besneeuwd

The Tower, Reconnecting People

2012-01-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

Last December 2011 we exposed the Tower in an empty store close to the new Zaailand. A new shopping area im the centre of Leeuwarden in Fryslan. Interested passants were invited to register themselves in this Tower store. Based on the answers of 8 questions, the installation calculates your postition on the square of the virtual Zaailand. The groups of people that are formed by the system are invited to come back during the opening of the actual new Zaailand in September 2012. Every group will be photographed at the new square.The Tower, Reconnecting People was part of the temporary exhibition Copy:Paste

The Geocities of Things

2011-12-26T03:02:00.000-08:00

Already a month ago I visited the conference day of the STRP Festival in Eindhoven. There was one lecture I enjoyed a lot. Russel Davies, a team-member of the RIG, presented his playfull crititque about The Internet of Things, which he called the Geocities of Things. Check his blog for an article about this! Some examples he showed were the hilarious Halloween Light Shows.And this one because its Christmas :-)

Nou&Herkauw MicroGarden VJ-Set

2011-12-04T14:42:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago Nou&Herkauw did a new VJ experiment. For a special party in the Blokhuis Poort, a former prison in Leeuwarden, we created a small garden, extracted all kinds of organic colour liquids, collected some finger cams and usb microscopes, bought very old books about nature, developed some loop and buffer software, created 2 stop-motion sets, and used all this as source for a bio-vj-set. Here are some pics. :) Many thanks to Marin de Boer for growing the garden, and Erwin Zantinga for his great animating efforts!

Catastrophe nominated for the STRP Talent Pit Award!

2011-10-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

UPDATE! Reconstruction of a Catastrophe wins the STRP Talent Pit Jury Award! Check this link for more information!---It's official!! I am very happy to announce that my graduation project 'Recontruction of a Catastrophe' is nominated for the STRP Talent Pit, Peoples choice Award! If you like my project and you think it deserves an award, you can give your vote on the STRP website...I will be very grateful :)

Recontruction of a Catastrophe from Snow on Vimeo.

Hot100@Picnic

2011-09-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

Thursday September 15 Virtueel Platform Hot100 day at Picnic in Amsterdam. We are happy to be part of it.

Me TV at MoPA

2011-08-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

Some new photo's of the restyled Me TV at the opening of MoPA at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, last friday the 26th of August.

GiantMiniMediaLab

2011-08-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

We developed a new workshop for kids. The GiantMiniMediaLab is a studio set-up where kids (also parents) can create and edit 3 spectaculair short movies. The theme is gigantic and mini. Like giant robots, mini people, and big insects.

With scale models, miniature puppets and cars, cardboard, costumes, a greenscreen, finger-camera's, and the kids as actors and actresses, we create on the spot and live movie scenes with wonderfull environments and special effects. After the workshop we add a soundtrack and sound effects. It was hilarious!

Exhibition FMI International Masters

2011-07-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

Hack Pro Art!

2011-06-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish I was a hacker, but unfortunately I'm not...

A call for help to all the hackers around the globe to join the battle for art, by artistically modifying all online services directly relating to Halbe Zijlstra and his ministry.

I agree that sometimes measures have to be taken to controll government expenses by cutting down funding in almost(not the weak, unprotected and the ill) every layer of society. But the measures taken by our State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science Halbe Zijlstra to cut down funding in Culture, lack any possible vision and knowledge of the relevant developments in art and new media of the past decade. He really has no idea about the valuable and leading international position of Dutch New Media Art in the world. By cutting down all structural government funding to all renowned New Media Labs in the Netherlands, he helps destroying a young scene essential for innovation and research in the field of art, society and digital culture. Why is he choosing for this destructive strategy??? Does he really has no clue what he is doing??? What about an extensive research to the consequences of this style of cutting???

The Mother of Google Maps

2011-05-28T01:06:00.000-07:00

The first known aerial photograph was taken in 1858 by French photographer and balloonist, Gaspar Felix Tournachon, known as "Nadar". This photo no longer exists. The first surviving aerial photo was taken by James Wallace Black in 1860. A photo of the city of Boston.

