THE HIGH KEY
The rocking chair
“The high key is a transdisciplinary design practice that flattens the space between physical and digital.We believe that our existing creative landscape requires more than a dualistic understanding of materiality. We produce content that appears in various material manifestations. Images, videos, artifacts, spaces, and experiences become explorations into objecthood and contemporary aesthetics.”
The high key starts the beginning of 2020, Spring around the beginning of March . The debut on his rocking chair is huge, he went to couple shows and expecting more to come soon. The founder had the idea to delve into furniture design after finishing his masters in Architecture. He tried to leverage the skills of 3D visualization to create a catalog of furniture, it was to keep the design skills fresh also generate a series of products he then creates in the real world.
Distinct elements? What made The High Key different?
"A lot of people are doing digital renderings.What I’m interested in that is slightly different is actually how did these ideas slip between physical and digital, I’m trying to create this series of visualizations images that can stand alone is nice looking, but they're also a way to test ideas before I build the thing itself, those fundamentals difference. That’s engaging of height and also interest and, it’s a way to wrap up the product so I can lean on to ideas slightly more quickly without buying thousands of dollars of materials."
Muse / fashion label you would want to work with or collaborate in the near future?
John Vieweg | Creative director of "The High Key" —
"I’m working with a smaller studio that does clothing design or merchandise something that will be up on "The High Key" e-commerce website. Instead of the furniture, which is larger and expensive."
"Developing several small-scale objects, even things like disposable furniture or things that are composable, maybe a series of cardboard chairs printed on them.TheHighkey is a platform that will be working or focusing on the scale of small, medium, and large objects eventually very soon. Some of the furniture is on a larger scale and gonna be a lot more expensive. I like the idea of creasing small novelty items that anyone can kind of have."
"Virgil Abloh is hugely inspiring and extremely influential. Daniel Arsham is another person I'd like to collaborate with or work with."
These designers make fashion, art, and design more fun again, and I personally really likes designers who come out with fun ideas and sort of write down this idea of the sacredness of the art industry. Flattening the hierarchy is extremely crucial, the art world is so day-cap, digital prototyping is a way through to that day-cap industry, and the high key can produce nice rendered images of objects."
Where do you find inspirations?
John Vieweg | Creative director of "The High Key" —
"Changing the language of the material that everyone would expect from the furniture. As many people have already seen in the furniture industry, where they used a lot of elegant materiality such as wood from several thousand years. The High Key choose to buy product contemporary moment Stuff that is unstainable."
"The idea of remixing various materials - finding an emergent quality in it, is very fascinating to me. For example plastics, waste products, melting them down, taking over capitalists / industrial materiality, and repurpose it to our own hands. "
What do you think of Eco-conscious furnishing and is it something that you consider for you practices.
John Vieweg | Creative director of "The High Key" —
John studied sustainability prior to his masters in architecture, and claimed that sustainability is crucial and something that he would like to apply to the platform.
"The digital push has pushed the idea of mounts of wastefulness. Digital prototyping, might consume electricity and renderings, and such but it is generating the material waste that a lot of creative studios make. "
"Also material choices. A lot of materials and sources "The High Key" playing with are recycled, up-cycled, repurposes objects and giving people new values. "
The most exciting moment during the creative process?
"Doing something new in this phase of design and furniture design is intriguing to me. The way that you get to new is not what people would expect. Because the big part of my process is looking at a really bunch of nice stuff, fabrications, materials, or art and sort of putting it all next to each other and figuring it all out how I’m going to create an idea into a new one. A lot of today’s productions are all about remixing that already exists, the idea of making truly off my something new is I think a little impossible, and our image-saturated culture. I'm intrigued with the idea of new that can come from two unalike ideas next to each other and see what they have in common. Pushing the boundaries that the material capabilities is very important."
Have your practice changes to keep up with technologies?
John Vieweg | Creative director of "The High Key" —
"I have the tendencies to sit on my computer and make a lot of imagery, but now I’m in the phase where I have this sufficient catalog and jump into producing and make the piece to reality. Translation between Ideas and images builds functional pieces of design that you can acquire."
Does the high key has signature materials? or would you want to establish a collection of furniture that sticks to one material?
After the success of the rocking chair. The High Key has been working with an acrylic manufacturer who has some knowledge of optical effects, and what sort of minimal interventions you can make to acrylic color and create an amazing sort of optical effects.
John Vieweg | Creative director of "The High Key" —
" We’re looking at this technique where you can adhere a sort of highlighter quality paint to just an edge of acrylic keys, but it will reflect the entire of that keys and color the edges while not showing up at the surface at all. The fact that optical effects exist is just fascinating to me. "