Several signs are needed to guide all visitors towards the main entrance of the Tabakfabrik Linz, a former tobacco processing plant which is the main event area for this year's Ars Electronica Festival.

Arriving at the main square we walk into a performance by soft bodies who are using the central square as their stage, or better playground, to interact with their audience. This nude performer needed nothing more than a single rock to capture the attention of dozens of visitors.

The Cyberarts exhibition is where we find Zimoun's sound installation. The Swiss artist created a structure of 216 dc-motors rotating wires that all together surprise our ears with unusual and complex sounds. Hard to explain but great to hear.

See more photos after the jump.

Helmut Smit is our new favorite artist/designer, even if FLAMMA was the only project he'd ever done (it isn't, by the way, and they are all stellar). This brilliant Ikea Hack "harks back to one of humanity's basic needs: making fire." As Ikea does not sell matches or lighters, Smits has taken cues from the wartime necessity of burning furniture to keep warm, and created a fire from an Ikea rope, hanger, wine rack, egg cup, napkins, and floral embellishments.

The video above is worth every minute, not to mention a good lesson in building fires, an art lost on most of us.

Visit Smit's site here.

Oscar Magnus Narud's Keel collection: tables in rough wood and iron.

Running from September 15th through November 14th, Make-Me is an upcoming exhibition at Moss that brings together a set of artists and designers producing what Moss has coined "Butch-Craft." Maybe there is no better way to describe this than the words they use themselves: "a cerebral yet virile narrative applied to rough work crafted in wood, iron, steel, marble, rush, paint, boiled leather, clay, baked agricultural waste, plant-life, gypsum drywall, and blood, sweat and tears."

Honda R&D
Automotive Designer
Torrance, CA

You will work independently on the development of original designs or adaptations requiring very specialized design skills and abilities. The Designer employs the best combination of preliminary information and contributing data to develop final designs (2D/3D) and basic concepts; selects technique best suited to represent project including graphics and technology; conducts product research to determine styling trends and consumer preferences; produces sketches, renderings and computer graphic illustrations, ideas and materials for presentation and helps develop strong brand specific ideas for building identity.

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The best design jobs and portfolios hang out at Coroflot.

Ah, the wonderful dilemma with design festivals: too much to do, too little time. The London Design Festival is making that problem even worse, announcing that it's sweep of the city is broadening with three new design districts, each with its own character and events. In addition to Brompton and the Shoreditch Design Triangle, the Covent Garden, Fitzrovia Creative, and Clerkenwell districts will help to further inundate London with design September 18-26. Various events, exhibitions, and installations are scheduled in each of the districts. For more information, download the London Design Festival Guide here.

Here's a couple of interesting videos done by Austin-based design studio Zoticus Design, displaying computing-of-the-future concepts that demonstrate client Freescale's networking prowess. In the second video, I dig the way the woman sends info to her tablet around 1:15; the first video is otherwise the more interesting one, but I kept thinking "Why in God's name is that little girl wearing so much makeup?"

Freescale - Consumer from Zoticus Design on Vimeo.

Freescale - Industrial from Zoticus Design on Vimeo.

If you live in Brooklyn, the bane of your peaceful residential existence (or the source of your entertainment, depending on your disposition) is noisy teenagers hanging out on the stoop. So here we present The Last House I'd Ever Build in Brooklyn: Y+M Design Office's Stairs House.

The entire house, as you can see, is basically one gigantic stoop. Very cool for a beachside family property in Japan, not so cool when you live in Bushwick and would have to spend every evening chasing guys named Re-Re, Bombs-a-Poppin and Tommy Karate off of your goddamn roof while threatening to call cops that, let's face it, have better things to do.

Hit the jump for more shots.

Studiobility, the Icelandic design studio headed up by Gudrun Lilja, has launched a new partially-eponymous brand: Bility. Today at the Maison et Object design show in Paris, Lilja will take the wraps off of new Bility items like this Heklad Stal shelf made from polycoated steel:

The Design Council has recently run a design workship with the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to look at how to encourage the adoption of home insulation and other low-carbon home modifications.

A joint proposal How can we help people make their homes more energy efficient? (pdf) shows how user-centred design research has helped DECC understand how consumers feel about installing cavity wall insulation or lagging their loft and it shows that people feel disengaged with the overarching environmental issues.

>> Read article

L.A.-based designer Charles Pyott's been getting lots of blog love lately for his portable Linos record player concept, above; another lesser-known project of his worth checking out is the DAWS (Dynamically Augmenting Wheel System, below).

ID Magazine may have shut its doors this past year , but, as promised, the Annual Design Review stayed put, celebrating the best of design with its 2010 awards at the AIGA center in New York.

Nicely packed for a Wednesday evening in NYC, the festivities showcased a variety of work from product to packaging in the minimalist showroom design of Manuel Miranda and Jiwon Lee. The duo's basic kraft paper-and-masking-tape-covered-pedestal installation reminded us of the simple solutions many winning designs captured (faves that put a smile on our face were Homebase's Grow Your Own gardening product, the concept Coat Check chair and the Meyerhoffer Surfboard). While the back wall display of some 60 I.D. covers served as visual epitaph to one of the most followed design publications from the last 50 years, the products in the room reminded us that though the printed page might be gone, but the conversation still continues.

You can see the whole lot of winners here.

Alexander Wiethoff of the Department for Informatics at LMU Munich (and a former Experientia intern - disclosure) has developed with the Univeristy of Saarbrücken a mobile device application that enables a radically new form of interaction with buildings that will be shown Sunday and Monday at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.

"By combining a recently developed mobile software application with the multimedia facade of the ARS Electronica building [...] we developed two prototypes: in the first application, users can paint interactively on the building using touch input on the mobile device. In a second application, users are able to solve a jigsaw puzzle displayed on the facade."

via LIFT and Alexander Wiethoff

Continuum continues their series Open for Branding, where they are sharing, from start to finish, their latest branding project for the new, nomadic Design Museum Boston.

Wow. Last week, we posted our Design Museum Boston branding concepts for feedback, and more than 1700 people checked out our survey and 274 completed it. The greatest part: everyone aligned--Continuum, Design Museum Boston, and you—on which directions were the strongest.

This fall, you could be one of six clever individuals working side-by-side with 24 top PepsiCo leaders, helping them rethink and work through key business challenges. The company has partnered with Continuum to help them run an eight-session fellowship problem where they will bring in innovative, interdisciplinary thinkers to work on small teams with Continuum coaches to tackle real-world design challenges, moving through the process from user-research to rapid prototyping.

The first session will begin on October 15th and continue for eight consecutive weeks. In addition to the an opportunity to participate in the workshops, the six selected applicants will receive a $4,000 dollar stipend. Sessions will be held in New York City, Purchase, NY (PepsiCo HQ), and Continuum's Boston office.

You must apply before September 15th. For an application and guidelines, email innovationfellows (at) pepsico (dot) com.

Guest post by Phil Patton.

Surprisingly self-effacing among the high profile wit and higher profile designers of Alessi, the new Ovale line of tableware from Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec may sum up the current design zeitgeist.