Style Forecast: Lighting Ideas, Octopus Chair, and Luxury Flash Drives

The octopus chair is the first piece in Spanish artist Maximo Riera’s Animal Chair collection. Riera spent three years designing the piece, using advanced technology and variety of manufacturers to give the chair, made of compressed foam, lifelike shape and texture.

Created by London-based design firm Cinimod Studio, DJ Light is an interactive installation that allows guests to stand on a platform and control music and 85 color-changing globes with the wave of a hand. A software program on the platform detects a person’s movements, which triggers the LED-lit globes and sound system, creating a striking, rainbowlike effect.

Flash drives have become a cheap giveaway, but data storage company LaCie has gone in the opposite direction, partnering with Christofle to make Galet ($130), a round, silver-plated, four-gigabyte storage device.

“Art in the Streets,” opening April 4 at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles, is the first exhibit by a major museum on the history of graffiti and street art in the United States. The show will include work from the 1970s to the present day, featuring more than 100 artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Swoon, and Shepard Fairey. In addition, two dozen artists will create installations and murals for the exhibit.

The next generation of teleconferencing, Vgo is a remotely driven robot that enables you to see, hear, talk, and move around a trade show, meeting, or other event, as if you were there.

New from Chronicle Books, Bullet Proof … I Wish I Was looks at British designer Andi Watson’s artistic concert lighting for bands such as Arctic Monkeys, Oasis, and Radiohead (who wrote the song for which the book is named).

To celebrate the “year of the contemporary artisan,” Hermès kicked off 2011 with an eccentric dinner created by François Delarozière of French production company La Machine. Servers offered pepper while hanging upside down, dinner rolls sailed through the air via catapult, and guests grabbed dishes from a giant wrought-iron wheel, among other surprises.

On My Radar: “I always love to look at beautiful art and fashion books by publishers like Taschen, for an immediate hit of inspiration. One of their new, limited-edition books showcasing the work of legendary Italian designer Emilio Pucci [Emilio Pucci, $200] was the inspiration for one of our big award season events. I’m really excited about using the bold, swirling patterns and vibrant, contrasting colors in just the right amounts to create a totally chic environment.”Cara Kleinhaut, owner, Caravents Inc., Beverly Hills

Three feeds worth following on Twitter: @corptravel links to stories about the airline industry, security, hotels, and more, @simondoonan, the creative ambassador-at-large for Barneys New York, shares observations on the fashion world along with his trademark witticisms, and @slowfoodusa delivers daily updates on “good, clean, and fair” eating.