“Design and the Elastic Mind” is a major exhibition currently presented by MoMA till May 12 2008. The title of the exhibition emerges from the assertion that while “adaptability” is hard-wired into human intelligence, coping with the recent and dramatic changes in our experience of “time, space, matter and identity” requires something stronger - “elasticity”. In 2006, MoMA teamed up with the science magazine “Seed” and held a number of salons where designers, architects and scientists were invited to share ideas and work. According to Paola Antonelli, curator and co-writer of the companion book “Design and the Elastic Mind”, the exhibition “reflects on how the figure of the designer is changing from form giver to fundamental interpreter of an extraordinarily dynamic reality.”

The online component of the exhibition presents over 300 works which represent the designer’s “ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores, changes that will demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior, and convert them into objects and systems that people understand and use.” The website presents seven fundamental divisions: Thinkering where artists, designers and scientists use “design to give method to productive tinkering… or ‘thinkering’; People and Objects including Tagging and Responsive design where “New interfaces incorporate instinctive human traits; Design for Debate - placing human beings at the centre of emerging tech scenarios and debates; Visualization - examining the way designers and scientists grapple with dramatic contrasts of scale in data in order to facilitate human understanding; Thought to Action - envisioning objects and new modes of manufacture including 3-d Printing and Processing and algorithms; All Together Now! which introduces the concept of “Existenzmaximum” and examines the effects of “open-source movement and ubiquitous connection”; and Super Nature where nature is viewed as a “collection of sensible and sustainable structures” which are in many ways superior in terms of sustainability to man-made systems.

As I’m not likely to be in New York before May 12, I’m wading my way through the 300+ projects online. Some projects are legendary - the Mandelbrot set; some are familiar - Digg Labs beautiful and elucidating data visualisations; some are fresh - Nokia Morph which illustrates “how a portable personal device can connect its owner to the hidden information in the surrounding physical world and, at the same time, to the massive global data, information, and digital content via the Internet”; some fantastical - Typosperma the second part of Israeli typographer Oded Ezer’s Biotypography series “cloned sperm with typographic information implanted into their DNA.”; this is downright scary - Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow; fun - the SMS Guerilla Projector which enables users to receive texts and project them onto public surfaces; and some are even practical - the Touch Messenger designed to “provide the large number of blind consumers in China with the same cell phone features available to everyone else, at an affordable price.”

This is an important exhibition not just for the fanciful and fun explorations of science colliding with design, but because it is a recognition of the importance of visual design as a fundamental aid in human perception. Designers have the ability to re-present complex and otherwise baffling concepts, to facilitate access and to give form to potentially abstract objects and systems. Paola Antonelli: “Without designers, instead of a virtual city of home pages with windows, doors, buttons, and links, the Internet would still be a series of obscure strings of code”.

My favourite quote: “Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life”.