The stapler is a sad building on the outside, with an overly undisguised 90s feel, boxed in between the endless construction of the invisible Glòries Catalanes. Inside, probably due to its geographical and temporal situation, it is quite empty. But one must admit that when you enter, you have the feeling of being in a large space, I mean full of grandeur, something like being in an American museum in terms of dimensions, in terms of Gulliver, of not being exactly in Barcelona but in Manhattan. The pity is that Elisava or other design schools and faculties are not nearby, because this space only makes sense if it is full of young people typing and having breakfast, rather than begging for a visit from two families with children. Design only deserved a museum if it was capable of demonstrating that it connected, and the current exhibitions connect (Digital Impact, we will talk about it now; Picasso's ceramics, which have been highly recommended to me; and TvBoy, an artist I don't like but I understand why he attracts attention). The problem I think is the building, the place and the moment. Because the content seems to me, for now, quite worthy.
Digital Impact, which can be visited until August 27, is a journey that mixes art and design, taking advantage of digitalization as a common thread, featuring internationally renowned artists such as Refik Anadol, Universal Everything, Random International, Brendan Dawes and Field, apart from local artists Domestic Data Streamers, Alba G. Corral and Antoni Arola. But then, is it art, is it design or is it digitalization? I would say that this is the problem, that it is everything and nothing at the same time, unlike, for example, the Picasso exhibition, which everyone knows perfectly well what it is about. They have visibly struggled to decide whether to make a more artistic, more spatial or more technological exhibition, and in the end you end up with an "oh, interesting" that detracts from the result because there are certainly magnificent pieces. I mean, I don't know if the igloos are necessary (fun spaces, designed with the intention of isolating you from the other pieces), if not to house the work Oasis (Archive of the Heavens) by Antoni Arola, an emotional succession of colors projected on the dome that impregnates our retina with the Mediterranean, the moon, dawn and rain. Without a doubt the most meaningful, simplest and most ambitious work at the same time, of the entire exhibition.
I think if the whole tone were like this, more artistic and poetic, by now the exhibition would make more sense. I mean, we no longer need speeches, nor big data, nor technological exhibitionism, for digitalization to provoke something in us. We are already digital beings; you won't surprise me by explaining how many people have just connected to Instagram or Tinder at that moment, even if you do it through beautiful symmetrical strokes produced by machines. Digitalization no longer surprises us, but it can aspire to move us: the piece Artificial Spaces by Ezequiel Pini (Six N. Five with Someform) does this, an invitation to friendly architectures where you roll the sun from a distance and transform the entire atmosphere, or you press to rebuild a new evocative space, or the piece Storms by Quayola, where ultra-high definition images of the stormy seas of Cornwall are projected as a data set to generate new computational paintings, that is, as if painted live on a traditional canvas, and all this in motion. Here is the right path, the correct bet. If there is one thing we must flee from, it is the coldness of the medium, and move towards the humanization of content. Never will a data, or a computer, cease to seem cold to us.
There is space for comedy (Universal Everything figures at the entrance) and for the bore (a digital plant that doesn't grow if you move, meaning, we'd better die if we want to save the planet). And, when you answer "no" to a screen with a human face asking "¿would we be better off with less technology?", it immediately responds as if you had answered yes. Again, prefabricated speeches that go their own way and want to impose ideas on us at a time when we are trying to enjoy an experience. Like the discursive excesses of a Coldplay concert, listen, I've heard you, now please just sing because otherwise you'll make me feel like a P3 student who can't think for himself.
In short, go. And go with children, they will be quite amazed. But they won't be amazed by the machines or gadgets, not even by the design, but above all by having introduced some sensitivity into this technological era and by having managed, only sometimes, to avoid futuristic exhibitionism. We already know the future. Now make us live it.