Chair Motion Studies

The 2006 IKEA product catalog was a remarkable publication. Yet, it does not read that way – by design. Spread across page 198 and 199 are a selection of chairs and tables laid out on a grid. Top row, third from left, is an image of a chair. The caption reads ‘Bertil chair DKK 295: transparent lacquer, solid birch B39xD49, H87cm. Sits 45cm. Design: Nike Karlsson. 200.877.47’. The image resembles a product photograph, but it isn’t. A real treachery by image, this is the first time IKEA publishes a synthetic image, one that isn’t captured by a photographic camera. The Bertil image very silently screams: 'Nothing to see here, move along.' It successfully goes unnoticed and sets off a shift within IKEA from product photography to 3d rendered imagery. Already a couple years later in 2014, 75% of images in the catalog are synthetic. In this conversation with Natalie Kane, Curator of Digital Design at the V&A museum, we delve into the cultural and technological implications of the 2006 Bertil image and the interplay between product images, computer vision training datasets, societal norms and bodily standards, augmented through life among synthetic images.

"(...) Bertil’s image really is a Murphy’s door to the entangled correlations responsible for contemporary image technology’s power. We must question it. Nothing is as it seems. Don’t assume." scn