007 piece Light Rain. Visitors could see drops of virtual water bounce off their shadows and splash in pixellated puddles.

Simon Heijdens is presenting his poetic Lightweeds project. Plants projected onto the wall spread and grow depending on the weather and how many people walk past them. The Dutch designer is known for his delicately constructed interactive works such as Tree, a giant outdoor projection of a tree that sways in the wind and sheds leaves that swirl around the feet of passing pedestrians.

Wieki Somers is showing her Chinese Stools, inspired by objects she saw while walking around Beijing. She has recast wooden stools in aluminium as an ode to their makers, burning the original objects away in the process. Somers puts experiments with materials at the forefront of her practice, and previous works include a muffin-shaped stool created by a chemical reaction and furniture that looks like it’s come out of the freezer.

Tuesday 6 May 11am

Stuart Haygarth is painstakingly threading together hundreds of pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses to create a large-scale chandelier. Haygarth likes to collect objects from junk shops, streets and beaches and use them as his raw material. He rose to prominence in 2005 with the Millennium chandelier, made from exploded party poppers picked off London’s streets on 1 January 2000.

Wednesday 7 May 11am

Martino Gamper is taking a saw to a classic design piece and re-appropriating it in his own style. Italian-born Gamper is the alchemist of the design world, and gained notoriety last year for his 100 chairs in 100 days project, for which he arranged different parts of found chairs to create 100 surprising hybrids.

Thursday 8 May 11am

Julia Lohmann is setting up a workshop using kelp to create lights, and you can follow the whole design process from raw material to finished product. Lohmann won media attention for her 2004 Cow Bench, a seat in the shape of a cow’s torso, covered in the hide of a single animal. She has also made lights from sheep’s stomachs and brooches cast from baby mice.

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