Sunday November 24th 2010
11.00 – 17.00
Project Space Onomatopee
Kanaalstraat 8, Eindhoven
Free entrance
THE KIOSK showcases the work that was created within the scope of the ‘Typographic Voice’ minor, which ran through the months of september to december 2009 at the ArtEZ Academy of Arts Arnhem. This minor focused on the changing role of the designer, transitioning from maker to author, and assessed the affects current technology has on stable and unstable media, language and communication. Students were encouraged to interact during all phases of the project by ‘open sourcing’ their creative process on the Typographic Voice Blog.
The design of the exhibition was based on this conflict of language, form and medium. It is an attempt to take concepts that are native to the virtual domain and translate them directly to the project space of Onomatopee, displaying the work in such a way existing relationships between pieces become visible. This relational context should result in a visual interaction between the work.
Every student was asked to select a maximum of three pieces to showcase at the exhibition. These pieces were hence provided with a descriptive text and tagged with several keywords the student defined himself. These keywords (or ‘tags’, as known on the internet) vary from formal characteristics as ‘black & white’ or ‘catalogue’ to more abstract concepts like individuality and language. The extent to which these keywords match ultimately determined the position of each piece in the project space. This results in a spatial distribution of work where physical distance actually resembles the substantive relationship between the typographic pieces.
Visitors of the exhibition can navigate the space by use of the handouts provided at the entrance. Twelve piles correspond to the 12 most popular keywords used to describe the exhibited pieces. Every handout displays all pieces tagged with the respective keyword, and provides for each a description and information on where it is to be found. The visitor’s selection of handouts then determines how he or she explores the work exhibited at the Kiosk. (text: tiemen rapati)
Concept, design & programming: Charlie Berendsen & Tiemen Rapati Realization: Leonie Krol, Dominique Banning, Ralf de Graaf, Marjolein Hameleers, Charlie Berendsen & Tiemen Rapati
Here are some stills & video from a project I’m currently working on.
The blocks symbolize events that float trough time. The present is represented by the pink surface, through which the events break on their journey from future to past.
It’s funny that now I posted this, I wonder at how the events in the video have color when they’re still ahead of time, but lose it when passed through. In a sense it would be more logical that they get their definite shape (color) after they’ve ‘been’, be it not that I developed this as a calendar. In which events have less meaning when they’ve passed. But still something to think about!
The Book-problem probably has stalked every media-conscious interactive/graphic designer at some time. These are the ways I’ve yet dealt with the conversion of books to the digital domain.
1. Homer’s eLiad
Last year I tried to find the best digital form for a specific book. I chose Homer’s Iliad because I figured it would be an interesting s…object, looking at it’s origin. From my old Greek classes I gathered the origin of the ‘book’ to be a product of oral tradition. The book is riddled with artifacts from a story telling tradition and has seen a long history of conversions, transitions or mutations, as I began to think about them. Translation, being interpretations, on which further interpretation is based…
So when I indexed the book on it’s properties to be transferred to the digital medium, the “mutability” of the book, above most else, ought to be preserved. Other values to be taken aboard are the original greek script, and the necessity for translation in order to be interpreted; no-one is native in old-greek.
The digital version created room for an unlimited number of translations, based on the original script and on previously entered translations. Being presented without hierarchy, these should allow for continuing mutations, online.
2. The “Show Off Shelf”
Okay. So now the iPad is here, all books are dead. Ehh.. Well. Maybe not just yet, but a future with a database replacing the bookshelf is definitely thinkable. But when thinking in terms of a bookshelf, how is that thing represented online? How can I brag with my learnings, wisdom? How can I satisfy my hunger to collect? How does this manifest in my (physical) personal space?
I tried answering some of these, creating a room projection that kept several key aspects of the physical book intact; shape, cover and thickness, while using scale to represent my pride on the specific item. Sorting and filtering, at will. Then I lost myself in the actual programming practice and ended up having created a semi-slick, style-accessory for in your living room. Or iPad.
I recently revisited an old project Joey and I did during the spring of 2008. (before the death and rebirth of this blog)
Use this flash applet to enter your name and launch the site. (Only in Dutch)
NCDO approached us to create an innovative campaign for the Third Chamber elections, a summit that discusses the Milennium Development Goals. The result was an interactive documentary; a cross-medial website that generates a film based on the user’s actions by dynamically merging individual shots.
It was a challenging, stressful but very fun project that despite the very tight timeframe (one month) had a very satisfying endresult.
We enjoyed devising the concept (with sketches flying around that had ‘choice-trees’ with over a hundred different outcomes..), wild days of filming, meeting true Dutch celebrities and having to retake their shots because we f****d the lighting Manic days of video editing and programming, and of course trying to shortcut testing just to find out that’s a very bad idea.
My goal was to use the simple rules of perspective (objects in the distance appear to move slower) to create a rhytmic pattern for audio & visuals.
The projection is developed in processing in which a landscape photo is animated into moving slices which speed corresponds to their relative distance to a horizon. At present this creates the experience of watching from a train window.
The audio-part still sounds awful, but I’m currently focusing on optimizing the visual part. The illusion of depth is easily achieved, and in addition I shift colors to enhance the ‘eclipsing’ effect that occurs after a while when the slices come back in line. Watch the middle section, when it has completely shifted color, a ‘partial eclipse’ occurs, when it comes back to the initial color (cyan), all colors line up.
