news
  • 15.3.2024 – 13.10.2024
    new project , exhibition

    "Water Pressure - Designing for the future" an exhibition of the MK&G Hamburg and Jane Withers Studio – looks at the water crisis from a global perspective. We were commissioned to come up with an installation celebrating water. The result "vital rain" is part of the exhibition and will stay permanently in the museums yard.
    more soon

    MKG Hamburg - Water Pressure

  • april 2024
    new project

    For the glassware company Lobmeyr we designed "ident" - drinking set No.287

    Identical shape, identical height - five individual glasses.
    The series was unveilded during Milan Design Week.

    Lobmeyr

  • april 2024 - ongoing
    factory tour

    We designed the factory tour for Laufen in Gmunden with a lot of details and small installations to guide and inform local and international guests.

    Laufen Gmunden

  • 5.4.2024 - 14.7.2024
    exhibition

    "inWastement" glass series is on show at the Klimabiennale in Vienna at the "design with a purpose" exhibition.

    Klimabiennale Wien

  • 15.9.2023 - 21.7.2024
    exhibition

    HEIMATEN. An exhibition and survey and an attempt to break with conventional takes on Heimat. the exhibition was shown at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) in 2022. Our specially commissioned piece 'riparian cloud' is now also on show in Molfsee.

    Freilichtmuseum Molfsee

  • 01.06.2024 - 30.03.2025
    exhibition, adapted project

    A utopian insect swarm based on our 'curiosity cloud' developed with 13 children from Dresden swirls during the Kinderbiennale in the Japanische Palais. The participatory process resulted in 24 fantastic, colourful insects.

    Children's Biennale "Planet Utopia"

  • 30.05 2024 - 13.10.2024
    new project , exhibition

    All in! Re-Designing Democracy - Every aspect of democracy has been designed, therefore it can be designed differently. A new "Themis" claims in the exhibition for rights for Nature.

    Bundeskunsthalle

  • 10.05. 2024 - 23.06.2024
    exhibition

    20th anniversary international exhibition and series of events. Our glass project "access" is part of the exhibition.

    design without borders

coalesque

an interactive installation visualizing playfully how dialogues help to create new thoughts

  • year 2019

  • category Kinetic & Interactive Installations

  • commissioned by

    Design Museum Holon

  • curated by

    Maria Cristina Didero

coalesque was developed for The Conversation Show – an exhibition curated by Maria Cristina Didero – at the Design Museum Holon.

The project visualizes and intends to sum up the studio’s working methodology, where dialogues and discussions often go back and forth until a project (a mixture of Katharina and Thomas’ thoughts and ideas) evolves to become something they believe is better than if it would have just popped out of one single head. This impressive machine called coalesque changes the color according to the position of the person who approaches it. It looks like this pendulum is watching people and suggests information. It rotates, but always via the middle, as it seems it should always get to the center in order to start a new adventure at the borders to encounter a human entity. Questioning delicate and sensitive topics via extraordinary devices represents at best the core household of the studio. With any given subject, the duo challenges itself in a thoughtful propaedeutic research to shape the object or the installation they have in mind, which is able to tell their story. coalesce as a word could pass different meanings: to blend, fuse, combine, join, mix, unite, come together, meet, amalgamate, associate.
Or again to band together, intermix, mingle, intermingle, interweave, become one, synthesize; and it is this very last one which better mirror the sense of the couple: to engineer an appliance capable to interact kinetically with human beings in such a precise, analytic modality. As streams coalesced in the forest to give birth to small rivers, this is their way of getting together to produce new effect. And most of all, according to mischer’traxler’s words, “they produce a better version than the singular one could be.” Balancing between workmanship and technologies is one of the must of the couple to visualize a vocabulary able to stand solid to the approach their design has to look like. It is a mutual, social effort that leads to an aesthetic of engineering that the designers put together to produce, once again, a high-tech landscape of projects, which is consistent and solid since the very beginning of their career. As they say: “design can be functional, good and beautiful not just in objects but also in the ideas it represent.” coalesque stands for the perfect example.

Text by Maria Cristina Didero

the project was supported by a printed dialogue between Katharina and Thomas and projected animated graphics on the walls, image credit: Shay Ben Efraim

K We had the idea of mixing colors. Changing appearances became important for representing the input coming from two parties. It’s like mixing two colors that change and become a third color.
T And we had to find a way to involve the audience in the project.
K . . . so that they can play their own ping-pong. We always talked how a conversation is like a ball. So this mental jump to a sphere of movement between two people was not so far.
T Then the whole project came into being. We thought of having a pendulum that swings between the two partners in a dialogue. Depending on where each one is standing,there is a certain color, and in between them the sphere forms this beautiful mixed color that one did not expect before.

short video of coalesque showing how visitors interact with the installation

coalesque installation, image credit: Elas Sarig

testing coalesque in the studio

  • material

    MDF, paint, plastic, stainless steel, LEDs, various electronics

  • dimensions

    approx. ø 4 m

  • electro-technical development

    Simon Laburda (DKIA)

  • team

    Katharina Mischer, Thomas Traxler, Stephan Jäger, Monja Hirscher