ROTTERDAM — Fancy a phone that looks like Damien Hirst’s diamond skull sculpture? An ashtray or a cigarette lighter resembling the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium in Beijing? Fake medals? Wads of counterfeit U.S. dollars and Chinese yuan? (Note to forger: real U.S. dollars are printed in green and black, not red.)

You can buy most of these trinkets in any big Chinese city, but these particular ones appear in “daringdesign,” an exhibition running through Nov. 20 at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. They are there as examples of the tinselly junk that dominates consumer culture in China and to illustrate the challenge faced by the Chinese designers whose work is featured in the show as they struggle to develop a more meaningful approach to design.

China is eager to evolve from being the world’s biggest workshop to being a research and development center. Unlike most of its rivals, it has been able to invest heavily in the hope of accelerating the process. More than a hundred new design schools have either opened in China in recent years, or are currently under construction there. The question of when (rather than whether) China develops a dynamic design culture is a critical issue in global design: as is what sort of culture it will be. These themes are explored not only by “daringdesign” in Rotterdam but another show, “China New Design,” which will be presented at La Triennale Design Museum in Milan until Sept. 11.

The two exhibitions are very different in scale. “Daringdesign” is bigger, better financed and more focused. It analyzes the role of provocation in the work of eight Dutch and Chinese designers, and describes the cultural and economic contexts in which they operate. All eight participated in “Taking a Stance,” another exhibition from the N.A.I. that toured China last year. Among the Dutch participants, Irma Boom designs books, Hella Jongerius products, Rem Koolhaas/OMA architecture and Alexander van Slobbe fashion. The Chinese contingent includes the architects Urbanus; the graphic designers To Meet You; the fashion designer Ma Ke; and the artist, architect, designer and political activist Ai Weiwei.

“China New Design” at La Triennale is less ambitious. It consists of a selection of projects from “New Design,” a series of exhibitions held at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing last year. There is no attempt to contextualize either its contents, or broader developments in Chinese design, at least not at La Triennale. (I haven’t seen the parallel version of the show at Palazzo Chiablese in Turin.)

The good news is that there is compelling work by emerging Chinese designers in both the Rotterdam and Milan exhibitions, particularly in graphics and fashion. This isn’t surprising given that it is relatively cheap and easy for young designers to work independently in those fields, which are typically the first design disciplines to evolve in expanding economies. By contrast, product development is so expensive that designers tend to depend on winning commissions from empathetic manufacturers, who are dispiritingly scarce everywhere, but especially so in China, where much of industry is still state-controlled. Linda Vlassenrood, curator of “daringdesign,” searched for a Chinese product designer whose work was strong enough to include in the show, but could not find one.

Luckily, there were richer pickings in graphic design. Liu Zhizhi and Guang Yu, who work separately but also collaborate in the design group To Meet You, are the only designers to appear in both the Rotterdam and Milan exhibitions. Now in their mid-30s, they grew up in a China where the only manifestation of graphic design was government propaganda. By the time they enrolled at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, the graphic scene was slowly emerging. In the decade since they graduated, each has defined a distinctive design language in projects commissioned mostly by friends in art, fashion, music and publishing.

Their designs are formally expressive, yet also critique Chinese consumerism. (It was their decision to include the “Damien Hirst” phone and fake dollar bills in “daringdesign.”) Like Ruan Qianrui and other graphic designers in “China New Design,” Mr. Liu and Mr. Guang use traditional Chinese techniques of illustration and printing in their projects, as well as references to daily life. Though a critical difference between their designs and Western graphics is that they are intended to be read instinctively, as is the Chinese custom, not rationally.

Chinese history is also cited in Urbanus’s architecture, notably in its contribution to “daringdesign,” a social housing project in Guangzhou, inspired by ancient toulou, the circular buildings that provided communal housing in China for centuries. Similarly, the influence of traditional Chinese dress is evident in Ms. Ma’s fashion collections. She conceives her clothes as protests against rampant consumerism by making them from recycled fabrics and garments, often using ancient processes and styles, and inventing her own organic dyes. The result is a more convincing interpretation of sustainable fashion than many of her Western contemporaries have mustered.

