Virtual Design Festival

Exclusive tour of AI exhibition Hyper Human with designer Monica Förster for VDF x Stockholm Design Week

As part of VDF's partnership with Stockholm Design Week, designer Monica Förster takes us on a tour of the exhibition Hyper Human at the Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm.

AI, genetic engineering and eternal life: the exhibition at The Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm explores the relationship between humans and technology – in the past, present and future.

Hyper Human exhibition
Monica Förster created the spatial design for the Hyper Human exhibition

This exclusive tour of the exhibition's design is led by designer Förster, founder of Monica Förster Design Studio, which is based at Södermalm in Stockholm.

Förster created the spatial design of Hyper Human, working with BAS Interesting Times Gang to explore how AI works when creating new forms.

Monica Förster
The designer speaks of her artistic approach to the project in this tour

In her tour, Förster explained the experimental and artistic approach needed to let an AI choose how to design different objects.

With sustainability in mind, the designers also let the AI determine how to minimise material usage when designing an object.

The objects created by the AI, which were 3D printed, had organic structures and patterns. This surprised Förster.

"I imagined when we started to work with the AI that it would be something that would be much more geometric," Förster said. "But it looks like it's part of a tree, it looks like something very organic."

Hyper Human exhibition
The exhibition let the AI decide how to minimise material usage when creating the objects

Hyper Human also includes exhibits on the way technology is changing how we operate and how it is being used to help within our  everyday lives and in more extreme situations.

The exhibition is on at The Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology in northern Djurgården in Stockholm, but due to the coronavirus crisis it can currently only be viewed online.

About Stockholm Design Week

Together with Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, Stockholm Design Week has established itself as the most important week of the year for Scandinavian Design. The week is held annually in February and is a meeting point for buyers, architects, designers, press and influencers from all over the world.

Stockholm Design Week takes place in a variety of venues across the city, from galleries and showrooms to dinner parties, after fair meetings, opening cocktails, museums and cultural institutions. The upcoming edition, Summer Design Week, will be held on 17-23 August 2020. The next Stockholm Design Week will take place on February 8-14, 2021