Corpse-Close

2011-05-22T16:52:00.000-07:00

Playing around with my digital remains...

Corpse

2011-05-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

My first digital corpse. Or digital remains....

Nou&Herkauw @ Clash2011

2011-05-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

Photo's by Mieke Lindeman.

Musique Non Stop, 1986, Rebecca Allen

2011-05-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Allen produced all the visuals for Kraftwerk's album Electronic Café, including this award-winning video. The video starred virtual mannequins that Allen brought to life with cutting-edge software developed to emulate facial features and expressions. Musique Non Stop reflects Allen's interest in movement and the incorporation of human elements into computers. It also engenders thoughts about how computers and technology interact with humans and mesh with society in general.

Text snippet taken from, Art and Electronic Media

Scan

2011-05-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I put two Kinects in an opposite position of each other with a couple of meters in between. I connected them to my laptop, and managed to draw two pointclouds. It is a very rough sketch. I'am in the middle of it, filming with my Iphone.
Next time I will get some screen-capture software.

Tilt-Shift Videos

2011-05-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

The world is just a miniature.

Small Worlds - Preview. by Keith Loutit .

The Sandpit by Sam O'Hare .

gottardo nord by fb1 visuals .

For more go here.

Indexhibit

2011-04-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I registered a domain name adrischokker.nu. For my Thesis I like to gather all my research on one website.

For this website I wanted to use Indexhibit, but I discovered to late that my web host only uses Windows servers and that Indexhibit only works on an Apache/Linux server.

After contacting the helpdesk, they offered me some very helpful suggestions to make Indexhibit work on a Windows server.
So here it is, for everybody who likes to use Indexhibit on a Windows server.

First:

in the file /ndxz-studio/defaults.php, change this code:

to this code:

Replace yourdomain.com with your website adress, and make sure the Indexhibit files are installed in your www-root.

Second:

In the file ndxz-studio/lib/front.php

replace:

.BASEURL.BASENAME.

with:

.BASEURL.'/'.BASENAME.

Third:

It is suggested to use PHP4 instead of 5, because of the CRT warnings. Normally you can change this in the settings panel of your web host. Otherwise contact your web host.

This should the job.

Google's never erasing Memory

2011-04-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

And still my photo:

http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_geOa6MEknT8/Sr_dr_7bICI/AAAAAAAAABg/K1kwCSkmpkk/S220/428711446_5_UkcT.jpg&imgrefurl=http://besneeuwd.blogspot.com/&usg=__8cSudcwlJj05AzP2a7kvoQuw2TA=&h=165&w=220&sz=6&hl=nl&start=46&zoom=0&tbnid=xFimwVBU9ATHyM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAdri%2BSchokker%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dnl%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D897%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C839&um=1&itbs=1&ei=rL-fTMPfBsf-OYus7JgD&iact=rc&dur=534&oei=p7-fTNWBIofMswaP7rnmDg&esq=2&page=2&ndsp=44&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:46&tx=56&ty=9&biw=1680&bih=897

Does it ever get erased?...

Tangible-Digital-Tangible

2011-04-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

Scanning spectators, and make a scale model of them.

DeSpeech

2010-10-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

In collaboration with Marin de Boer, Snow developed a VJ-performance for the first edition of the DeSpeech. A magazine for the senses, and a new project by the Dutch band LPG.

The first edition of DeSpeech was a plubication of an EP in a special hand made box, with the theme 'Day&Night'. The show celebrated the release. We performed at Vera Groningen, Tivoli Utrecht, and Paradiso Amsterdam

For the performance we used scale models, live cams, looped camera sequences, copied transparent sheets, and lcd screens as backdrops. The resulting show was made on the spot.

Digital Flesh

2010-10-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

Found this project thanks to Simon. I'm interested in the different methods artists use to transform tangible reality into digital forms and data. And the way we preceive these forms. This project made me think of 'the Tower' in which we are also researching methods to digitize the participant.

