Most of us are familiar with David Lynch‘s film The Elephant Man about the Victorian curiosity Joseph Merrick, who was severely deformed with elephantiasis. But even Lynch’s surreal mindscape couldn’t have dreamt up this strange concoction, which pays homage to Merrick with an elephantiasis lamp.Designer Daan van den Berg has taken the deformative disease and transferred it to the world of household consumer products in the form of the Merrick Lamp. To get his unusual lamp, van den Berg hacked an IKEA lamp called the LAMPAN (below) by 3D scanning the product and infecting the file with a digital version of elephantiasis.
Photograph: Leo VegerThe file is then 3D printed to create the finished product, but because elephantiasis causes random deformities and is essentially generative, each lamp is unique. Like a snowflake, but a lot weirder. The lamp is part of the Hacking IKEA project, which supports the appropriation, adaptation and transformation of standard IKEA products.[via Next Nature]@stewart23rd
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