User:Harry Senf

2018 Minor

Reimagine an existing technology or platform using the provided sets of cards. Our group was made with Tutu Naima and Hyunjitje

Inspiration

Our starting point

Prototype

Second assignment

The way humans use sound isn't always very efficient. We make a lot of noise, so to stand out we have to make more noise and if we don't want to hear that noise, we turn up our own noise. Super idea. We thought about how nature sometimes inspires design and so the thought about animals and sound.

Whales make supercrazy sounds, a lot of people find it even relaxing. People listen to tapes of wale sounds to relax. So to get away from all the sounds out there the put op wale sounds. But isn't there a better way? Can't we learn something from the wale sounds, rather than just copying it.

The downside of listening to wale sounds is that you don't hear anything around you, which you sometimes want.

So our idea was to transform the sounds around you to mimick the relaxing wale sounds, while still being able to hear some of the things around you.

Instead of just getting an input sound and putting some reverb effects on there. We thought it would be nice if we could alter the sounds in a simple way. With water. So our idea was a headphone, where you could hear the sound around you, but trough water.

You could youse a hydrophone for this, but a regular microphone with a condom worked aswel.

Test

Prototype

Result

Aquatic Acoustic

Video Link : https://vimeo.com/292687674

Meanwhile project To figure out what I wanted to do for my final project I started making a small project.

Based on the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Michael Sandel I tried to figure out which rol advertising plays in our lives. I asked the question: If the common goal is to be happy and everybody is free into figuring out how to become happy. Who teaches us how to become happy. And I think advertising does that.

To show how weird advertising actually is, it put it into a different context. The project Branded Fortune came out of that.

See full project: http://thijsmosterman.nl/branding-fortune.html

Research towards final Project

My approach to the research of this project can be divided into three categories. I started making and reviewing my work constantly deciding what to de next. At the same time I tried to look into what other artist and makers are doing in this field to get inspired by ways of working and making. Also I was doing research into philosophy, filling my head with idea’s that resonate with me and possibly letting some of these ideas spill into my work.

The research though making can be seen in my documented progress.

Max Siedentopf is a visual artist and creative partner of KesselsKramer, currently working in their office in London. This minor I got inspired by his work. At first not only the idea’s and aesthetics, but also the amount of work he produces. He produces a lot of projects that sometimes are not very labor intensive, but still very cool, fun or interesting. His work mentality drives me to produce more work.

But besides that did his concepts and aesthetics inspire my work this minor. The concepts behind his work are most often very simple. Can be explained in on sentence. And it’s produced in such a way that everybody can see themselves making it. And because everybody could be able to make his work, it makes it very democratic and with a low threshold.

Here we see pieces of two projects of him. One is about how children can defend themselves against school shooters. And the other one is about that cars lost their expression of individualism.

This was something I took with me designing my project. I decided not to make my work smooth, polished with professional parts. But with a drill, a bicycle tire and rolling pins. To make the work more relatable en understandable. Everybody knows wat a drill and a rolling pin does and how it works. Because of that the machine doesn’t need to be turned on in order for people to understand the machine. Next to that you get an extra humours element. When every gear is made especially for their task it all looks very serious. But now you get the element of: “Oh how silly, its a rolling pin.”

Roman Signer is a conceptual artist who has produced a lot of firework/explosive installations. Some of his work really inspired me and got me thinking. There is a certain mix of dryness and the feeling of greatness in his work, what makes it work. In some installations of his almost nothing happens, but for some reason I got really fascinated or had to laugh really hard.

What I got out of his work is the context of dryness. So in his work you see something really silly happening. But the context is so serious, and that is what makes it strange and interesting.

Jean Tinguely has fascinated me for the last few years. I saw his work in the Stedelijk Museum a few years ago. I think that he paid a lot of attention into how his machines moved. His gears are deliberately designed in a way that they can never run smooth. Resulting in a machine that moves like an old man with a wooden leg: funny. I think it gives personality to the machines therefore. You’re rooting for the machines, hoping they succeed in whatever they’re doing.

