Design
From flower to power
A London art exhibition examines the link between California’s hippie movement and the birth of Silicon Valley.
What do skateboards and Apple watches have in common? The current exhibition at London’s Design Museum California: Designing Freedom has the answer: they were all conceived in the sunny West Coast state. Yet the show goes beyond merely collecting products linked by proximity, instead it begs the question: did the radical free-wheeling lefties of the 1960s spawn the Silicon Valley start-ups of today? Told through some 300 items from film footage to music, prints, pamphlets, posters and products the exhibition ekes out a narrative that ignores the boxy modernist houses and playful space-age inspired Google architecture for which California is already known. Although the moustachioed long-hairs rocking out at Altamont or erecting a geodesic dome in which to communally subsist in a desert weren’t the same fastidious kids cooped up with their computers, there’s a sense of chaos and an anti-establishment feeling that touches both. The exhibition runs until 15 October; the question of how radical Silicon Valley is will likely linger.