Cutlery is off-centre, glasses are half full and food is scattered across the table; welcome to Scholten & Baijings still life dinner party.
Dutch design duo Scholten & Baijings have transformed the Norfolk House music room, situated in the British Galleries in the Victoria and Alfred Museum, into a complete dinner setting that seems to be in progress.
The idea for the still life dinner party rendition came from the idea to display designed objects in an unconventional way. In galleries and museums, design objects are often showcased on pedestals or in glass vitrines, but rarely in something resembling the everyday living environment for which they were conceived. The designers’ Tea With Georg silver serving collection and a range of glassware is arranged to represent a real-life image of a dinner gathering.
"The objective of the presentation is to let people see things in a different way," say the designers.
As visitors entre the room, what they see on the dinner table is resounded in a piece of music playing softly. The composers Moritz Gabe and Henning Grambow created a composition exclusively using the sounds of the exposed objects, which is transformed into musical notes. The soundscape can be described as an audible musical fingerprint of the exposed objects.
The Dinner Party / True-To-Life installation can be viewed at the Victoria and Alfred Museum for the duration of London Design Festival 2013.