Though the most provocative work in either exhibition is predictably Mr. Ai’s. By combining art, design and architecture projects at his studio, FAKE Design, he has perpetuated the Chinese tradition of mixing different disciplines. When Ms. Vlassenrood asked him to choose a political project for “daringdesign” last fall, he suggested exhibiting the official responses he had received to requests for information on the causes and consequences of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan in which more than 5,000 students died. He finalized the plans for the installation before his arrest in China in early April and was released last month.

“After Ai Weiwei was arrested, we didn’t know if the Chinese government would stop the work from leaving China, but they didn’t, and people in his office told us that they really wanted the exhibition to go ahead,” Ms. Vlassenrood said. “The concern now since his release is whether showing these letters will put him in danger. Up until now we have had no indication that it will. This is extraordinary work, and it is very, very important for us to show it.”

Asian consumers are becoming some of the most prolific app downloaders in the world.

While Western countries saw a decrease in the number of apps downloaded in the past six months ending in May 2011, the application download volume in Asian countries has grown significantly.

In countries like China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, the most popular apps are often highly localized.

An average of 34 percent of the most popular iPhone apps in Asia are only popular within the region. In the US and Europe only 20 percent of applications are aimed specifically at North America and Europe respectively, explained mobile application analyst Distimo in a recent report on the Asian app market.

To get a better idea of the apps Asian consumers are downloading, Distimo honed in on "Asia's most popular applications that are not popular in the United States," in both the Apple App Store for iPhone and the Android Market.  

Apps in the games category were the most popular in the iPhone App Store. The top apps in Google’s Android Market were more evenly spread between categories and featured few games.

Highest ranked free applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone, Asia, May 2011:
1. KungFu Food-Panda by Topzilla - Games-Action, Games-Arcade
2. Me So Ramen by Moxy Games - Games-Action, Games-Arcade
3. Simply Find It! by Simply Game - Games-Puzzle, Games-Trivia
4. A Mental Mouse by AceViral.com - Games-Action, Games-Racing
5. Antrim Escape I by Game Hive - Games-Puzzle, Games-Role Playing

Highest ranked free applications in the Google Android Market, Asia, May 2011:
1. Gallery 3D by Rayman50 - Media & Video, Widgets
2. WebMD for Android by WebMD, LLC - Health & Fitness
3. 글로리 코레일 by KORAIL - Travel & Local
4. HistoryEraser by DUMAPIC - Lifestyle
5. Documents To Go 3.0 Main App by DataViz, Inc. - Business

Highest ranked paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone, Asia, May 2011:
1. Birzzle by Enfeel Inc.- Games-Arcade, Games-Puzzle ($0.99 - $1.42)
2. FIFA 11 by EA SPORTSTM (World) by Electronic Arts Nederland B.V. - Games-Simulation, Games-Sports ($0.99 - $4.99)
3. PhotoShake! by MotionOne.co.Ltd - Photography ($1.99 - $2.84)
4. MONOPOLY Here & Now: The World Edition (International) by Electronic Arts Nederland B.V. - Games-Board, Games-Family ($0.99)
5. Photo Folder (Secret Organize Transfer) by EnSight Media - Photography ($0.99 - $1.42)

Highest ranked paid applications in the Google Android Market, Asia, May 2011:
1. SportsTracker Pro by sportstracklive.com - Sports ($9.80)
2. Solo by Coding Caveman - Entertainment ($4.07)
3. On The Ministry by PaKeSoft - Productivity, Widgets ($1.44 - $2.51)
4. UltraChron Stopwatch & Timer by TheSpinningHead - Tools ($0.99 - $1.99)
5. SpeedView Pro by Code Sector - Transportation ($0.99 - $1.99)

how to wirelessly send pictures from any camera to an iPad or iPhone

Rort - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rort is a term used in Australia and New Zealand. It is commonly related to politics, or, more generally, a financial impropriety, particularly relating to ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rort

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