For more than ten years, John Maeda has tried to combine art with science. How? By taking the most sophisticated software available and applying it to graphic art and design in search of the human aspects of technology.

Besides this, for the past few years his research has focused on how to lighten and simplify the technology which surrounds us. But because “making things simple is a complex process”, to succeed in his endeavor, Maeda founded a laboratory at the MIT in Boston: the Simplicity Lab. This Lab is working with Time to create the online magazine of the future and with Toshiba and Samsung to design the cell phone of tomorrow. Maeda’s digital design is poetic and minimalist. He mixes irony with sensitivity to amaze and entertain us.

Only a couple of his projects need to be described to understand why the Fondation Cartier (from 19.11.2005 until 19.2.2006) decided to give full rein to this 39-year-old prodigy who was born in Seattle to Japanese immigrant parents and who has already been listed among the new millennium’s 21 geniuses by the monthly magazine, Esquire.

For the halls of the Paris foundation, Maeda created two projects: Nature, which groups together seven digital landscapes as seven metaphors of nature, and Eye’m hungry, which is a children’s playroom where six interactive computers invite the youngsters to play with food. E.S.

Paris - France
John Maeda
Until 19.2.2006
Fondation Cartier, 261 bld. Raspail
http://www.fondation.cartier.com