Collective Works Summary

An analysis of Collective Works by Mischer’Traxler

Studio Mischer’Traxler’s Collective Works is an installation which responds to its audience by transforming human interest into a piece of object. The result of this process is very diversed in pattern and size based on the degree of attention the production itself gets. This installation was made for Design Miami/Basel ’W-Hotels Designer of the Future Award” originally in 2011.

The material of the attention-made object is a roll of a 24mm wide veneer strip which is glued to a 20mm thick wooden circle end. When someone approaches the machine and starts to observe it the process starts. The strip is pulled through a gluing device and then reeled to the rotating circle. While the circle is rotating

Every observer leaves a mark or a footprint on the object so every finished piece becomes a unique record of the attention given during the process. A basket used to collect something becomes a collection of data itself. If nobody pays attention to the process no data is crated and then no basket is made. After the process finished the data is written on a piece of smthg and is placed on the basket as well.

The installation enables a special connection between man and machine. During this interaction the observer becomes the part of the artefact only by watching the machine work.

In the case of Collective Works – or in the case of Studio Mischer Traxler’s other works (eg. Idea of a Tree) – designing is focused on the process of formation, which raises the question of what really the work is. The machine that is producing something, the process which enables this production or the tangible finished product? The identity of the creator is not clear either. Can we say that Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler are the ones or the observers too, who are needed for the project to work and to have a fisnished product. What really is important, the process and the idea behind it or an object to

In thecase of l’Artisan Electronique the question is about the indirect connection to the material. Still its not about the alienation from the materialbut how can digital dseign made to be more tangible

Not in the case of Collective Works nor in l’artisan Electronique clear the role of skill. None of these conceptions demands us to have the knowledge of how we can make a pot or basket in the old, tradition way, the object shapes without it. Skill is still needed, but as time goes it changes just like technology does.

Still there’s one thing which couldn’t change. We still need to know the materials we work with, thus its not irrelevant how a given material would react to shape design in the virtual space. It is a fact that in the industry of our age the two factors – still being the creator and the material – are getting awayfrom eachother but the role of skill and material is still