Digital Flesh is a project developed by The Science Project, YesYesNo & Paranoid USwith Partlyhuman, Apologue & Peter Klein. In this project they create a digital, mythical organism by combining 3D scans of participating humans. The scans are made by portals on different locations in several countries around the world.

The Tower

2010-10-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

During the opening weekend of ForumImages, September 24,25,26, we had the opportunity to try out a next step in the development of the Tower. The tower is a generative installation fed by input and recordings of humans. It is as growing human database. Each human has his/her own unique place in the crowd, based on differences and resemblances with other humans. The more resemblances, the more attraction, and the other way around. This ongoing project is a collaboration with Frans van Hoesel. Frans is head of department for High Performance Computing and Visualization of the Rijks University of Groningen and developed the software and algorithms for visualization.

The greenscreen setup where pictures of the visitors where taken.

The interface where visitors could choose 5 to 8 words which fit the person best.

The growing crowd.

People highlighted based on resembling words. As you can see there where a lot of creative people ;).

The try out at the ForumImages was based on a first experiment with the different ingredients of 350 cocktails.

For more information see: Tower, Ruben's Blog

Google's longer term Memory

2010-10-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

And still my foto:
http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_geOa6MEknT8/Sr_dr_7bICI/AAAAAAAAABg/K1kwCSkmpkk/S220/428711446_5_UkcT.jpg&imgrefurl=http://besneeuwd.blogspot.com/&usg=__8cSudcwlJj05AzP2a7kvoQuw2TA=&h=165&w=220&sz=6&hl=nl&start=46&zoom=0&tbnid=xFimwVBU9ATHyM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=107&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAdri%2BSchokker%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dnl%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1680%26bih%3D897%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C839&um=1&itbs=1&ei=rL-fTMPfBsf-OYus7JgD&iact=rc&dur=534&oei=p7-fTNWBIofMswaP7rnmDg&esq=2&page=2&ndsp=44&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:46&tx=56&ty=9&biw=1680&bih=897

Google's Memory

2010-09-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I changed my profile picture by making myself incognito with a mosaic effect. Today, after googling pictures related to my name, I found my old picture connected to my blogspot url. But I can't find this picture in my profile.

Me TV Buddha

2010-09-25T05:22:00.000-07:00

Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha was produced as a gap-filler for an empty wall in his fourth show in the Galeria Bonino. The installation consists of a Buddha statue placed in front of a TV gazing at its own video image, registered by video camera.
Causing an infinite, closed feedback loop installation of which the spectator is excluded. The traditional, closed eyed Buddha, cut off from external stimuli, contemplating the inner self, is forced to interact with a media perception of the self. This conflicting, possibly incompatible, situation enhances the interaction between the two. During the 'Projekt '74' exhibition in Cologne, Paik took the Buddha’s place, suggesting the implicit antithesis between transcendentalism and technology was equally present in his own personality.

The installation Me TV is developed as a funny but critical note to the Singularity theory of Ray Kurzweil. Which claims that in the near future, humanity transcends its biological limitations by exponential evolving technologies. The theory was a main theme for an assignment given by our semester lecturer Kees de Groot.

Me TV invites the spectator to take the position of the Buddha statue and experience its conflict. On the one hand, get in a meditation state by closing the eyes and closing oneself from external stimuli. On the other hand, experience the perfect image and invoke the infinite feedback loop. With the use of a brain computer interface that measures the brain activity, the spectator is able to influence the distorted image. By achieving a meditation state, the image gets restored. An attempt to see the perfect image mostly fails. When opening the eyes, the brains get stimulated and distort the image again.

