Bloemaert was the name given to inspire me and from here on I went on investigation. This particular man (and his relatives) had been quite busy from the 16th into the 17th century with some pretty amazing paintings. I was quite ashamed I hadn’t heard of this man before, but he wasn’t quite the celebrity I had in mind.

His work mostly reminded me of the Italian renaissance painters we all know but he was on a lower level. Nontheless this was some high quality work he produced and he is not to be underestimated. I really got into studying his paintings and found them even more interessting when I knew the actual stories behind them and at that point I had found my concept.

Most paintings from before the 19th century were either religious, mythologic or (self)portraits. Bloemaert’s analog portfolio consisted mostly out of religious paintings with some greek mytology and selfportraits inbetween them. For example “The adoration of the magi” is an all known bible passage which a lot of artists painted for us to portrait a scene so we’d have a bit of an image of what had occured.(or not, you decide)

I didn’t want to push it into a religious corner keeping it as open as it could be, but with the churches being most artists clients(read funders) you can’t ignore the fact of the religious subjects. My final selection of 6 paintings, after studying almost all of his work, consisted out of religious and non-religious work.

Given that the subjects of the paintings made me more intressted was something I wanted to use. I was going to think out something that would show people how to understand the paintings by a less boring way than reading the sidenote. I also remembered that the museum, in general, can’t really grasp the attention of the youngsters who you can’t blame for having a short attention span, just like I had(or still have). So that would also be a factor in the development to make it educational by adding some interactivity and less dusty storytelling.

A puzzle which could be digitally read and once in place would trigger a part of the storytelling was what came to mind as a productconcept. I also wanted the puzzle to look like it was taken from the time Bloemaert actually lived. I thought out this altar alike stand which would hold 9 blocks with an symbol on each side taken from the paintings. If you’d turn the 9 blocks and put the symbols in the same layout as the painting displayed the symbols, the story would move on. The symbols would show you the meaning of the painted image and teach you the story the painting shows us.

It’s a pretty though concept as you’d have to know how to communicate the same thing the painter wanted and be clear in what you think he wanted to tell.

So off to the D.I.Y. to get some hardwood bars to saw into square blocks so I could get an image of what I was creating. My technical teacher gave me the hint to visit the Fablab sometime and that they could help me out in my quest for some wood engraving.

I had no clue of what this Fablab could be and visited them on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam. After passing it four or five times with somewhat friendly women waving I found out that the awesome castle alike building was the one housing the Fablab. They helped me out greatly and the people working there are just the best. Friendly, good attitude and a good way of helping and being helped. Very progressive and very intressting and I would recommend you visiting them if you have some wacky ideas.

I made my prototype block and was pretty happy about it. The deadline was coming closer and closer and I couldn’t get my head around detecting the symbols being displayed on the blocks. I went on working with processing and open frameworks but I had too less knowledge to combine a difficult modded detection with a storytelling application.

So I settled for less in order to finish the product instead of having something that wouldn’ t work and got on with a flashapplication showing a live webcamfeed that would film the bottom of the blocks. Now if the right symbols on the blocks would face you, the painting would be on the exact other side of the blocks and this painting would be projected right in front of you.

Here I have the outdoor presentation in the hall of Centraal Museum Utrecht, the intern prototype presentation at school and some proces photography.

You can also download the full design document that gives even more insight. (in Dutch)

I, got teamed up with one of my fellow students who was pretty familiar with audio and another student who was well aware of how you should produce a good story.

Apparantly our teachers for this subject got the inspiration out of something I myself found quite intressting too. We went on from Hilversum to Amsterdam to follow an audiotour.

On forehand I downloaded the audiofiles and put them on my mp3-player and had a good headphone to accompany it. As we started we were guided by footsteps and were led through multiple places you’d never come as a tourist. A pretty boring story was told but nontheless did I love the concept of telling a story this way.

Fun fact: we were held up by two men who’d stare at us pretty strange and started talking to us about how we’d have scanners and were spying and invited us in for a ‘talk’. I thought this was part of the tour so I played my part as if it was a Shakespeare. In hindsight this could be seen as pretty confusing for the lads as we heard, at the end of the tour, that this wasn’t part of the tour and I had probably been talking to a couple of somewhat old drug users/dealers which justified their suspicion of being watched the keepers of  the law.

So after this insightfull audiotour it was up to us to come up with a concept for our own audiotour. The name thought out was Disaster-us. I had this drama alike story in mind where 4 participants would verbally battle with eachother. Each person starting out with a different briefing of insights in the full story so every person would have a piece of the puzzle.

After some debating the story of a corrupt corporation, who would cover an intern disaster.

Four characters would feature in this story taken from every level of the company.

• The CEO would have to be the one to escape and delude his personnel.