That’s what I took with me making my machines. That the best, most smooth design, may take the personality out of it.

Furthermore is there a ‘genre’ on the internet with makers making, weird stuff. Simone Giertz an William Osman where two YouTube/makers I followed during this minor.

Philosophy This minor I looked the work of a couple philosophers. Not with a goal in mind, but just to fill my head in the hope that some brainfarts would spill into my work.

One think I stumbled upon was the boundary between nature and human defined by the modernism of Immanuel Kant which was put in doubt by Bruno Latour.

According to him we have a relationship with the world. We cannot fully understand the world, but we love to try. We try to look at the world in a mechanical way, looking for the function in nature. Creating order, which gives us the feeling of power.

What I find interesting about this is his way of seeing do difference between what he calls ‘Actors’ and ‘Actants’. He sees the influence of things in the same way as the influence of people.

In a different spectrum I read into the work of Søren Kierkegaart. Who wrote about freedom and fear. Saying that fear, real fear comes from the ability of choice. Fear, not as fear for the dentist, or a bear. But fear for doing the right thing, living your life in a the right way. Not knowing what the right thing is, and at the same time being responsible for the choices that may lead to this right way… scary.

It has lead me to rethink the practice of advertising. If everybody wants to be happy, but nobody knows how to become happy, and everybody should figure out how to become this. What entity nowadays guides people towards a direction? Who tells people how they can live their life in order to become happy? For a large amount I think it is advertising. And my fascination about this idea has lead me to make ‘Branded Fortune’. Showing what (maybe religious) role advertising has in our lives.

I tried to get an idea of what I wanted to talk about in my work, maybe though philosophers. That why I briefly studied: Aristotelis, Kant, Kierkegaart, Faulcault, Latour and Sandel. And I hoped that something would unintentionally manifest into my work. That has happend. Personally I find the work of Kierkegaart super interesting. But looking back I think that Latour had more influence on it. Looking at machines in a totally different way.

Research trough making The base of the idea of this project was not very good substantiated. It was just the idea of machines putting of fireworks. I made a few sketses of ideas and started making.

One idea was two rolling pins popping bubblewrap, an arm throwing small firecrackers and an alarmclock pulling apart a firecracker.

I started with a thing that popped the bubble wrap manually. Giving myself some time to think how to power it while I started working on the throwing machine.

The first idea of the throwing machine was an arm picking up the peas and throwing them. But I realised that that wouldn’t create enough force to throw it and that it was better to make it more mechanical.

This is the point where I started creating rules for my machines.

The firework has to be safe, so safe that it almost becomes boring. All work must be mechanical, made in a understandable way. No code’s No moving parts inside black boxes, with the exception of the machine driving the machine.

The design of the trowing arm was very simple. A turning motor pushed a lever down, which was connected to a spring trowing the pea away.

I started thinking about a new machine. The rules helped my defining what I could and couldn't make. I was thinking about small flames, candles, wigs, lighters. But all these things didn’t seem safe enough. I was thinking about the moving motion of a analoge metronome. But since I didn’t want to use fire, use technology and make it dull, I decided to use a fake battery-powered flame.

The alarm clock used some thinking. There were a few things I hoped to accomplish. All the mechanical parts added to the clock should be on the outside It has to be set in motion by the clock and no additional machinery.

The first idea was to place the string on the place of the bells, and attach the string to wing nut of the alarm. Hoping that if it would wind back, it will pull the stings apart. But there were two things, the moving parts of the alarm clock had no strengt at all. And the strings had to be pulled really hard.

After some thinking I came up with a solution. I made the arms of the bells movable, and pulled them out by elastic bands and springs. The two arms were tightly hold together by a small wire underneath the firecracker. On the hammer that used to ring the bells was a knife attached. When the alarm would go of the knife would cut the wire, leaving all the pressure on the firecracker which would crack open.