TV Buddha, Nam June Paik, 1974

ME TV, Gogbot Festival, 2010

Sources: MediaArtNet, M/Cyclopedia of New Media

Noottocht

2010-07-13T01:59:00.000-07:00

Noottocht is a collaboration between the PeerGrouP and the NNO (Northen Dutch Orchestra). Every year the NNO develops an educational concert for schoolkids all around the Northern region of Holland. This year they invited the PeerGrouP to develop the theatrical concept.
Noottocht is a theatrical concert which tells an extraordinary adventure of the music composer Geuterbach. Geuterbach suffers a terrible writers block ever since is wife died. He isn't able to compose a single score, and he changed in a very moody, grumbling, lonely man. After he rejected an invitation to write the opening score for the Viennese Competition, he falls asleep and in his dream the portrait of his wife gets stolen by two flying flutes. This is the start of a magical journey into the enchanted forest of the orchestra.

The play is performed by the actor Rogier in 't Hout, puppet player(and maker) Siem van Leeuwen and his puppets, and the director and all his musicians(about 60) of the orchestra. The stage and theatrical design was developed by Sjoerd Wagenaar. We were asked to develop a video concept to visualize the dream and the forest of the orchestra.

Rogier and his puppet alter ego.

To create the dream world and the instrumental forest, we used the actual musicians of the orchestra and their instruments as a starting point. This because the dreamworld is an extension of the real orchestra. We took a lot of photo's of the orchestra, and collected as much photo's of instruments as possible. Also a friendly artist of Siem created a resembling puppet version of the actor, which we used to record all kinds of running scenes in front of a green screen. During the play there was a continuous switch between the actor on stage and his puppet version on the screen, running trough the forest. We created the dreamworld by combining all kinds of different techniques and software like; live-action video, photo collages, 3D modelling and compositing, Photoshop, After effects, and Cinema 4D.

Recording the mud bubbles for the swamp scene.

Our team got reinforced by our intern Richard Toepoel and media designer Egmar Erausquin, who both made magnificent contribution!

Opening scene!

I did overall artistic coordination of the project. The challenge was to give the animations the dynamics and edits of movie scenes. And also to give the scenes a magical, dreamlike atmosphere. This instead of the more abstract, non narrative animations I'm used to make for VJ performances.

Angry forest scene, created by Richard Toepoel.

Finally Noottocht was performed in Groningen, Stadskanaal, Hoogeveen, Emmen, Meppel, Drachten and Leeuwarden, from the 10th till the 25th of June. About 20.000 schoolkids enjoyed the theatre concert.

Compilation of some animations.

Me TV at PlanetArt

2010-05-06T02:08:00.001-07:00

Me TV, quotes Nam June Paiks TV Buddha and invites the spectator to bridge the gap between transcendentalism and technology. By achieving a meditation state, the spectator restores the signal and completes his or her videorecorded image on the screen. Brainwaves are measured by a Mindset, which manipulate the video-signal. I used the Arduino Brain Library developed by Eric Mika

IMU

2010-03-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Half a year ago I wrote a blog post about the IMU. In short an IMU is a small board with a 3 axis gyroscope and a 3 axis accelerometer. When rotating this small board you can actually measure the rotation and acceleration of the board. This data is sent to the computer. You can use the data for a kinds of applications. For example for robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles, or advanced motion-capture devices. A couple of months ago I bought one, ArduIMU, build by DIY Drones. And some more months later I finally took the time to give it a try. I simply followed the instructions in the manual and got it working quite easy...on a PC. The problem is that normally use Mac. But when I try to read out the data showing in the Serial Monitor of the Arduino IDE on my Mac, its complete hocus pocus to me. Next step will be filtering and converting the data. I think...

Hénon-Heiles

2010-03-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

Open Mind is a collaboration with Professor of Dynamical Systems Henk Broer from the RUG, and Guy Weizman Artistic Director and Choreographer of Club Guy and Roni. The project is initiated by Pavlov E-Lab. For five days we discussed various topics intersecting chaotic mathematical models such as Hénon-Heiles, the resonance of Mercury, algorithmic choreographies, sonar reflections, media art, etc.
The aim was to develop collaborative concepts to be researched and realized in future projects. Friday the 19th we presented our results and initial concepts in an empty store at the Nieuwe Ebbingesraat in Groningen. The presentation was a collection of participative experiments, a short lecture by Henk Broer, and a calculated video choreography based on the Hénon-Heiles system. It was an extraordinary, strange, chaotic, and playful happening. Thanks to Pavlov E-Lab.

