The Department of Seaweed
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

April 2013 – September 2013

Artist Residency at the V&A

More Info HERE

‘Oki Naganode’
Installation
Seaweed, cane, aluminium
3.5m x 3.5m x 3.5m
Victoria & Albert Museum,
London, 2013

The ‘Oki Naganode’ is a large-scale installation made of Japanese Naga seaweed,
which I treated to remain flexible like a translucent leather and stretched over a
modular framework made of cane and aluminium. The installation showcases the
potential of seaweed as a versatile material for design and manufacture. It was
developed as part of my ‘Department of Seaweed’ residency at the Victoria &
Albert Museum from April to September 2013 and exhibited publicly during the
London Design Festival.

June 2013

The Department of Seaweed entered its third month. I organised a trip to London for a group of design students from the HFBK in Hamburg and we created a room-setting, food and tableware for a kelp evening in the department.

The studio looks increasingly spectacular.

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Public Engagement is an important benchmark for National Museums in Britain. Our team at the Department of Seaweed also takes public engagement seriously, so as part of our strategy we are now engaging with the public outside of the museum’s boundaries on a daily basis.

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Yesterday I had my first public engagement as Head of the Department of Seaweed at the V&A.  I spoke at a Sustain RCA evening entirely dedicated to the potential of Algae:

‘Fuel, food, fertiliser, dyes, cosmetics, colourants – even pollution control are just a few of the many uses of algae. From design and architecture to fishing and pharmaceuticals, this diverse biological substance is promising to rival fossil fuels and kickstart new economies around its growth and production.
Meet our three speakers: scientist, academic and business consultant Brenda Parker; V&A resident product designer Julia Lohmann, and textile-researcher Marin Sawa – all working at the intersection of science, technology, art and design, exploring the amazing potential of this Green Gold.’ (Quote from the Sustain RCA website)

The talks will go online on the Sustain RCA website in the coming weeks and until then you can find out more about the speakers by folowing these links:

Sustain RCA Website:

http://sustain.rca.ac.uk

Brenda Parker:

http://www.enalgae.eu/ (collaborative website collecting and sharing information on the development of algae based knowledge)

http://www.incropsproject.co.uk/ (a low carbon initivate spinning out from east University of East Anglia)

Marin Sawa:

http://www.marins.co.uk/ (Designer and researcher Marin Sawa works with living algae and currently experiments with printing algae cells as an artist in residence in the Biochemistry Department at Imperial College, just across the road)

Also if you are more generally interested in algae related information, this is the most comprehensive database there seems to be:

http://www.algaebase.org/