Exhibition by Pinaffo-Pluvinage within the framework of the Masters Interdisciplinary Workshops

an design be a tool for making the unseen tangible? This question is one of the challenges behind the work of the design duo Pinaffo-Pluvinage, formed by Marion Pinaffo and Raphaël Pluvinage, both designers, graduates of Ensci-les Ateliers and have been working as a duo since 2015.

In recent years, they have observed, manipulated and experimented with the technologies that surround us. Their graphic sensibilities, their taste for intuitive uses and their attachment to an economy of means, lead them to create a physical reality that is both surprising and accessible by all.

Taking advantage of different printing mediums, they imagine objects or installations in paper or cardboard, to give a new vision to phenomena that may seem complex. In 2018, they created a publishing house to publish their project Papier Machine, a book of printed electronics, made in France.

Their challenge consists on expanding the field of investigation to all types of invisible systems, digital and electronic. Their goal is to depict the physical reality that exists behind the virtual realm, impelled by the idea that design and art can reveal these impalpable actualities.

For their projects, working closely with select collaborators (other designers, a scientist, musicians…), they have dreamed up hands-on installations, sensory forms and interactive situations that are surprising at first, but then familiarize us with the logic behind computer code and algorithms, the mechanisms of touchscreens and pushbuttons, the magic of intelligent materials.

From one project to the next, the exhibition establishes a tangible artistic language that draws its power and distinctiveness from the use of simple, economical basic materials and components, transformed or assembled to create ingeniously apt solutions to interact with the resulting mechanisms. Even though they address complex conceptual topics, the works by Pinaffo & Pluvinage are experienced as games, playfully revealing the new realities in the world around us. This ambitious approach can be perceived as the signature of their collaborative work.