• The office-employee would have the knowledge of fraud/cover-up and could try to team up with the CEO or team up with his ‘lower’ co-workers and uncover the scam thus reporting himself.
• The administrationdesk would have some of the info and would be able to contact all the participants but would not have enough status to join the scam.
• The security guard at the door would be able to open al the doors with the set of keys he has but could also not join in the scam.

The most intressting part in this is how the story evolves as it is never the same because the participants make up their own dialog and a very charming CEO could delude them all but if he or she has a weak presence or a strong feel of guilt his personel could expose him very quickly.

These are some slides out of the presentation. The final product was quite different and scaled down to a single person with two moral thoughts who would speak into his left and right ear with a pretty spectacular ending which would lead to the roof of the school.

The briefing more or less instructed us to redefine an artform. I teamed up with 3 more students and made a pretty solid team to do some serious brainstorming. Long story short; Kabuki. Japanese theatre artform where the story is told by body positioning combined with sound and a matching prop like, for example, an umbrella.

As we knew next to nothing about this subject, we decided we’d all do a part of research like sound, positioning and started thinking about possible concepts/technology we could use to make our modern Kabuki.

And a couple of moodboards, discussions and presentations later we pretty much finalized our concept. One of my fellow students invited the whole team for dinner and we wrote the story in one evening which was pretty relieving as I got myself in to a gigantic load of technical difficulties I had no guarentee of succes for.

But once something amazes me I got to know how it works and than I’d love to implement it into one of my projects as soon as possible. So I took on 3d-mapping and making my own sensors.

I got amazed by 3d-mapping by seeing examples and I thought; how could something so simple stay unknown for such a long time? I rented a projector from my school and started experimenting(poor recorded video here) at home delivering my family pretty spectacular shows. I connected my tablet and started painting/graffitieng my whole house. But as you know, normal people need light at night so they can see what they’re doing so my proper experiments were mostly deep in the night and close to morning, so I slacked school a bit coming late with close to no sleep at all.

Lessons i’d surely to arrive in time for were the research and development given by two masterminds who I could explain my problems to and recieving most helpful feedback and I have to say that this, hands down, is the best subject in school.

They explained how my sensor problem could be solved as I had no clue how to begin. I was told to take a usb keyboardchip and try to solder copperwire on to the connectionpoints and try to connect two copperstrings to combine and thus put out a digit on my screen. I was in total awe of this actually working(video here).

As our story required a lifepath, I thought it would be perfect if you could to actually walk the lifepath and trigger the installation as you’d move forward. So I thought out a path going with the story and made these pads, of cardboard, that would connect when you’d stand on them. And connecting these pads to al kind of different combination wires that were wired to the keyboard chip and programming that into flash so that would trigger the right videomap projected by 3 projectors. Completely insane, but not impossible.

This project was also taken more serious as we got an actual venue to present our work where an audience would come and see us.

So two weeks before the opening we got presented our space and there was a LOT of work to do. I had prepared myself with my wacky experiments and was ready to go and do some proper work. Actually standing on location provided an unknown drive for me.

Slippin’ and slidin’ on ice and snow we’d go to work everyday. We worked untill and finally settled for what we had standing. I was still not fully satisfied but we’d have to let go and grab a beer before the show had already closed.

All in all, a lovely project and a huge leap in education.

• Our overall research and progress blog is found over here.(in Dutch)

• And for even more visual coverage visit my teammate Marianne Krist her behance on Kabuki.

On sidenote: I also helped out another group who had no teammate with technologic experience so I fixed their flashapplication but there is no visual input from me just scripting so I’ll save you a covering of that story.

So for once this time I decided to pass for additional tasks like programming or art direction, as I forsaw the fact that nobody, at that point, in our classroom would be able to create an Ipad app. We were going to get a pretty basic application where all the design is straight out of the window which would dissappoint the art direction.

I got assigned to do an interview as my main goal so I started thinking out concepts as the main editor(s) thought out a subject. Our magazine was named: Transfer.

I didn’t want the standard interview so I was thinking about an ongoing interview or an interview in controversial circumstances like debating morals while playing a shooter.

Then I went on with the first idea after a debate with my teacher, after sneaking into the secret technology vs. art direction meetings and took on the everlasting interview idea.

Now there are millions of message boards and opinion polls but they are mostly based on discussions and arguements that are (mostly) backed up with actual facts. I wanted to do something more humorous and less serious so I made my Transfer Wisdom.

Transfer Wisdom was not about facts but based on the first thing that comes to mind when reading a question. No research or correct answers required, maybe some cleverness.

Meanwhile the art department decided that wool would be our main designelement. I decided that I wanted to combine that with a schoolboard as Transfer would be the wool and Wisdom would be the schoolboard.(ahum)

A rough task to just go and think out 5 or 6 concepts for different emotions with a minimal interaction. So I started thinking and by this time in my school period I decided I wanted to do more with physical interaction.

