Hey Kids!
So, how have you been, you ask? Well, unknown yet beloved reader – I’ve been better. I have just lost the favourite part of my life. Friends tell me that "sometimes things just end", and that you can’t do anything about that. Well, sometimes things just downright SUCK BALLS, and you wish they where different, but they are not. Stuff is as beautifull as it can be hard sometimes, and that’s true too. And it’s one of the hardest things I know.

I feel like I’m living in a bubble these days – and I am – this is one of the first days I actually came out of my room. It’s a bright sunny day, and I feel strangely disconnected from it all. Music keeps me sane these days. "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place" by Explosions In The Sky and "As If to Nothing" by Craig Armstrong are playing right now on my iPod. Also, the first album by Burial. Can’t wait for the third one to come out. Not the most fitting music for one of the first sunny days of the year, but bright sunny days are not the kind of days that would fit my mood now anyway.

So – schoolwork then. The show must go on, right. That’s the only stuff i have to concentrate on now, so I better go make my thesis a succes. The last weeks – or months maybe – I was in a very non-productive mood. Partially because of this relationship-crap, but also because making this kind of thesis is very hard for me. I get crushed under the fear of fucking it all up, and I have a hard time dealing with it all – sometimes (or several times a day) I’m just convinced I will never make it – and that’s not the best mood to get work done. It’s a downward sprial sometimes.

But – I’ve been trying to get out of it. As long as i keep going i surely have to end up somewhere in the end. So the next post will be a big status update on my thesis ideas. Before i can get to that though – it seemed like a good plan to list all my other finished projects here. So brace yourselves for it – here they come.

Factory Instrument (Launch)

So – after building it an testing it, we had to go install this on location. It took us a while and the software written by some other group members wasn’t really up to the most stable level ever, but in the end it turned out good anyway. It was really nice, working on a real location, for real people and appearing in the newspaper with our project afterwards. This is one of my favourite projects I have done so far I think. The fact that Wout and me just picked out our craziest idea and started building it AND succeeded (at least as far as I’m concerned) made working in the darkness in an empty wet factory building until two o’ clock in the night all worth it. Also, we had Peter (my stepdad) to cover our back with his awesome "getting-it-done-and-not-despairing-skills". Yeah. It was good. The video is in Dutch, by the way, or at least some Limburgian variant of of it.
On with the show i say!

Noise Pong

Noise Pong is a project produced by Wout "Blobkat" Standaert and me. We continued on the "lets-try-something-that-seems-really-fun-and-get-it-done". Our teachers where all ok and supportive of our idea of a music game without a real purpose or aim. Noise Pong was inspired by awesome stuff like United Game Artists’ Rez and Toshio Iwai’s Electroplankton.
It is a tangible interface to make music with and it uses the reacTIVision framework, Processing (Visuals) and Ableton Live (Sound). What you see in the movie is actually what would be underneath the real table surface you are manipulating.
We plan to continue developing this thing if possible. And, if luck is on our side, we might get to do a performance with two of these tables at once.

Residual Self Image

DSC_0837
Sofie In Residual Self Image

One of two "Mirror Installations" I helped to develop in close succesion. This one captures the face of the person that is sitting in front of the mirror, and then projects it onto the next person who visits the installation.
This creates an eerie blend of two different faces, who eachother in the mirror.
This installation was created in a very short time for a workshop in "De Brakke Grond". This was another one of my more "real" projects, and it was a good experience.

Firefly

Photoshop Composition
Firefly Title Page

Firefly is a quick-and-dirty concept (not built – yet) for an interactive/immersive room.
It recreates a technologic version of the classic Will-O-The-Wisp stories of uncatchable lights that lure you deeper into the forest all the time.
It was meant to be able to be built easy, quick and cheap. And powered by Arduino. I hope to produce this one some day.

I Think I Broke Myself

This is the other "mirror" installation piece. It’s is an interactive / immersive installation for one room.
The installation resembles a mirror and gives a poetic expression to an idea about yourself in relationship to your self image: When you get to close to it – it shatters.
This was a group project and it was made possible by using just one camera, a projector, Arduino and a tool called Isadora. Video above was shot and edited by Roger. This is an important project for me – especially in relationship to my thesis – but we’ll get back to that later.