Henk giving a lecture.
Kids playing the Solar Collision Game inspired by a model developed by Laskar.

Throwing plates on the frequency of the 5:2,3:2,2:1,and 1:1 resonance models.
Hénon-Heiles translated to the body of a dancer.

Video edited by Pieter van Dijken

Open Mind 19 maart

2010-03-15T01:51:00.000-07:00

Sorry in Dutch.

Voor de Open Mind editie maart 2010 worden professor Henk Broer, choreograaf Guy Weizman en mediakunstenaar Adri Schokker samengebracht in een kort intensief werkproces. Op vrijdag 19 maart zullen ze een korte presentatie geven van hun denkproces en verkenningen in een winkelruimte in de Nieuwe Ebbingestraat.

Henk Broer is deskundige op het gebied van niet-lineaire dynamische systemen, in het dagelijkse taalgebruik bekend onder de term ‘chaostheorie’ . Kort gezegd komt de chaostheorie er op neer dat een klein verschil in een bepaalde beginwaarde een enorm effect kan hebben op de uitkomst.

Guy Weizman is een choreograaf die de uiterste grens van de dans opzoekt. Eerder deed hij intensief onderzoek naar de ‘chaostheorie’ en maakte enkele voorstellingen die hierop waren gebaseerd.

Adri Schokker is een mediakunstenaar die zich manifesteert via interactieve installaties, videofilms, performances en theatrale vormgeving. Hij voedt zich met een breed scala aan onderwerpen maar gaat daarbij ook nog eens de diepte in. Toen hij bij Open Mind 2009 met Professor John Videler samenwerkte aan het “How do Birds Fly” thema, doorzocht hij dagen-en nachtenlang de vakliteratuur naar de mogelijkheden om daadwerkelijk met zijn eigen lichaam te kunnen vliegen.

Bij de eerste bijeenkomst werd op verzoek van Guy besloten het onderzoek te focussen op akoestische levitatie. Een gebied waar nog weinig mee gedaan is. Er is daarna voor een bredere insteek gekozen: we gaan onderzoeken hoe geluid invloed kan hebben op materie. We beginnen bij de eenvoudige vragen; Wat is geluid, hoe reist het en welke invloed kunnen verschillende geluidsfrequenties op elkaar hebben? Hoe ziet een choreografie eruit die bestaat uit verschillende geluidsresonanties die op elkaar inwerken?

Resonantie: als in een systeem twee of meer oscillerende (zeg trillende of slingerende -- dansende) bewegingen samenwerken.

see / hear / fly
Na twee korte weken samen, geeft het Open Mind Resonance Choreographies team een korte presentatie van de wilde en ongepolijste ideeën die bij het onderzoek boven zijn gekomen.

Kom langs en leer in 20 minuten hoe geluid een chaotisch systeem kan veroorzaken en hoor waarom Mercurius waarschijnlijk op termijn uit zijn baan met de zon zal gaan....

Meer info Pavlov E-Lab

3D Scanning

2010-03-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

Today I tried to make 3D models out of Dennis and Merel with the structured light scanning technique. More information about the technique in this Instructable by Kyle McDonald. I'm fascinated by the atmosphere of the scans. The imperfect and distorted images,vague digital reflections. Because I didn't have enough patience I didn't calibrate the camera very well. I think this caused more distortion. I think I like it.

Arduino & Cordless Drill

2010-03-10T13:02:00.000-08:00

This week I managed to control the speed of a cordless drill with an Arduino and a potentiometer. Thanx to Ron!
Because this drill uses 1,3A and 14,4V the machine is to strong to power with an Arduino. As external power source I used the DC adapter of the drill.

