Saturday, February 16, 2008

3D modelling and a game engine called "Unity"


The Virtual Communities research group that I'm participating in from Feb 4th onwards for about 8 weeks.

A major part of this is learning Cinema 4D. Wim is a fantastic teacher. This image is the marriage of a freeform spine + a sweep nurb.

some home entertainment + an exhibition opening


Leiden, February 3rd:

A number of Leiden Bahais and friends cycled over to our place and our entertainment was to give them creative tasks until they realised that what they were really doing was doing our housekeeping. It was a lot of fun and the fridge got cleaned, the washing put out and the kitchen was tidied up.

For each task, each person received a letter and their task was to work out what the word was.



Then we all cycled over to the opening of U Bevindt Zich Hier at the RAP gallery.

It was very crowded! The curators, Sanne + Jos did a brilliant job on PR, display and the whole look and feel of the show in a very difficult space. The red wall and ceiling is a permanent part of the space.


Daniel Lehan was one of the 12 short-listed for a prize. The winner was a boy who made a skater's map of Leiden. Daniel's work "This makes no sense" is the narrow work in the top row on the left. It had these words printed over a map of Leiden and referred to the fact that having never visited Leiden and not reading Dutch, this map made no sense to him.



Two other London friends
also had work in this show.

Ella Guru's is on the left and relates to her visit to Leiden last year and the discovery that the prilgrim fathers, her ancestors, had lived here before emigrating to the U.S. Elaine Arkell's is the red + blue small print on the right. Her work, The Shift, associates the circular streets and canals of Leiden with blood vessels.
My work is the deep frame in the middle and Sen's is the shrub with the engraving below.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Dick Raaijmakers book launch, appearance + performance

I attended this event on January 27th in the Amsterdam concert hall on the Ij.

Dick Raaijmakers (1930) live on the screen via a webcam from his home, while Arjen Mulder (a Dutch media theorist and one of the co-author's of Dick's new book (Monografie: the website is only in Dutch).) asked him a pile of questions. In one of the stunning auditoriums in the muziekgebouw aan't Ij,

Dick Raaijmakers, one of the pioneers in electronic music in the Netherlands, is mainly known as a composer, who has made numerious installation-performances involving electronic music or sound where visual aspects are part of the artistic production.

I know of him mainly because of a lecture I heard in 2006 in at the Eindhoven Strp festival, given by Kees Tazelaar, where I heard his compositions and saw his revolutionary 1960's animations.

Some interviews with Dick Raaijmakers are here on the v2 website.

Then Raaijmaker's 1979 performance De grafische methode fiets (The graphic methodical bicycle) was re-performed by Bart

See this arts blog (in Dutch) for a series of photos of this performance.

new video starring the kitchen sink

This features music by Waiting for Donald (New Zealand Tahora friends: Mark, Brenda, Robbie + Chris). It is a fantastic funky music cd. See Mark and Brenda's website for some samples.

A low resolution version of the video Kitchen Pythagoras is here.