So far, for now,
All my love to all of you
(and you know who you are)

X
Jim

Hey Kids!

Allright, i got some work done today with Peter.
It makes noise and it W.O.R.K.S.
Arduino + Pure Data controlled Solenoid baby!

Now i have to repeat this 9 more times, for even more noise.
And then test it and install it in “De Stroopfabriek” with Wout.

Take Care Kids,
XXX
Jim

Hey Fellow Students,

So, an overview of my ideas an toughts about “De Stroopfabriek”. Although I think i did a good job sufficiently ventilating all of them in the last class, I’ll recap on them here.

Rust & Dirt!
(Two of my personal favourites)
A shiny new beautiful building, to me, is less beautiful (or maybe interesting is a better word) then the old worn-out “Stroopfabriek” we saw. The reason is that all this dirt and rust is the leftover from a history, a past, a story. So as soon as I found out that the Stroopfabriek would be transformed into a “Fruit Experience Center” I felt the need to preserve some of that old, worn-outness, and find a way to expres the history contained in it.

Machines & Noise!
I’m definately a fan of all the stuff we wrote on our Machines-brainstorm-page.
There seemed to be a lot of good, interconnected stuff on it.
I especially liked the whole Machines=Soul=Organs=Connection=Sound line of thinking we came up with. This is basically very close to my personal idea that was floating in my head since I first set foot in the Stroopfabriek: to make a giant musical instrument out of the Stroopfabriek.

This could made possible with an Arduino prototype board, controlling a load of Relays that trigger a bunch of Solenoids. This basically enables us to hit all the machine parts, building a giant drum kit out of them.

Check the video for an idea of what’s possible – then imagine these solenoids hitting big kettles!
[Edit] I added Olmo’s Youtube underneath the original video too…

Does this tell a story?
I’ll be ahead of my teachers: is making noise really a concept to tell a story? I’m convinced it is, you could call it an industrial version of Sergei Prokofiev‘s “Peter and The Wolf“. It’s an interesting way to look at storytelling, a different angle. And the connection between the old factory, the machines that will preserved and the invisible history made hearable by this kind of installation seems like a very natural match. Also, it’s miles away from anything involving screens, text, images or projections – so the chance we end up with something original, no-one of us has ever done before is bigger.

User Input?
I’m not totally in favour of building a storytelling platform in the sense that each user should be able to enter his story into the system. I tought the “Story-Vault/Box” Rosanne showed us AND the “Now Or Ever” project that was done last year where pretty awesome. BUT, If we build something that has the same purpose (collecting stories), we will be basically building the same thing, or at least something very similar: some sort of machine that has an interface for capturing as much media as possible. A box with a scanner, microphone, keyboard and screen in it – so to speak.

This might be a bit to rough, but I’m more in favour of finding out “the big storyline“, and then telling those in a new, exciting way – capture the spirit, feel and soul of the factory, and make sure it still echoes trough, when the new infrastructure is in place. Something that makes people who worked there immediately think back to that time, while newcomers are made curious.

Interface
Whatever our final project turns out to be – i’m convinced that the interface should be as physical and integrated as possible. No mouse, keyboard or screen. But buttons, switches and lamps. This is ofcourse an interesting thinking excercise too – because as C-MD students, we’re pretty used to thinking whitin in the borders of our screen. Also, oldfashioned buttons and knobs are another one of my personal interests.

So: Bottom line – I’m up for telling stories, not building a system to collect them. And turning these giant factory machines into music instruments vibrating with life seems Neo-Maxi Zoomdweebie. And the interface should reflect that too.

Totally unrelated sidenote
Does anybody think that Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” might be a contestant for a myStory-Lunch-Movie? It’s not as dark as his other works, but i think it has a lot of soul in it. Might be just me tough. It’s in a whole other league than Memento – but it’s definately about stories.

So, that’s it – my personal toughts on the matter.
Leave a comment here – or any other platform to your liking – I’m looking forward to those.

XXX
Jim