The Rapid Response team’s first job was to find the gun. They had seen it being fired — there was a video of a man in the desert taking aim and shooting — and they swiftly arranged for one of their operatives to fly from London to Texas to track it down.
Louise Shannon is not an Interpol officer, nor is she an international arms dealer: no, she’s a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London. And the gun — 3D-printed out of plastic — was the inaugural purchase under the museum’s Rapid Response Collecting initiative, the aim of which is to acquire items of political, social and economic significance, and to display them to the public as quickly as possible.
Corinna Gardner is another of the four-strong team of curators who have been involved in the project over the past year. “If you look at what contemporary design museums do, I think there’s a real risk that they all become the same,” she says. “If you work on the basis that it’s about picking the most successful or the most beautiful things, there are conventions around that and you find a lot of very similar objects in institutions.”
Next to Gardner’s desk is a white cabinet filled with items that she and her fellow curators have acquired in the past year. When she opens the case — which is, she notes, endoscopically secure, so no looking device can get inside it when it’s closed — a strange array of items is revealed. I see two bras: one pink, one white. Some mannequin arms with different skin tones. A cuddly toy. A fake iPhone 5S.
The idea, says Gardner, is that each object has a story to tell about the world we live in today: something about working conditions in the Third World, or political unrest in China, or changing race relations.
“The stance we are taking is much more politically and socially minded,” she says. “Some might even say polemical.” The curators aim to be agile, responding immediately to news events around the world. “I think the idea that you need the passage of time before you know what to collect is redundant,” says Gardner. “Time will tell what will be more interesting and less so, but I think we need to keep going and not be fearful of failure.” (The activities of the Rapid Response curators do have a precedent in the V&A’s Circulation Department, which collected contemporary design from the Fifties onwards, and was seen as a radical left-wing cadre within the museum.)
Sometimes they are frustrated in their efforts. When 10 fire stations were closed down in London earlier this year, they were unable to find any objects that did an adequate job of telling the story. In February, Gardner tried to get hold of a faulty plastic element in Aston Martin’s accelerator pedals, which had resulted in almost 18,000 cars being recalled, but Aston Martin did not share her enthusiasm.
The group’s research occasionally takes them into murky territory. The 3D-printed gun skirted the boundaries of legality, as did Gardner’s counterfeit iPhone, which she picked up in China (it has space for two Sim cards, handy for frequent travellers over the China/Hong Kong border; it runs on the Android operating system).
They’re interested in products sold on the so-called “dark web”, online market for illicit goods. As they have collected e-cigarettes, would they collect modified versions that allow people to smoke drugs? “I think so long as we are informed and considered and can be transparent about it, I would hope it would be OK.” She laughs. “But I’m not the director of the museum.”
Motorola WT41NO wearable terminal: The data-collecting ‘spy’ in the warehouse
The costs and benefits of wearable technology are embodied in the Motorola WT41NO. It is a device used in warehouses where stock has to be delivered speedily. The main unit, strapped to the forearm and connected wirelessly to the main warehouse computer, directs workers where to find items. They use a ring-mounted scanner worn on the forefinger to confirm that the item they have picked up is the correct one. The computer then directs them where to take it. “If I’m an employee,” says Gardner, “my boss may not know what my next job is, because that’s entrusted to that larger computerised system. If a new, high-priority order comes in halfway through a shift, it will jig around and give you a different job.”
The story came to the team’s attention when a story was published in the Telegraph in February about the way that Tesco used data collected from these armbands. A former employee of the company claimed that the machines were used to spy on work rates, with penalties imposed on people whose productivity fell, or who failed to register loo breaks (Tesco denied the claims). But, as Gardner points out, these technologies are not straightforwardly dystopian. “It depends on how you use the data,” she says. “And these are the type of things that make next-day delivery of books or groceries possible.”
Ikea soft toy wolf, ‘Lufsig’: The cuddly toy that started a revolution
Ikea’s plush gingham-clad wolf became an unlikely symbol of protest against the Chinese authorities in December 2013, when a citizen threw one of the toys at the chief executive of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-Ying, at a town-hall meeting. Leung was elected in 2012, and is thought by many in Hong Kong to be too closely aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. The choice of Lufsig was not accidental: Leung’s name in Chinese characters is similar to the character for “wolf”. The fact that “Lufsig”, when transliterated into Chinese by Ikea’s translators, came out as an insulting Cantonese phrase, also added to its allure.
After the incident on December 7, the toy sold out at Ikea shops in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as in mainland China. A page created for the toy on Facebook received more than 50,000 likes, and has become a hub for anti-government comment. (Leung also posted a picture of himself with Lufsig online: “I realise that this toy has been very popular recently with heated offline sales and speculation online,” he wrote. “This shows that Hongkongers’ creativity is boundless.”)
In January 2014, when stores in Hong Kong were restocked with Lufsigs, people joined ticketed queues to buy him. The curators at the V&A initially wanted to track down the Lufsig that had been thrown at Leung, and approached contacts in China about finding its owner. When this proved impossible, the curators bought one from an Ikea in Wembley, north west London. “It was a story about people across the world saying they wanted this object,” says Gardner, “so it was about that specific toy, but also about the many, many others.”
Primark Denim Co slim Jeans: Fashion almost lost in the fire
These jeans were originally thought to have been manufactured at the eight-storey Rana Plaza building in Savar, Bangladesh, which collapsed on April 24 2013 with the loss of 1,129 lives. Primark was one of several clothing companies — among them Benetton, Mango and Matalan — which subcontracted work to the New Wave Bottoms factory. In the days after the disaster, an AP photographer took a picture of the rubble in which a pair of Primark jeans featured prominently; it was this photograph that inspired the V&A’s curators to rush to the Primark in the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, east London, and buy a pair of jeans of the same make and model.