So the three concepts I coughed up were more or less all based on that type of interaction.

The first, to trigger amazement, I went on and thought about what would amaze me and it had to be something fantasy alike as I’m not that easy to impress(ha!). I thought about a different planet where you could more or less play god by walking into a vegatable propagation and start playing with the growth of the fruit and veggies.

Second, I got inspired by the Japanese who are fishing on the street with their Iphone and tried to think out something similar which would let you have pleasure/fun and made you think about how fun could be experienced outside of all modern technology. Inside an office would be an actual wooden bridge you could stand on and feed digitally projected ducks.

With the third concept I took on the emotion melancholy. Sadly looking back on certain icons(like gameboy) in time that would make you want to go back in time to experience it the same way as you did when you were a kid. I made a wheel that could turn back time and as you turned the wheel the icons would pass you by untill you were born. But if you’d let go of the wheel it would roll back to the icon of the current time(let’s say an Iphone).

In other words; you can’t stay in the time your melancholic thought goes out to. On the positive side, you could come to the conclusion that the current time will become a melancholic thought once you get older, so you have to enjoy the moment you currently live in.

I’ve redrawn my concepts into more representable material. The crappy ones, which I also included, were made on the trainride towards these lessons.

Environmental design was a really fast paced subject in which every lesson was ment to produce something and we would discuss eachothers work.

The first lesson we we’re send out on expedition around our own school to find a good spot to hold an exposition. (in this case an media-installation.)

I made up the concept of Ikea man. A man, representing humanity as of today, living in a habitat the same way animals are exposed at the zoo. You could feed this man but he’d become angry when the crowd is throwing food in his perfect designed room.

The next lesson I was going to produce something that my inspiration brought forth. I took “fragile” by Sting and tried to place that in modern society. I combined that with Amsterdam Central Station which is a architectual masterpiece but completely ruined by a hideous blue fence. So I thought I’d give it a nice use by making Central Comrades.

The comrade handshake makes you feel more connected than a normal handshake in my opinion and that’s what the society needs. A better connection.

My idea was to have hands poke through the wall in an inviting comrade shake. The message is: Can you accept an unknown reaching hand? Can you embrace the unknown and take a leap of faith and trust to try and get closer to the other person.

Not to become dramatic but the, in my opinion, best line from Obama: “To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West–know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

The last assignment was to make your dream into an installation. I named it falling asleep.

I took a pretty rough nightmare in which I experienced my own death and tried to portrait what I felt during that dream. So I wrote out my story board and I drew a map of how the interaction would take place.

This one day he brougt along his Canon xm2(filmcamera) together with an wide angle lens. So I tried it on my Canon 450d and for some weird reason it did fit. I couldn’t get really sharp images(no matter what focus) and the edge of the lens would show when not zooming in a bit.

So we wonder around the place pretty local and he shoots his footage as I shoot my photographs and after all that we’re returning home to go on and edit/review the materials.

I love it when going out on a sunny day and just go anywhere you please, exploring places, buildings or sights just because you want to or you think you might get a nice shot out of it.

This is what I got that day: (besides the nasty scars while jumping over a spiked fence while I shouldn’t)

The third but chronological maybe the first ISA project is my ps3 mod. I’ve always wondered how it was to produce something for other media than the computer and now I thought it was time to put on the gloves and discover this section.

The result was my ps3 menu mod where I made my own icons and backgrounds.

I didn’t completely dove into the actual programming but it’s a good start. I did some XML mods but it can’t be seen as that difficult. Next goals is to get something running on my ps3 or make an dynamic theme. Too bad sony won’t release their SDK.

He had this collection of fast cars and usually escaped the law because of his privilege. So I decided to take the monopoly jail, as the prisoner looks like him in his early years (especially with the photoshopped glasses) and placed his fast car on the line of jail and the free translated dutch words “Just Visiting” like he was always balancing on the line of getting caught.

The jail color being orange(the name of the dutch royal family and their royal color)  being the cherry on the cake but the VPRO thought otherwise so no cover from me. Too bad for them, ha!

I just picked up a personal project I did on the side. This was testing my skill to actually draw something as creating an image with (digital)pencil is what I really love but where I’m not very good at.

This testing is what I (still) do most of the time. Some exercise in creating. And every time you exercise in this particular section of drawing you’ll pick up usefull info I’ve been browsing youtube, deviantart and some more individual websites for lessons or tutorials as they are named on matte-painting, portrait, concept-art, anatomy etc.D

I also kept trying myself to nail the hardest part, in my opnion, proportions. It’s pretty hard to keep failing and not give up but I think I’m going in the right direction. I just have to keep: drawing, drawing, looking and drawing.

Here are some examples of the “proof” I used for showing my learning experience.