Some time ago we sold our old van and got us a new shiny red one. Thus rendering my old linksopdebus.nl project useless. But then the neighbours started complaining. They were actually missing linksopdebus.nl! So here it is now… linksopdebus.nl is back! I stickered our new van yesterday and renewed the website.

The city of Deventer is close to the completion of it’s fiberglass network and claims to be the first city in Europe to do so. In order to get (inter)national attention, a manifestation named ‘Het geheim van licht’ (The Secret of Light) is being organized on Vogeleiland, a small park in Deventer. It should open on November 28, 2009.

For this event, me and several other artists were asked to come up with ideas for interactive art installations, able to stand outside, in public space for about a month. However, the city of Deventer decided not to spend enough money to be able to grab their desired national attention. A crucial mistake, I thought then and know now.

In order to tackle the lack of sufficient funding, the organization of ‘Het geheim van licht’ tried to forge alliances between artists with proposals and companies with facilities, hoping that would bring down developing and production costs. A sound theory, but due to the tight schedule (two months time from start to finish) it didn’t work out that great. At least, not for my plan.

I had an interesting idea for an interactive installation that deals with the conversion and transportation of signals (just like a fiberglass network). In short, a webcam image gets converted into a few seconds of sound in realtime. This sound is then amplified, transported through air, received by a microphone and converted back to an image on a screen. This kind of signal transport (sound waves through open air) unavoidably gets corrupted by ambient sounds. The audience can play with the input through the webcam, to influence (or even compose!) the emitted sounds. Or they can deliberately add sounds to control the final image on the screen.

I discussed my idea with a selection of companies and they all liked it, so I worked out a detailed description, a sketch design and a budget for this proposal. Software development is already very close to being usable for this installation.

Unfortunately, it became clear that the approached companies were somehow unable to put their money where their mouth was… and there wasn’t enough time left for me to find and negotiate alternative partners. My proposal was then also denied by the organization of ‘Het geheim van licht’, because they felt it was too expensive. From their tight budget point of view they may be right. But 6500 euro for a specially designed and developed, innovative, interactive piece of art, able to hold it’s ground in outdoor public space, to be delivered on a very tight time schedule, isn’t exactly overpriced I think…

Due to positive thinking on my part (some would call that naivety), I have now invested a lot of time in a project that’s not going to happen. I’m not getting paid for my work either. But, it was a valuable lesson.

I still very much want to see this installation in action though. And I bet you want that to, because it sounds like a lot of fun playing with this… right? Anybody out there willing to commission or sponsor?

Quatre Mains Aléatoire (my random piano composition by four cd-players) was invited to perform live at the next MOMI-fest on June 12th, in Romein, Leeuwarden. Check this video of the Quatre Mains Aléatoire performance in Kunstenlab. It will be interesting to see how this audio installation holds up on stage in a pop venue…

Rest of the line-up: Phil Mills, TCTW and De Geweldigheid. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing De Geweldigheid (a fusion of Parkside and Jack Meoff and the Lockerroom Lovers) in action.

Update 1: De Geweldigheid was great (as expected)! And Quatre Mains Aléatoire did quite allright too, considering that you can never be sure of anything with those random compositions… Here are  some photo’s.

Update 2: The video below is a short edit of aproximately one hour of random performance. De Geweldigheid played right after Quatre Mains Aléatoire. I added their first song for the sake of contrast…

A random piano composition by four cd players. One piano stroke per track, about 60 tracks (and some silences!) per cd. The four cd players are set to play random and repeat.

The video shown above was shot at Uncollectibles, an exhibition in Kunstenlab Deventer (more info overhere). Although the video can give you some idea of what this installation sounds like, it’s still only a relatively short fragment and the sound quality is poor. You should probably realize that this installation never produces the exact same composition in a live situation for a very, very, very long time… Some pieces may sound like a child playing the piano, some pieces are silent and some pieces might even sound like they are actually composed.

I personally find listening to Quatre Mains Aléatoire (live!) can be quite addictive… just like looking at How Random – Is Random by the way. Maybe it’s a random thing…

How Random – Is Random is an installation for two digital photoframes. It’s an adaptation of a previous version. A large number of eastern proverbs, split in half, are continuously recombined at random to form new proverbs.

The video shown above was shot at Uncollectibles, an exhibition in Kunstenlab Deventer (more info overhere), to give you some idea of what this installation does. The video plays at twice the actual speed. Since there are over 300 text fragments in each digital photoframe, the number of possible combinations is pretty high and repetitions are rare. Even when looking for days (or months if you adjust the speed on the photoframes).