Hand and Machine
In common with many European cities, Monday is closing day for several high profile galleries and museums in Oslo and we’d been grateful for the list of “Places to go on Monday” given to us by the Visitors Centre. Today, Sunday, would be our last chance to see one of the galleries on our “must see” list, and so we jumped on the tram and made a beeline there first thing.
The National Museum exactly my kind of place! This new construction by the Aker Brygge wharf is the Norwegian equivalent to the Victoria and Albert museum in London, presenting art, architecture and design in a lively and contemporary style.
Our Oslo passes gave us free entry and having hung our coats up - as we do! - we headed to the top floor to work our way down.
We stepped into an exhibition with the title “Hand and Machine” and for a few minutes stood bewildered. Not only did there appear to be a weird collection of things here and there, the floor was printed with large scale photographs, there were quite a few video screens and it seemed, very little explanation.
We had come in half way through, which didn’t help. So, we went to find the beginning and all became clear. Had we taken the time to read the website first, it would have made life easier, but of course, we’d been on a cultural whirlwind so far!
As always, I’m as interested in the way the information is displayed in such an exhibition and once I’d realised that the step ladders and wooden crates were mere staging accessories, then I settled comfortably into the groove and began to enjoy the show.
It really was a fascinating exhibition. Having just had first hand experience of architect’s drawings at home, surely drawn on computer using a CAD programme, but printed onto large sheets of paper, I could appreciate the benefits of some of these newer ways of presenting a design to clients. I always struggle to envisage a 2D plan in three dimensions, find it almost impossible to picture what some of our architect’s ideas might look like in real life and find scale and proportion very tricky indeed.
So viewing some of these concepts presented on screens, propped up on stepladders or on top of a trolley, proved to be really interesting.
The aesthetics of the design were something I’d not considered. I think of architectural plans as blueprints possibly including a model for larger projects, built from card to scale. When we built our house, I made such a model which still sits on our bookcase. But such things are old hat now, replaced with designs on screens.
The ease of sharing such plans on social media was considered, as was the time-saving ability to continually update and refine ideas.
Thinking that a new generation of architects will require a totally different skill set, I wondered how this might affect the outcomes. Might the limitations of software (and the user’s ability to work with it) limit the ingenuity of the original concept?
We sat and watched for a while, as nine screens showed super-quick editing processes using Photoshop. My Hero enjoyed watching the transformation of a Barber’s shop, middle left, whilst I watched the changing appearance of the block of flats, centre of the bottom row, except my eye kept being drawn to the colour of the store design above it. We’re both Photoshop users but could only sit back and marvel at the “ease” with which colours, textures and materials were changed. All speeded up on the film loop of course, but nevertheless…
We’d reached the end of the exhibit and cast our eye over the hall, agreeing that it had been really interesting to see and a great start to our visit here.
There’s a page on the Museum website about it all and a 3D walk around too. (Well, yes, of course there is!)
Stepping out of the gallery, we found ourselves in the cafe where one or two chairs caught our attention. Resisting the temptation to take a break now, we moved right along to the show which had caught my eye immediately, even though neither of us had heard of the artist. But “Every atom is colour” ? That was a sure fire win for me.
I’ll share some thoughts in my next post.