“The jeans tell a story about workers’ rights, about fast fashion and what it means, about the importance of building regulations as well as labour regulations,” says Gardner. In recent weeks, Primark heard of the V&A’s acquisition, and got in touch to say that their jeans were not in fact made at Rana Plaza; they have offered a pair of men’s shorts that were manufactured there as a replacement.
The Liberator: The world’s first 3D printed gun
The first object acquired by the Rapid Response team was also the most controversial. The Liberator was the world’s first 3D-printed gun, designed by a 25-year-old Texan law student and self-styled “crypto-anarchist” named Cody Wilson. Wilson was filmed by the BBC firing the gun on May 6 2013. The next day he made the design available for download from his website, and it was downloaded 100,000 times before he was ordered to remove the files by the US Department of State.
Louise Shannon, one of the rapid response curators, flew to Texas to meet Wilson. She ultimately purchased a gun that he had fired, a disassembled gun, an assembled gun and the Liberator’s prototypes. Some commentators felt that the acquisition of the Liberator gave a sheen of legitimacy to Wilson’s creation.
“The 3D-printed gun is one of the most important stories of recent years,” Gardner says. “Techno-utopian ideas about 3D printing technologies were exploded because of this one design.”
Eylure Katy Perry ‘Cool Kitty’ false lashes: Real hair meets pop fakery
They may be available in your local chemist for less than £5 (Dh32), but these false eyelashes, endorsed by the American pop star Katy Perry, are works of extraordinary craftsmanship. They are made from real hair, and are knotted by hand on to pieces of string which form the basis of the eyelashes. They were the gift of Gethin Chamberlain, an investigative journalist who had written about the women who make the eyelashes in Indonesia.
“It’s a product that connects a very low-income woman working in pretty poor conditions to one of the most famous women in the world,” says Gardner.
Oculus Rift Development Kit I: Virtual reality made easy
The most recent object acquired by the rapid response team is Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality headset. The curators began investigating the device when it was bought by Facebook for $2 billion in March 2014.
“It’s the first device to really make virtual reality possible,” says Gardner, “in the sense that the lag between when you move and what you see has been dramatically reduced, and you don’t feel sick, which has been a major problem with this kind of headset.”
The next thing the V&A wants to acquire is the hardware and games to bring the machine to life; At present they don’t have a powerful enough computer to make it work.
Kone UltraRope: The backbone of tall buildings
Its appearance may be drably functional but UltraRope, a material developed by the Finnish company Kone, has the potential to change the appearance of the cities of the future. UltraRope, made from a carbon fibre core and a plastic coating highly resistant to wear and abrasion, is relatively light and extremely strong, and was developed to hoist lifts in tall buildings. Historically, lifts have been hoisted using woven steel cables, the sheer weight of which has limited the height to which they can rise, topping out at around 500 metres. UltraRope, its makers claim, could offer potential lift runs of 100 metres — double that of the existing metal alternative. There are at present three buildings in the world taller than 500 metres, but there are plans for 20 more such buildings to be constructed in the years to come.
Kone has just won a contract to supply the lifts for the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is set to become the tallest building in the world when it is completed in 2018. The Kingdom Tower’s double-decker lifts will be the world’s fastest, travelling at around 10 metres a second.
Christian Louboutin’s ‘The Nudes’ Collection: The second-skin shoes
In 1962, inspired in part by the convulsions of the civil rights movement, Crayola made a singularly enlightened decision about their crayons: they changed the name of their pink crayon from “flesh” to “peach”, an acknowledgement that skin comes in more than one shade. Fifty years later and the fashion industry, where “nude” still typically means a shade of beige or peach that relates to Caucasian skin, is still catching up with social realities. At the end of 2013, however, Christian Louboutin, creator of distinctive and wildly expensive red-soled high heels, launched his “Nudes” collection: shoes in five different shades, ranging from “fair blush” to “rich chestnut”. Along with a pair of “Fifi” round-toed heels in each colour, the V&A also acquired five mannequin arms which are used to mount the shoes in countries where display on a full leg would be considered too risqué. When you consider the fact that China is projected to account for a third of luxury fashion spending by 2015, Louboutin’s decision seems like a canny one.
The Rapid Response display, which will be updated as new objects are acquired, opens at the V&A on July 4. See vam.ac.uk for more information
–The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2014
IMAGE CREDITS All photos: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
****IMAGE INFORMATION**** Title: Soft toy wolf Lufsig Artist: Designed for and manufactured by Ikea Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: ‘Fifi’ pump in five nude shades Artist: Designed by Christian Louboutin Ltd Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: False eyelashes endorsed by Katy Perry, ‘Cool Kitty’ style Artist: Manufactured for Eylure Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: Sections of ‘KONE UltraRope’ Artist: Designed and manufactured by KONE Corporation Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: Vype ‘reload’ e-cigarettes Artist: Designed and manufactured on behalf of CN Creative Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: Spikes Artist: Date: 2014 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: ‘Liberator’ 3D- Printed Gun Artist: Designed by Cody Wilson / Defence Distributed Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: Motorola ‘WT41N0’ wearable terminal Artist: Designed and manufactured by Motorola Solutions, Inc. Date: 2012 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: Primark cargo trousers Artist: Manufactured by New Wave Bottoms for Primark Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None Title: ‘Flappy Bird’ mobile game Artist: Designed by .Gears Studios Date: 2013 Credit line: Photo (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London Special terms: None
