Photos © Frederick Charles, fcharles.com

Doug Aitken brings his startling audiovisual and architectural vision to the iconic Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington with the groundbreaking SONG 1. As night draws in over the next two months, the cylindrical museum building will become a unique 360-degree public cinema screen with accompanying soundtrack based around numerous versions of one song, "I Only Have Eyes for You".  Beck, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, Devendra Banhart, No Age and Lucky Dragon have all recorded cover versions. Tilda Swinton and Jon Doe from LA punk band X are also among those drifting into the projections.

As the work transforms the entire round exterior of the Hirshhorn, each visitor will always have a unique viewing and listening experience and must orbit the building to take in different parts of the audiovisual panorama. In form and content, the piece explores the fluidity of contemporary life and fragmentation of time, space and memory in spectacular fashion.

Aitken has previously shown breathtaking work at MoMA, Serpentine Gallery, Centre Georges Pompidou, Art Basel, in forested hills in Brazil and on a barge off Athens and Hydra Island in Greece. SONG 1 is another transgressive work in a series of stunning contemporary architectural interventions.

22nd March - 13th May 2012, nightly from sunset to midnight at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Text by Thanh Ma

© Victoria and Albert Museum

© Jamie Reid. Photograph by Victoria and Albert Museum

Zaha Hadid Architects

This spring the V&A will present a major exhibition celebrating the best of British design from 1948, the year of the 'Austerity Olympics', to 2012. Over 300 objects will be shown with most of these selected from the V&A's extensive archive.

Homegrown fashion, furniture, fine art, graphic design, photography, ceramics, architecture and industrial products will all be represented. This will be an epic journey from post-war industrialism, to the New Towns such as Harlow and Milton Keynes, to 1960s consumerism, 80s radical art right up to modern day technology and architecture. Expect to see household goods as well as lesser known designs.

The exhibition reminds us of the importance of Britain as a hub of creativity and innovative design even at a time when manufacturing has mostly moved elsewhere. Jaguar, Mini, Concorde, Zaha Hadid, David Hockney, Alexander McQueen, Terence Conran, David Bailey, Vivienne Westwood, David Bowie and Peter Saville are just some of the brands and tastemakers whose work will appear in what will be the definitive retrospective of modern design in this country.

British Design 1948-2012: Innovation in the Modern Age takes place at the V&A from 31st March to 12th August 2012.

Text by Thanh Ma

Rachel Rose defies most definition. A fine artist working across a variety of media (she will taking part in an exhibition from the end of next month, currently open in London, creating work on the theme of what Martha Rosler might still yet describe as the Semiotics of the Kitchen; you'll find more details in your daily Culture section as they emerge), she launched a new book of poetry yesterday in an opening in Because Magazine's second favourite city, New York.

Rose likes to untangle, expose and play with the structures that scaffold our daily routine. This new book, titled Open Poem and produced in collaboration with artist Alex Da Corte, who created the imagery that accompanies the written work, is comprised a series of poems that have either been written or came to life as messages on a smartphone. The tricksy interplay between tradition and technology, between the tap-tap-typing that happens innately, thinking more of issues of space than of accurate content, and that most intimate of forms: poetry.  Tactile sensuality is a theme that overarches the work, and the associated photography of original sculpture alongside the poetry transfers plaster to plastic in a very visceral and relevant material mash-up: clashing tradition with the shock of the new.

Rose turns what might be thought of as a gimmick into a very deliberate, and very thoughtful, trope through which to explore contemporary notions of intimate, personal, one-to-one communication. Readers shouldn't be surprised that this is a simple and engaging read, as well as displaying a consistent strength throughout (no mean feat for a book of contemporary poetry). There are certain traits that American artists have that European artists are still developing (a broad generalisation, and one that is based on the institutional foundations that support young artists; something that is based more on the culture of commodity over there than here, where culture becomes both the object and subject of knowledge).  Balanced finely within this book, it's a small and unassuming treasure that never outstays its welcome.

Open Poem by Rachel Rose with Alex Da Corte is published by Publication Studio.

image: Creeps Back. CD, unisex human pheromones, plaster, acrylic, plaster utensils. 8x11". 2012. Rachel Rose.