I use this Arduino code to control the motor:

int motor = 10;
int sensorPin = 0; // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int sensorValue = 0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor

void setup()
{
analogWrite(motor, 0);
}
void loop()
{
// read the value from the sensor:
sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);

sensorValue = map(sensorValue, 0, 1023, 0, 255);

analogWrite(motor, sensorValue);

delay(200);

}

Next motor will be a washing machine motor, I hope :). This technical research is part of my neglected pet-robot project.

Cordless Drill from Snow on Vimeo.

Constructive Soundscapes

2010-03-06T12:42:00.001-08:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Realtime sound and visual performances through live coding with Pure Data and Fluxus.
Saturday, march 6th at het Paleis

Performances by: No Copy Paste, Agonston Nagy, Gabor Papps

More info.

Pecha Gnucha at het Paleis

2010-03-05T12:41:00.001-08:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Pecha Gnucha is a presentation, in which participants can give a presentation about their projects. But all within the rule of 20 slides, and 20 seconds for each slide. The total time is 6 min. 40 sec. The focus of the projects has to be on the open source character.

Last minute I, and some fellow students of IME, applied for a presentation of some works-in-progress.

More info about Pecha Gnucha

Disassembling a cordless drill....

2010-03-03T08:25:00.001-08:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Thuur spreading #Fablab's vision...

2010-03-02T02:28:00.001-08:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

New in Groningen!

http://www.fablabgroningen.nl

Conflux at SonicActs 2010

2010-02-27T05:47:00.001-08:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

A very scary trip in the best horror movie and lots of smoke.

http://2010.sonicacts.com/

Presentation Open Mind in front of het Paleis

2010-02-25T10:12:00.001-08:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Disassembling an electric fan...

2010-02-24T08:09:00.001-08:00

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Icarus

2010-02-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

The PeerGrouP developed a new theater play for festivals next summer. Icarus inspired by black box recordings of crashed airplanes, and one of the biggest airplane disasters ever on Tenerife in 1977. The play shows a very dynamic interaction between the actors, lights, a lot of sound effects, and lots of video and animations.We did three try-outs at Feb. 18,29,20. All together there are about 200 ques for sound, video and light. We are working on a one button que system to trigger all the media together.

You can watch the play at De Parade:
Rotterdam: 17 t/m 20 juni
Utrecht: 22 t/m 27 juli
Amsterdam: 17 t/m 22 augustus

Photo's by Peter Rillema

Transmediale Berlin 4,5,6 Feb.

2010-02-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

For the second time to the Transmediale Berlin. Left for Berlin at Thursday night, accompanied with fellow student Marcel. A killing but inspiring weekend Transmediale, Italo Disco, and Club Transmediale. Arrived in back in Groningen Sunday night.
Saw some interesting works.

A Parallel Image, by Gebhard Sengmüller

White Noise, by Žilvinas Kempinas

E-WASTE WORKSHOP 18,19 JAN 2010

2010-01-22T09:52:00.000-08:00

An E-Waste Workshop by Benjamin Gaulon & Laurens Rozema. Recycle old hardware into new works.
Goal: Control an old washing machine motor with brainwaves.
To complex in a two day workshop.
Begin simple. Play with Arduino, small motors, and mutilate a toy monkey.

Weekend

2010-01-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

Weekend, 1999 from Snow on Vimeo.

A compilation of the first of my four graduation works realized in 1999. Long,long time ago.

Processing Circles

2009-12-11T04:35:00.001-08:00

Another lesson in Processing. Click the mouse and draw growing circles.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Nou&Herkauw @ DutchBloggies

2009-12-08T05:32:00.000-08:00

On December the first, the DutchBloggies had their Ninth Award show for the best blog in several categories. Nou&Herkauw was happy to be part of it and did a performance more emphasized on blogging.

New modules and contributions:

HumanTweetBox developed by Gerrald van de Kolk.
Write your tweets, and record yourself to express your tweets visually. The tweets combined with the recordings are used as source material for the N&H veejaays.

TweejayTool by Erik Katerborg.
A tool that integrates tweets from Twitter in Module 8. Based on tags or topics, search for tweets. The tool translates the tweets into typographic animations used for vj-ing.

