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This Is What Happens When A Designer Locks Himself In A Studio For 3 Months

Adam Nathaniel Furman put himself in solitary confinement, and the subsequent conceptual art project he made is a mind-bender.

Reading Adam Nathaniel Furman’s latest Identity Parade blog post entitled ‘Posterity,’ you might think you’ve stumbled upon the final words of a dead Internet artist. "I knew something like this would happen," he wrote.  "I could feel it. They were sucking the life out of me one click of the mouse at a time."

But click around, scroll a bit further, and you’ll realize the post actually reports the death of Furman’s “mask,” the character he used to drive the concept of his London Design Museum Residency responding to the theme of identity.

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Furman describes his project’s protagonist as a “Western hikikomori,” a socially withdrawn designer who spent his time 3D-printing objects and essentially living his life online. “I used the Greek theatrical technique of masking so that I could allow myself to become the character, so that I could embody the issues and stories he was pursuing to extremes that I would never have been able to if I was just writing as an objective creator, as the distanced auteur,” Furman told The Creators Project.

While he has one foot in the “ephemeral cornucopia of popular culture” online, the other is planted in a world of porcelain and architecture. For Identity Parade, he delighted in harnessing an ever-changing digital environment to create lasting objects with distinct narratives and imaginative potential.

To get into the role and create this conceptual project, Furman was plugged into his laptop for 14 hours a day, writing, drawing, and worrying. When the character died, Furman collected his creations and put them on display at the Design Museum as the culmination of his residency.

In addition to a table full of 54 bright 3D-printed objects in the shape of carousels and alien ice cream cones, Furman displayed a film summarizing the project’s theoretical threads, plus an iPad on which visitors could read a blog that merged his character’s private world with designs of each object.

“If you have ever entered the living room of someone recently deceased, you will know how powerfully their collected belongings are redolent of who they were, what was important to them,” Furman noted. “The effect is even more powerful when the space has been orchestrated by a collector, someone who consciously externalized their values and passions into their surroundings.”

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“People have an innate sensitivity to objects that have been mediated in some way, either by time and a journey, or by having had an unusual mix of reasons for their making,” he explained to us. Maybe that's why his seemingly-simple creations have an immersive, or seductive effect—we know their backstory, and they become more than just objects. They're inanimate objects that have been instilled with a history, or even soul, due to Furman's conceptual tinkering.

So what’s next? Furman is showing 'Identity Parade' again at the Hospital Club (April 20 to May 20), co-curating and exhibiting in “Represence,” an official part of Clerkenwell Design Week that will highlight new approaches to representation in Architecture amongst the emerging generation. Plus, he’s participating in “Space Craft” a collaboration between Habitat and the Crafts Council UK which will be touring the UK starting in April. Say hi to a new breed of Young British Arist, who's not only combining digital and concrete, but multitasking while blurring identities.

For a dense and metaphysical residency that revolves around the death of a fictional character, Furman's work certainly has us feeling for his creativity. Maybe we'll put ourselves in solitary confinement for three months—it seems to have worked for him.