Now I had to finish up the first two machines. The bubblewrap plopper had to me driven, and the pea thrower had to be self loading. A process I hoped was easier.

At first I installed a Dremel knock-off at the side of the bubblewrap plopper. Connected with a bevelgear to the bar to pull on the bubblewrap. But I noticed that everything broke constantly using the bevelgear so I dicided to install the Dremel knock-off parralel to the bar, and connecting it with a v-string and a pulley. At that point I realised what the cause of the problem was. The motor was too fast, way to fast. So it would either go too fast, or not turn at all.

With a quick try I saw that my hand-drill was doing quite ok. So I swapped the Dremel for a drill with a cord. At the end I was very happy about this, because aesteticly I think a drill works way better. Everybody knows a drill, what it looks like, how it works. So seeing something fammiliair, that you maybe use yourself, see doing something very weird is way funnier that a think you dont recognise doeing something weird.

Meanwhille I was working on a mini assambly line idea to lift up the peas and pushing them towards the lever. This is something I should have thought out better. At the end it got as far as almost working.

I made a binding of a bysicle tire, between two cylinders with ball bearings in them. They could move freely. With a string (also made of a bike tire) I hooked it up to the motor, but with a turn in the string, so the band would go up while the rest of the parst would move down.

Halfway I installed a snake drill, with the idea of it pushing the peas onto the lever. After being on for a couple of days I think this mechanism succedes maybe once or twice.

Meaning of it all While working on this I thought a lot about what it meant. My way of working was: if there is something that drives me to make this, there is probably something there, I just haven’t fount it yet.

I ended upon the role of technology (visualised in machinery) in our life.

NEXT YEAR, THIS YEAR   To Celebrate a new digital year. This project shows a future of joy and technology in a lighthearted way. It's about the celebration of the new year and also of a new year, a new time.   If technology is mostly useful, how does it celebrate? How does it express joy? and what role do humans play in this joy these machines are having?

How to be Human? Q10

What am I going to make?

What I really like about Digital Craft is that you can start on a project without knowing what the end result would look like. And that’s what I did with this project.

I had a couple things in mind when I started. One project which was impossible (for me) to make. And to hooks, themes that I found were interesting.

Interested about data, binary data, zero’s and ones. All the work that we do at the and of the day are just making new combinations of zeroes and ones. In retrospect it’s easy to look back on a time period and determine what that was like. For instance the flaws of technologie of the past are now used as an aesthetic: noise of a record player, an old camera, vhs tape, and already compression glitches. How will we look back at this time; what are the characteristics about this time-period?

The (impossible) project that I had in mind was a HDD-player, a device where you could put your harddrive in, and that device would interpet the data in an other way in visualise that in a still image.

I kinda knew that was not going to happen, but it was nice to have something to start with. I started looking into a way i could visualise the data.

Reverse engenering

It turnes out that there are people who actually use data visualisation. People who have to look at binary data and determine what kind of file it is, or look up where a flaw is, or where malware is hidden. These people have to have enough experience to be able to do that, because it’s not easy to learn. But when you have seen enough zeroes, ones and hexadecimals, apparently you’re able to. But, off course that is not a good way. So people are trying to visualise data. At least, a couple.

Aldo Cortesi, Greg Conti and the team of Codisec. Those are the only people I could find working on data visualisation for the purpose of reverse engineering. They also talk about the work of each other and also state that a few people are working on this. Anyway. They all have different ways how they interpret data. As you can see below.

Source data

So, I started thinking about translation whole hard-drives. But off course that would be an enormous task. A little bit of hard drive nowadays easily is more than a terabyte. So you would not only need an enormous canvas to visualise the drive on, you also need quite some computer power.

What can be a more interesting source?

In the meantime the FCC where fumbling with net neutrality. That made me thinking. Our time periode doesn’t have to be defined in a visual style, it can be an idea. The idea that in the future the internet will not be as free as it is now.

