DAITO MANABE

Multimedia artist Daito Manabe, founder of interactive design and programming firm Rhizomatiks Research, is no stranger to high-tech installations. “This collaboration with Gucci and Alessandro Michele was a first for me though,” he says. “We worked very closely in the realisation of this room.” For the Gucci Words Room, Manabe played with the phrase L’aveugle Par Amour (Love is Blind), the title of an 18th-century French novel seen on many of Michele’s designs, juxtaposing the words with symbols and motifs from Japanese literature. The result looked something like a digital pinball machine, with symbols and graphics bouncing off Gucci products hanging around the room.