Duchamp Serves As Inspiration For MoMA Design Stores' Large Sculptures Made From LittleBits

LittleBits hit the news awhile back with their open-source, electronic Lego-style pieces that clip together using magnets to create large circuits that you can fashion into toys and interactive objects. They're the brain child of Ayah Bdeir, an artist and engineer, and the idea is that anyone can play around with them, whether you're an artist, engineer, designer, or small child. They've recently made an appearance in the Museum of Modern Art Design Stores in New York in the form of kinetic sculptures.

LittleBits collaborated with Brooklyn design studio Labour—Ryan Dunn and Wyeth Hansen—to create two different window displays, a midtown one featuring a cyclist pedaling a Ferris wheel and people carrying a picture frame, and one in downtown featuring a geometric shark being teased by its rider and a puppet master controlling a mechanical puppet. Both installations were made to showcase what can be done with these innovative modules.

"When we first took a critical look at the MoMA windows in relation to this project, their size jumped out at us," Labour noted when discussing how they thought up the designs. "LittleBits are 0.8" tall, and the combined viewing surface of the two stores is roughly 320 sq feet. Instantly we saw that the challenge was going to be creating dynamic scuptural gestures that would work visually from across the street as well as up close."

Geometric shark, part of the downtown display

This meant motion was an important factor and another guiding principle was to make the sculptures from materials that wouldn't intimidate people who might want to have a go at creating something similar themselves. So paper, cardboard, wood, and plexiglass became key materials. As Labour explain: "Our hope is that we can nudge people towards building their own projects by exposing how we made ours work, while keeping the magic of their movements intact."

For the designs themselves they say they "went through a lengthy ideation process, coming up with pages and pages of these kinetic scenarios" while in the final pieces working in movements that would change subtly over time. Background was also carefully considered, "We also knew that background would be important, so we took the five-color littleBits palette and worked it into an angular dazzle pattern that took the modular feel of the bits and took it somewhere abstract and eye-catching."

Midtown display Ferris wheel

They also wanted the sculptures to have a mesmerizing, but minimal, appearance—something to capture passersby's attention without confusing them. "The midtown pieces were more art-specific" they say, "referencing Duchamp's rotoreliefs and the art establishment in general. We felt that the Soho store would be great with abstract takes on familiar tropes, with the donkey-and-carrot shark and Dr. Frankenstein puppet."

The sculptures will be on display from now until May 12th.

@stewart23rd