ALSO IN THE MEANTIME! I read that the english Wikipedia is only 60 gigabyte (the text). And I thought HEY!

60 gigabyte is something that I can manage, also it is a representation of our time (the pinacle of internet), and it is a string of zeroes and ones what our whole society has worked on.

Great.

What have other people made? Michael Mandiberg has printed a large portion of Wikipedia:

James Bridle had printed the revisions of the Iraq War page on Wikipedia

Erik Kessels printed one day of Flickr photos and dumped them in the Foam museum.

What did I make?

I really liked the idea that you can print the entirety of Wikipedia in one book; turn it in an encyclopaedia (again).

I downloaded the English Wikipedia. And decided to use the Cortesi way of translating it to data. I choose this way because it was 2 demential, detailed, looked nice and could (in theory) be translated again to data.

The software to translate it could not translate really big files, so i split the 60GB file to 95MB files with the split tool in the terminal.

Afterwards I put one by one the around 700 files in to the program and created a visual file.

I organises the files and places them in to InDesign.

Added the exact amount of bytes as page numbers.

Printed the book.

Folded every page.

Cut holes.

And sewed the thing together.

As you can see I didn’t succeed yet in making a cover, that is something that I intent to do soon.

How to be Human Q9

The first assignment that I worked on was a project about balance. Together with a group we tried to come op with something that you could interact with and work with balance. We started with the balancing of weird objects. But then we thought of a object that in itself was a simple object. It was a balancing table. And people could interact with it depending on the placement of the objects. So instead of forcing normal objects into doing something with balancing. We made something that made every object a balancing object.

To make it more interactive and social, we made it into a standing table with drinks on it.

(In collaboration with Tom Rentmeester) In our second assignment we tried to visualise magnets. Because we had to make a movie we decided that we worked with video and crt as tools, because they produce moving images with magnets. If we could manipulate that in an analog way we could visualise magnets.

As starting point we used a interview by Richard Feynman, who explains that you can't explain how magnets work in a easy way. We devided the interview in three segments and used a different technique on every segment. In the first one we manipulated the screen with magnets, on the second we manipulated the videotape with magnets. And in the third segment we gave in, in trying to visualise magnets; corresponding with the quote of Feynman.

End result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7wz-CiWrm4

After this we wanted to take the project further. We wanted to make it interactive. The idea was to make a loop: a camcorder captures the screen on a vcr, that shows it on the screen. The idea was that with magnets we could manipulate the tape while it was playing. It didn't work. We tried. We didn't die.

(In collaboration with 郭欣颐) In the third project we had to make a booklet about the mind of the machine. We were inspired by cross-section images about machines. We thought that is a way a machine sees an object. It is a way to visualise an object that is 'readable' for a machine. A cross-section image of an object is perfect for a booklet, because every section could be printed on a page; creating a 3d object hidden in a book.

We used an apple, cut it in thin slices, scanned it, printed it and binded it in a booklet.

What is your craft? (DRAFT)

What is my craft? My craft is to put myself in a position where I can make something that I couldn’t have thought of beforehand.

I start with an assignment or interest; a starting point. And I combine that with something else; an inspiration, fascination, or something esthetic. When there is a large contrast between the two I know that something interesting - which I can’t imagine at that moment - could come out of it.

Then I start making.

I don’t know where it will lead to, so I make sure I don’t limit myself beforehand. I work step by step.

Concepting through making.

Sawing a tabletop, putting it on top of a garbage bin.

Picking up a crt-monitor, hooking it up to a laptop, film that, up close, wide, no magnets, with magnets.

Slicing an apple, scan the apple.

No idea what I am doing. Well, almost no idea.

And then, see what comes out of that. Sometimes nothing, sometimes something. Sometimes a weird green purple block pattern on top of a man who is preaching something about magnets.

Something that I couldn’t have thought of myself.

So my idea is that there is a big change that someone else didn’t thought of it as well. Because of that it doesn’t make it a good project. But it can make for an interesting next step for a project.