Flickr/Moby photo download tool developed by myself. Is not fully working yet. Based on topics and tags automatically downloads pictures from mobypicture and flickr, and integrates them as a photostream in the N&H Veejaytool.

Nou&Herkauw @ Noordelijk Film Festival

2009-11-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday the 14th of November Nou&Herkauw did a new experimental performance at the NFF party. The party was the first collaboration with the NFF and the Popfabryk, a new production house for innovative, popculture related projects. For some time already we had the idea to extend the N&H performance with musicians. The NFF was the perfect occasion to experiment with this idea. The starting point of the project was Sound=Vision. Musicians, a singer, designers and media artist collaborating in a live improvisation to visualize sound.

Photo's by www.fotografieke.com, for more photo's of the NFF check Marieke her Flickr.

To visualize sound we experimented with several techniques. One of them was inspired by Cymatics. With Cymatics you are able to visualize frequencies of sound trough the use of matter. For example, liquids, dust, sand and even cornstarch. We got inspired by this after seeing some video's on the net. One of them a rare, strange, and epic movie by Hans Jenny. More video's: TEDTalks and a DIY video on Make. To use the frequencies of the music performance we used a collection of speakers which were connected to the output of the audio mixer. We prepared all kinds of liquids, tiny pieces of colored paper, beans and much more.

Always an important part of an Nou&Herkauw performance is the participation of the audience. One of the most popular components of a N&H set-up is the stop-motion animation table. People can join and start animating.

The interactive and collaborative process is maybe more important than the final result. N&H is a project which emphasizes the process and the creative energy of the collective. We started our N&H experiments four years ago in reaction to the VJ performances we did under our 'Snow' name. These performances were less interactive, more straight forward performing with some vj-software and a DJ, and with a lot of visual preparation in advance. Nevertheless also very enjoyable.

Dennis van Tilburg, a fliendly musician/sound designer with whom we work intensively, build a set up with Ableton, al lot of small instruments, and synthesizers. In collaboration with Laurens Vermeulen at the stage piano with lots of effects, Adriaan Groffen at the drum, and singer Merel van Dijk, they created a music and sound composition based on improvisation, sampling and looping. It was great!

Also a group of students of the Academy of Popculture did a great job producing and experimenting during the whole project.

All together 13 N&H'ers were jamming their pants off!

My Fellow Students

2009-11-05T03:36:00.000-08:00

Waiting for Salvation.

Marcel in his Waanzin Lab.

Report N&H VJ Farm

2009-11-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

My fellow Snowman Ruben wrote a very nice report about the Nou&Herkauw VJ Farm at the Cinekid Festival. Here is a link to his blog Sneeuwig. Freely translated into English as Snowy;). Ruben and I are collaborating in almost every media art project, I think, for about nine years now. Together we form the artist duo Snow. We both are graduated in sculpture at the Artez. An Art Academy formerly based in the small town of Kampen, but moved to Zwolle for a couple of years already.

Krause

2009-10-30T05:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Krause had her CD release in the Vera in Groningen. It was great! In collaboration with Ramon Putman, and two students from the Academy for Popculture, Egmar Irausquin and Thomas van den Heuvel, we created the visuals for her live show. The visuals are placed in Ableton Live, synchronized with her music tracks, so Krause can control them herself. Here are some photo's of her performance yesterday. When you take a closer look you can actually see some visuals;).

The Opera

2009-10-29T05:40:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we had the last play of the Opera 'The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat'. Here are some photo's of the preparations and the performance.Very satisfying to see the final results of the stage design combined with the light and the animations.

At first the idea was to use brain activity measurements to interact with the video. As you can see in this blog, we did some experiments with this. But finally we decided to skip this idea. Mostly because of the reason that the connection of the measurements, which are not very clear, and the supposed reaction of the image was not at all obvious. We didn't see a connection and/or an addition with the neurological lesion of the patient doctor P. in the story, and the way we could visualize this by measuring the brain activity of the singers. Maybe interesting for another project or experiments.

