assembling

Jerome Rigaud is French designer based in East London, he is running The Bunkery Studios on Hoxton Street, originally setup with Alexandre Bettler, and now helped by Pierre Schmidt and Erika Muller. He is the co-owner of ElectroNest, a research and development company involving Fritz Menzer and Pierre Schmidt with who he mainly work and develops all the magics.

electronic presence
Jerome Rigaud defines his activity of designer using terms like «electronic presence» or «digital objects» which are going beyond the simple scope of the web page design. The term «electronic presence» does not only refer to an url with fancy images and well designed logotypes. «Electronic presence» refers more to a global attitude towards digital mediums and cultures embrassing from the simple home page to the electronic installation (tangible computing) through customized content managment system, home made software, generative application, etc.

An essential curiosity glues all the separates aspects of a digital communication together and supports the communication expertise background. A website can be an extension or a representation of an activity /in real life/. Using the online laboratories «anti-chambre» or «textasplayground» as experimental spaces/territories where the various technologies involved in its production are tested, used, crafted, develloped, customized, designed and coded.

The fields of designs
The design fields confronted to digital mediums does not restrain anymore themselves essentially to a specific visual beautification process - it has to encompass the boundaries of semantics, mapping, taxonomy, publishing system, diffusion, economy, identity, copyright, … Neither does it has to be confined to a simple technical aspect. The WEB is therefore an essential source of informations and inspirations - the new possibilities offered through the ’so called 2.0 version’ reclaims more and more understanding and insight in the global landscape offered and at the same time on a technical and cultural level. Identitification of an activity either of a brand, a company, an art gallery, an individual can be translated/experimented through visual aesthetic as well as through structuration, process or attitude.

Electronest
The company he setup with Fritz Menzer in Zürich Switzerland is one of the core supportive point of the design expertise he can offer. «Electronest» is a R&D platform in the fields of electronic presence, sound synthesis and tangible computing.
It provides specifically designed solutions and accompanies the whole process of design from design/early_sketches to realisation/coding and invests most of his ressources in developing software and hardware solutions.
Electronest recently enjoyed the support of a new associates: Pierre Schmidt - as part of an ongoing effort to enlarge and strenghten its core fundamentals in the field of digital culture.

Collaborations includes design teams such as åbäke, damien poulain, alexandre bettler, daniel mair.
Clients includes datf punk, maison martin margiela, kitsuné, serpentine gallery, maureen paley, independent, jjmarshall associates, ramp industry, backhand.

‘Assembling’ is the place where he is monitor the incoming development in various projects related to content publishing, semantics, tangible medias, design, electronic identity, media management … and various topics related with his activities.

‘Textasplayground’ was originally described as:

« experiments around text used as the basics to generate a generative process. » …

It is now a space where design experimentations still take place; with the creation of Electronest, ‘Textasplayground’ moved on the new servers - allowing much more possibilities in terms of specific customisations and consequently for the electronic creative process. ‘Assembling’ will monitor those experiments, an annotation space about projects and ideas. It is driven by a standard Wordpress customized (so far) by common and simple plugins. The theme used here is called «HTML default». For most of the people it will looks awful and undesigned, at the end it’s just a simple design clin d’œil to the good old websites… the ones which pioneered the «information super mega highway» that Internet has become for most of us nowadays. This design will evolve by soft touches, the same way anti-chambre.net use to behave - it is a kind of electronic performance / presence, an ever changing concept, that will adapt itself to the purpose of communication, a permanent re-construction of the ‘tool’ speaking about itself.