Here are some still frames (two partial & one nearing total eclipses) from the project:
This *digital sculpture* should visualize the conflict of the european identity; the ambiguous relationship of Europe with its residents. To the outside, Europe cares to look united and whole, but inside Europe no-one feels himself to be “european”.
It’s simply a collection of 27 points that attract and repel each other (red/white connections), with these relationships gradually changing every second. A skin partially covers the internal hussle, representing europe’s facade to the rest of the world. Built in processing.
Last night I finished work on an interactive visualization of the datasets I collected from COW, containing all data on conflicts that had occurred globally in the past two centuries. The final piece has become an experiment on what amount of information can be put into one graph while remaining informative. The visualization works on two levels, an overview that allows the spotting of trends, and an in-depth look into a particular time frame.
One navigates through the set along a time line that can be controlled by mouse and keyboard.
Though it may succeed in displaying a lot of data, I’m not really satisfied with the overall look of the outcome. It feels like I cramped in too much information, losing control over its shape. Earlier, more abstract sketches displaying just a fraction of the data were much more pretty.
The “global” overview featured in the background/timeline is a visualization of the relative army sizes per country, divided by its population. Relative large armies generally signify a special situation.
This conceptual type is based on the western culture embedded in the typeface Helvetica. Helvetica is a typeface apparently able to fit any brand or product, and this shapeshifting behaviour projected on western consumerism is what provided the base for this conceptual type.
Sellvetica is a typeface that has in theory infinite fonts or variants. As a projection on any consumer product will do. This is the "Philips Senseo" font.
Pictures are taken at a 30 degrees angle from the projection, complete font comprises the full 360 degrees of the consumer product.
Continuing from the Negative Space post, I proceeded into converting text to a spatial environment. This first experiment adds the previously mentioned ‘impact’ that a word has, in positive or negative context, to the z-axis. This produces a landscape in which words with strong positive connotation form mountains, while negative association results in deep pits.
When we offer people only the reactions to an event, an image forms in their head of what must have happened. This is probably an unique image for everyone, their unique reality, with common factors and differences. Exposing this interpretation can be done by condensing the mental image.
Originally started as a personal project, an ongoing research into movement, I started separating RGB channels of shot footage. This technique I used earlier to obtain stereoscopic film, but this time the 3D component played no part. When B&W footage was split into its RGB components, a subtle delay of a few frames visualized motion by color appearing. Extending the delay time resulted in an upscaling from movement to dynamics. B&W represents static matter, while colors show dynamics.
Or with only a few frames delay, we detect motion:
While when we upscale the ‘delay’, each color channel represents it’s own timeline; there is virtually no black & white left, as the intensity of the sunshine in the red channel may differ from the other channels, shifting the color balance, resulting in coloring the grass blue…
The next step was to do this on the fly with live input. This project was written using Max/MSP+Jitter. The installation works live, delay adjustable on the fly, black & white imagery can be cancelled out:
The project has featured during the ArtEZ Arnhem Exhibition 2008, on KONIJN2000 and in Studio K. Maybe the biggest compliment has been that it was especially well received by junior spectators. UPDATE: The project will feature as a permanent installation at the NEMO Science center!
This is a visualisation of all 1015 English three-letter-words, structured according to their usage in the English language.
I set out to map all the words according to their ‘alikeness’. Words as cat, hat, and bat should be placed on equal distance from each other as they have two letters on two positions in common. I devised a system that would score each word on these properties:
But ran into problems when I wanted to place them in respect to each other. I ran the “attraction”-calculator for each word to each other word and used the sum of these values as their “popularity-index”; which describes the uniqueness of the word. A word that has little words that look like it scores low.
Next I calculated the usage of the words as used in the english language, and the usage of the letters they’re built off (their ‘scrabble’-value), and plotted this in a new graph, inspired by star trail photography.
Position near the center marks a non-unique word, speed is determined by the use in the english language, and color is calculated from their ‘scrabble’-value; a red word has a common letter on the first position and two rare on the second and third. A overall light word is composed of common letters.
And lastly, one was able to explore this universe of words by typing the words in, hence creating dynamic constellations that deform by the speed of the words:
During the past week I attended the Live Cinema Workshop, produced by RE:VISIE at the National Dutch Film Festival. Martijn van Boven, an abstract filmmaker and composer (and also teacher at the Arnhem Art Academy ArtEZ), supervised the workshop.
Teamed up with Anja Masling, Hetty van der Kloot, Marina Stavrou and Cas van der Pas, we decided to go all analog for a short live performance conceived within 16 hours.
The visuals were created by recording and projecting the reflection of water wrinkles caused by the accompanied sound (live performance of Renoud Netjes, Rosalien Derkinderen and Tara van der Wel), as well as capturing falling droplets hitting the surface by means of a stroboscope.
Manic days of video editing and programming, and of course trying to shortcut testing just to find out that’s a very bad idea.
Flash ‘attraction’ tool
The Comment Condensator
Exploring the mental images of people.
When we offer people only the reactions to an event, an image forms in their head of what must have happened. This is probably an unique image for everyone, their unique reality, with common factors and differences. Exposing this interpretation can be done by condensing the mental image.
Developed in collaboration with Tineke Dorst