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#NTUDEGREESHOW Spotlight: Matt Wilde

This week's Spotlight piece features BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design student Matt Wilde.

    Matt Wilde, Music Stools, BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design, 2019
    Matt Wilde, Music Stools, BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design

    In the run-up to the Art and Design Degree Show, we will be sharing a series of student projects from across the 26 participating courses through #NTUDEGREESHOW Spotlights.

    Music Stools

    Music has always been an adventure. It provokes us, makes us feel happy or sad. Music Stools adds to that journey, we see the music take shape and freeze it as a moment in time.

    I am what you might call an out of the box designer. I am constantly searching for new ways of approaching design. A designer should always be looking to learn and experiment and shouldn’t be afraid to get things wrong.

    Matt Wilde, Music Stools, BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design, 2019
    Matt Wilde, Music Stools, BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design

    When considering how to begin my major project I decided to build upon a strong technical foundation in Computer Aided Design (CAD). However, in the interest of experimentation, I decided to go a little further.

    The project Music Stools was created more as a system than a product. The concept is to have the shape of a piece of furniture change as a result of different data inputs. For the Music Stools project, this data comes from music.

    A music file is analysed and a series of values are extracted. These values correspond to frequencies at different time points in the music, the frequencies are then taken and used to edit key dimensions in a CAD model of the stool. This model can then be easily produced using CNC manufacture to create a piece of furniture totally unique to the song.

    As the furniture market is flooded with hundreds of different designs and styles it is difficult to remain unique. With Music Stools, much of the aesthetic control is relinquished by deriving shape from a different source, therefore making it possible to regain some individuality.

    Music Stools is acknowledged as a concept piece. However, by taking the same philosophy and approach, designers could drastically alter the landscape of the industry. As technology accelerates the rest of the world has to move with it, because only then do we create the future.

    Matt Wilde

    Find out more about the BA (Hons) Furniture and Product Design Degree Show here.

    Published on 31 May 2019
    • Subject area: Architecture and civil engineering
    • Category: Current students; School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment