Art in your cell

Jyoti Prabhakar / TNN / Jul 27, 2007, 00:00 IST

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This is tech revolution with an ingenuous twist. It’s no longer the user who has to be gizmo savvy, but the gadget that has to be user friendly.

A design fest is all set to turn your mobile events into a thing of art by marrying aesthetics with technology
This is tech revolution with an ingenuous twist. It’s no longer the user who has to be gizmo savvy, but the gadget that has to be user friendly. Is it any wonder then that the industry is striving to give technology a human face?
And that means giving the end user options to individualise gadgets that they are using.You want your refrigerator to match your kitchen decor?
Demand a deep pink one and you’ll get it. Or you can have your family photo as your TV screensaver, your karaoke song as your ring tone, you can even touch-sensitise your computer the solutions are emerging fast and furious.

But one thing that’s been regularly innovated is the mobile phone.
For instance, Nokia, which has been pegging their Nseries range as a high performance convergence device, recently held a fashion show inspired by one of their models. Now, they’ve come up with a design fest — Art meets Intelligence.
To make it a mass-connect event, Nokia has thrown this competition open to aspiring designers, apart from roping in established names in the industry. The basic idea is to forward the latest model, N76, as a muse for the designers.

Explains Alok Mehta, manager-marketing, multimedia, Nokia India, We thought this was a good idea to combine aesthetics with technology. The more extrovert Nokia Nseries consumers look for style with substance. This design fest will give a whole new meaning to the way designs and innovations in mobile devices are perceived by people.”
The fest was launched by design gurus like David Abraham, Rakesh Thakore, Anthony Lopez, Arzaan Khambatta, Michael Foley, Mukul Goyal, Sumir Tagra and Jitin Thukral. Each of them have come up with a unique collection of mobile themes (comprising three screens each) inspired by the N76. Anthony, for instance, has created a computer programme that will enable a user to code up a unique scrambled screensaver.
“Everyone likes to personalise their handsets’ screensavers.
I am just taking this forward, and giving them more options,” he explains. Michael Foley, an industrial designer, has come up with a wallpaper that will seamlessly change colours as day gives way to night.
“The colour palette is such that it will give the mobile screen an oil patina sheen,” says he. Mumbai-based sculptor Arzaan explains his concept as “a salute to the machine that has come to mean so much to us. A form full of function that we just can’t live without.”
And here’s a bit of info for the aspirants who’ll want to participate in this fest: The winner gets to... well, that’s a surprise we wouldn’t want to spoil. So while you check that out on their website, here’s to more machines with heart!

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