Talk to Me
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St.
Through November 7

Talk to Me explores the subject of communication between people and their environment, highlighting the role of the designer in imagining and establishing these connections. Through a diverse selection of objects and conceptual work, the exhibition examines designs that engage users, including information systems, visualization design, communication devices, and interfaces, like the QR code mowed into a field in Bernhard Hopfengärtner’s project Hello World!, above.

While developing the exhibition, the curators kept an online journal, creating a forum for a public dialogue about what should be part of the show in such a rapidly changing culture of technology. The website provides a window not only into the curators’ ever-expanding database but also their thinking: “The exhibition hinges on an important development in the culture of design (and in culture at large), a shift from the centrality of function to that of meaning. From this perspective, all objects contain information that goes well beyond their immediate use or appearance. In some cases, objects exist to provide us with access to complex systems and networks, behaving as gateways and interpreters.”