A graphic style, a manifest, a way of packaging, a designer kitchen.

But I don't make designer kitchens, I started calling myself an (art) director. A combination of an art director and a director. An art director and director who works in the way described above: lead by the project itself.

Making is Connecting Q7

This course I wanted to create in a different way than I normally do. The major that I follow is advertising. That emphasizes and focuses on concepts. So that what I normally do, that's why I applied for advertising. But I've come to the conclusion that you can limit yourself in your thinking proces, when you can't just randomly create something. Next to that, when I look at my work, I mis a curtain form of art direction. I can't easily make something visually appealing. What I realized, is that when I try a different making proces, it can be visually appealing.

SOOOO! What was my plan for this quarter... I'm gonna make stuff. Period. Without too much of a thought behind it. In the hope that something can come out of that. Maybe an interesting concept, of an appealing visual.

I stared thinking about stamps, and the fact that my bicycle wheels are in a way stamps. I made some examples of using my wheel as a stamp and got tired of it very quickly. I didn't thought is was nice. What is did found interesting was de combination between the ink and the paper, which told different story's.

Using the wheel as an icon I tried to mimic that idea. A made a stamp of the icon of the wheel and printed that on top of something totally different. Facebook profile pictures. When I was done I thought it could be a flipbook. But when I tried to make that, you couldn't really see it.

BUT!

I thought that this idea of an animation could be very nice. And without thinking to long about it I went to the thrift shop, bought some books and cut them in a uniform size.

On which I started screen printing.

Screenpainting was something that I had never done before, so I started with no movement. And while doing that, I tried to think about a way how I could animate the prints.

The way I choose to work, was to use a sheet on which I could draw. On there I layed down the posters, marked te position, printed and went on to the next.

I thought about what I wanted to do with this project. Can it be more than just an animation. Every time I saw a poster that I had printed, I realized that it could work individually. As a visual something, didn't know what.

I thought about what was talked about at studium generale. The difference between autonomous and hetronomous art, and modern vs. post-modern. The definition that they used talked about modernistic art being only form and no meaning, and post-modern being more about meaning and the word outside the art world. Through this I realized that my work was a combination of these two thinks. On one hand we have form, without meaning. Printed on a story, a context. And that I used the neo-dadaistic principle of coincidence to combine them, creating new meaning.

With this in mind I decided that the animation would be a promotion of an art project: '964 Frames'. This project would consist of 964 original pieces that anyone could own. Making it a democratized art work.

Nice story. But I needed to finish it.

It was a lot of work.

I hope you can imagine.

I used the same features that you can find on silk screen prints that you can buy.

After that was done I could photograph every page.

And framed a curated selection.

== End result: ==

http://www.thijsmosterman.nl/964frames/

Group assignment

Because this was a group assignment we wanted to make something that empathizes that. We thought about tools, because that could direct our work towards something we couldn't think of ourself. We started indivudially make a printing tool, and tried to use that to think about something. We thought of the idea to make a printing tool where you need a group to use it. This is what came out of that: A pencit that's controlled by stings who are pulled by the people from a group

A group exhibition where the focus lies on overlay. In posters that can me used as overlayers. A book filled with different printingtechniques which are overlayd on different papers, and tools. And a project where I icon is overlayd onto different contexts.

'''Why I Make (dutch with the exception of the first sentence):'''

To explain myself.

Mijn gedachten over allerlei dingen stroken niet met manier hoe normaal gesproken ergens over gedacht wordt. Ik ga anders met mensen om, waardoor die mensen zich ongemakkelijk kunnen voelen. Ik vind het prettig als mensen mij niet kunnen plaatsen. Ik probeer te kijken wat er achter het gedrag van mensen zit, inclusief mijn eigen. Waarom doen mensen zoals ze doen? Wat is grappig? Wat is gemeen? Ik heb interesses die anderen niet hebben. Over de meeste dingen heb ik geen mening. Mijn twee emoties zijn chagrijnig en vrolijk.

