WOKmedia is a design partnership between Michael Cross and Julie Mathias who met while studying Design Products at the Royal College of Art.
They graduated in 2004 and became research associates at the RCA while running WOKmedia with interaction design collaborator Wolfgang Kaeppner. On the strength of their RCA degree show, their work has been shown in group and solo installations at the Design Museum; in the British Council’s lighting exhibition Twinkle, twinkle in Tokyo, Moscow and Istanbul; and in Great Brits: the New Alchemists, the second collaboration between the Design Museum, the British Council and Paul Smith for the Milan Furniture Fair in 2005.
Cross and Mathias believe that the best design stems from a desire to reproduce something; usually an emotional feeling or a physical sensation. Flood, a collection of light bulbs and cables immersed in glass vessels of water, reproduces our fear of electricity and water mixed, and projected them into the media spotlight immediately following their graduation show in 2004. Sprinkle, their randomly-scattered “carpet” of wool clusters, reproduces the joy of scattering things with abandon. Blow, the fan you activate by blowing, reproduces your action by blowing back at you. |
