The first V&A museum outside of London opens this week in the city of Shenzhen, China. The galleries present a history of design production to a new Chinese audience and is the first collaboration of its kind between the V&A and a Chinese partner.

ISO were invited to create a digital experience that was the finale of the visit; visitors are invited to interact via their mobile phones or interactive tablets with a large video display that captures their psychological profiles by asking them to select design objects from the collection. They can then send their own personal design statements to be added to a permanent collection of user generated slogans. The exhibit explores the Chinese audience’s use of the worlds most popular app We Chat and QR codes to allow for the sharing of data and connection in real time.

Have a read of It’s Nice That’s feature on the museum

Just finished working with GSA’s Interaction Design 3rd years on their new ‘Narrative Systems’ project with The Glasgow Vehicle Trust.  The students were tasked with creating a series of site-specific installations for the public at the Trusts depot in East Glasgow with the aim of attracting a new, younger audience to the Museum. Led by Ex ISO colleague and course head,  Paul Maguire and artist/designer Jen Sykes we worked with the students to develop their interactives.

The final work ranged from 3D audio pieces that tracked visitors in real-time, film installations, generative graphic works and video-augmented sculptures.  Students Steve Curtis and Hana Seo created the installation featured here, ‘Patterns’ which allowed visitors to explore a huge database of graphic patterns and then video-map back to an array of seats in real time.

Learn more about the GSA Interaction Design Department.

We welcomed artist and author Jo Joelson to the studio as part of her research for her latest book, Library of Light, which reflects on the use of light in creative practices and the role that light plays in culture and more widely in society.

Jo interviewed Damien and Clyde and has included ISO’s site-specific immersive VR project, Siren Servers as one of the featured works in the book, which will sit alongside works by artists including Yoko Ono, Anthony McCall, Gustav Metzger, Bill Drummond, Haroon Mirza and Jason Bruges.

The book will be published by Lund Humphries in October 2018.

Scottish Jewellery designer Lynne MacLachlan joined us in the studio for one of the films we are creating of her work for the new V&A Dundee galleries. Lynne took us through her whole creative process – from generating her beautiful designs in CAD software Rhino, 3D printing, hand dipping and assembly.

The final film will become one of the key assets in a large interactive table we are designing that explores the design process and production across a range of Scottish design objects.

See more of Lynne’s work.

Sonica is the UK’s biggest sound and interactive art festival. We have extended our studio practices of pre-visualisation and high-end production of immersive installations to create an optical and auditory simulacra with regular collaborators Butler Bros, composer Giles Lamb and Numbercult (Craig Ritchie Allan) in what is our first personal project in 5 years. This new commission of site-specific work in our sub-basement will explore real time graphics, sensing and 3D audio in a journey through a series of volumetric tableaux, with reactive motionography and sound.

Find out more.

Historic Dockyard Chatham’s major expansion by London studio Baynes and Mitchell Architects is one of six projects in the running for this year’s Stirling Prize and Dezeen have featured the nautical museum’s transformation.

‘The discovery in 1995 of the frame of an 18th-century warship called the Namur laid out beneath one of the buildings led to a lengthy excavation process. It was after this that Baynes and Mitchell Architects was brought on board.’

We were the lead AV and interactive designers for Chatham’s Command of the Oceans galleries.

This December, China’s first ever design museum will open in Shenzhen. V&A, London has partnered with China Merchants Group to create ‘Design Society,’ a new cultural hub masterplanned by Japanese architects Maki & Maki. We are working with the curators on a new interactive installation centred around the value of design for the museum. Using mobile devices and large video walls integrated with WeChat (the world’s most popular app) visitors will be able to reveal their personal design values. Earlier this week, It’s Nice That featured the groundbreaking new museum with director Ole Bouman commenting ‘that human creativity will be the critical factor to decide success over failure [to answer] the big issues of our time, such as climate change.’

BBC’s iPlayer has officially been around for a decade. Back in 2007, we were commissioned to develop its interface design and user experience — creating a graphic language for a TV experience on the web. The design treatments developed were integrated into the original launch of the service where a simple, visually-driven interface makes discovery of new programming at its core. Our distinctive visual identity has continued to inform subsequent versions.

After winning the RIBA South East Regional and National Award, Command of the Oceans at The Historic Dockyard Chatham has been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling prize building of the year. It joins a diverse list of finalists, including the British Museum extension, Hastings Pier, City of Glasgow College, Juergen Teller’s photography studio and Barretts Grove.

Congratulations to architecture firm Baynes and Mitchell and the team whose designs have transformed the 18th-century dockyard in Chatham, Kent. The project tells the story of the most complete dockyard of the age of sail to be fully told for the first time and centres around the Namur, ‘the ship beneath the floor’ uncovered by chance in 1995.

It was a real pleasure to have been a part of the story with our interpretation of Chatham’s great history through multiple AV installations and interactives.

See Glasgow-set sci-fi film-noir Death Watch in the subterranean screening room of Merchant City’s newly renovated ISO HQ building. The Merchant city features prominently in this cult classic by Bernard Tavernier. Harvey Keitel plays a reporter with a camera implanted in his brain who secretly records the final days of terminally ill writer, Romy Schneider. With its satirical prophecy of reality TV, media paranoia, surveillance and celebrity, this chilling film is more appropriate now than ever.

Part of the Merchant City Festival with complimentary drinks by Heverlee Beer.

Book now via Eventbrite