Er gebeurd veel in mijn hoofd die ik als vanzelfsprekend zie. Ik heb ook geen referentiemateriaal met andere hersenen. Wanneer ik probeer uit te leggen hoe ik ergens over denk, kijken de meeste mensen mij met een schuin hoofd aan. Mijn humor is raar en mijn gedachtes zijn onnavolgbaar.

Toch denk ik soms een interessante ingeving te hebben. Maar dan wordt het moeilijk. Want blijkbaar werkt het niet als ik dat gewoon probeer te communiceren naar mensen. Als ik een denkwijze heb die ik wil delen, moet ik dat op een andere manier overbrengen. Ik moet een manier verzinnen om iets uit te leggen aan anderen. Want blijkbaar kan ik dat niet. Ik moet nadenken hoe mensen denken, wat hun referentiekader is en hoe ik ergens in hun bubbel kan inbrengen om mijn zienswijze in te planten.

Ik heb beeldtaal nodig. Een verhaal, een concept, een visual met stopping power. En ik zie het als uitdaging om een ingewikkeld proces zo vorm te geven dat het in een oogopslag duidelijk is. Dat is de reden waarom ik advertising ben gaan doen. Omdat het voor mij niet uitmaakt welke beeldtaal ik gebruik. Welk medium het geschikts is om een verhaal te vertellen die wordt gebruikt. Dat kan een fotoserie zijn, een film, een spel of een kunstproject.

Tot voor kort ben ik vooral gefocust geweest op het concept achter mijn werk. Een idee, een zienswijze, een hersenpoep, noem maar op. Dat werk ik uit, en zo vertel ik mijn verhaal.

Alleen merk ik dat ik een stap naar een groot gedeelte van mijn publiek moet zetten om hun tegemoet te komen. Ik ben opzoek naar een beeldtaal die mensen aanspreekt. Het eerste wat je ziet is natuurlijk hetgeen wat je ziet. En niet iets wat je achteraf zelf moet bedenken wat het is.

Daarom ben ik nu aan het maken. Om een manier te verzinnen, om een verhaal in vorm te geven. Dat verhaal kan ik dan vervolgens vertellen met deze beeldtaal. Waarom ik dát maak is om mijzelf te kunnen toelichten.

Daarnaast (wat ik al eerder zei) vind ik het gedrag van mensen interessant. Dus vind ik het ook boeiend om een projecten te maken waarmee ik het gedrag van mensen beïnvloed. Hoe werken mensen. Hoe gaan zij ergens mee om? Hoe zit hun denkproces in elkaar?

Wanneer ik (of een opdrachtgever) wil dat een mens op een bepaalde manier handelt, hoe is dat voor elkaar te krijgen?

Het werkproces is hierbij vergelijkbaar met het proces van het werk wanneer ik mijn verhaal wil vertellen. Ik moet een gedachtegang van een mens infiltreren, een stap in hun richting doen, een gedachtengoed infiltreren, die aanzet tot actie.

Een punt extra dan de andere reden van maken, en die laatste actie maakt het misschien ook wel erg interessant. Dus omdat mijn autonome werk door mijn onduidelijkheid al in de buurt komt van het beïnvloeden van mensen, leidt dat tot een verplichting om daar mee bezig te gaan. Misschien is het toeval, of is dat de reden waarom ik het gedrag van mensen boeiend vind, maar in ieder geval is dat iets wat mij blijft interesseren en dat is een groot onderdeel van het commerciële werk wanneer je dat vergelijk met mijn autonome werk.

Om dit lange verhaal samen te vatten: (TL;DR) Ik kan mijzelf niet goed uitleggen, daardoor visualiseer ik mijn gedachtes. Dit doe ik door goed naar het gedrag van mensen te kijken. Hierdoor vind ik het gedrag van mensen boeiend. Daarom vind ik het commerciële werk ook boeiend, omdat dat dat heel veel op mijn autonome werk lijkt.