Valentine Scherer

Valentine Scherer is a French/Australian interaction designer who is interested in finding and making connections between generative and organic processes, analogue and digital, material and non-material, to discover new lenses on sense-making in a world of chaos & disinformation. Her most recent research and work were initially inspired by some of Richard Sennet’s writings on craft and how we live in the built environment.

Her work interrogates processes in making, production and consumption in the networked digital society. Allusions to the circularity of the economy are made throughout her work as an attempt to make a playful commentary, drawing from a broad range of inspirations such as Dadaism, George Brecht’s instruction art or more contemporary artists and designers like new media artist Philipp Schmitt. Much of her research and work on the ecology of modularity stems from a fascination with the role of craft as a means of sense-making in society.

Much of this work is based on a set of images of hybridised furniture pieces which were produced using Machine Learning algorithms via Runway ML software. This process enabled the generation and computational ‘imagination’ of a new set of furniture designs based on standardised IKEA graphic instruction covers.

Seeking to critique flat pack and modular furniture and the IKEA model which is hyper-dominant for all students and young people worldwide, she uses machine learning, 3D modelling and printing methods to uncover the flawed value system underlying the culture and production ethos. Using a playful and absurdist spirit of inquiry, she developed a way to auto-generate semi-functional modularity which shows just how ridiculous it is, and how it is just creating toxic landfill at an exponential rate, how this culture in itself is a huge driver of economic externalities that can only be eliminated by thorough system change.