What's that, you didn't get the memo that it's Onkar Singh Kular Week here at Daddy Types? Don't sweat it, neither did I.
Truth be told, it was the adorable little eyes of Hari & Parker peeking out at me from Regine's blogpost about kid-oriented "The Science of Spying" exhibit at London's Science Museum that brought Kular's work to my attention.
Hari & Parker are the cute-as-pie mascots of a [presumably] fictional government campaign "to promote and encourage children to commit subtle acts of domestic surveillance." Kular collaborated with graphic designer Anthony Burrill and character artist Wilfrid Wood to conceive the characters and to produce some awesome promotional swag: pins, picture books, coloring books, brochures, dolls, etc.
See, Hari the bunny has a microphone in his ear, and Parker has a camera in his nose and a fingerprint scanner paw. The same exhibition has a doll with a camera where her eye should be, which is actually inferior to several products already on the market [including this surveillance teddybear-cam Mark posted on BoingBoing this morning]. And governments have been training kids to narc on their parents' stashes for years. Which means the only way the Hari & Parker campaign differs from reality is in the sleek quality of its execution.
The Science of Spying, Part 3 [we-make-money-not-art.com]
H&P materials are maddeningly not online anywhere, but foe and chris o'shea have installation shots: here, here, here, and here. The printed matter is here.
The Science of Spying exhibit runs through Sept. 02 before traveling [sciencemuseum.org.uk]