One of the ideas we integrated as a video concept, was an animated lecture about 'visual perception'. During the play we liked to inform the public about the journey through the brain when your eyes see a certain object. In the case of doctor P. a hat. In what way do your brains compute this information?
If you are interested in this you should check this website. There you can find extensive and very well illustrated lectures about this subject.

N&H VJ Farm @ Cinekid 2009

2009-10-15T05:15:00.000-07:00

The Farm

2009-10-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

Some pictures of the farm almost finished.

Processing

2009-10-10T05:17:00.000-07:00

This is an experiment to embed Processing sketches in my blog.
To achive this I used the iframe html code:
iframe src="http://www.yourserverdomain/applet/index.html" height="500" width="500"

The 'applet' folder is the folder in the root of the server where the processing html, jar, and pde files are placed. For this action you need a web server, for example the one where your website is located.

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Your browser does not support iframes.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

WiiMotionPlus HackNight

2009-10-06T14:57:00.001-07:00

I finally managed to read the yaw, pitch, and roll data from a Wii Motion Plus adapter with gyroscope. With some soldering and rewiring connected the WM+ to an Arduino, uploaded the code found on this blog, and it works! All done with my humble assistant Jippie!

A very early sketch of the new visuals for Krause

2009-10-02T01:26:00.000-07:00

sketch for visuals Krause from Snow on Vimeo.

IME the E of building a Vee-Jay Farm

2009-10-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

Snow has a side-project which carries the name Nou & Herkauw. Freely translated in English Now & Ruminate. N&H is VJ-collective with a variable formation of designers, artists, poets and musicians. The aim of N&H is to create a audio/visual performance by starting with completely nothing and create all the content on the spot during the performance. What starts with nothing ends up into a performance made out of beats, loops, glitches, buffers, animations, errors, and more.
For the Cinekid Festival N&H is developing a worklab for kids with the age of 8 to 14. Its called the Nou&Herkauw Veejay Farm and is a combination of a playful animal farm and animation vj/dj workshop. At this moment we are executing the design of the farm. We asked Richard, Gerrald, and Willemijn to collaborate in this project. The three of them are design students from the Academy of Popculture.

Theory

2009-09-30T06:46:00.001-07:00

Our theory class

- Posted using Mobypicture.com

Some tests with EEG

2009-09-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Today we did some tests with EEG equipment at the University. More information soon.

WiiMotionPlusArduino

2009-09-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

I started to get lost in all those different types of gyros and accelerometers you can find on SparksFun. It takes quite serious research to build an IMU in this way. Although its very interesting I'm afraid we don't have the time for this. I also found some projects of people who connected the Wii Motion Plus to the Arduino, but those slipped my attention. After a tip of Frans I took a closer look to those projects. I think its actualy worthwhile to experiment on this.

http://randomhacksofboredom.blogspot.com/2009/06/wii-motion-plus-arduino-love.html
http://hackaday.com/2009/06/23/wii-motionplus-arduino/

The Mystery of IMU

2009-09-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

To measure the movement of the singers head we had the idea to use a Wiimote controller. The Wiimote is cheap and easy to use on a Mac for example by using Osculator to communicate with the Wiimote and the computer. Once the movement data is in the computer you can easily route it via OSC to other applications. In our case we use Isadora. The problem with the Wiimote is that it contains linear accelerometers that measure acceleration along the axes, but no gyroscopes. So it is impossible to measure linear movement along the axes. Recently Nintendo released the Motion Plus extension which ads the gyroscopes to the Wiimote. Only there seems to be no software written yet to measure this data.
So what to do now? Jan Klug gave us the names of possible sensor hardware which we can use. During the research throughout the web I discovered that the device we are looking for has actualy a name. It is called a Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). For now I have two solutions. The first one is to buy a complete but quite expensive system with the Orient3D sensor of Infusion Systems, or the make one myself with Arduino and connected accelerometers and gyroscopes. The last one is pretty hard and time consuming but way more cheaper. You can buy the sensors online at SparksFun. I found some people who are quite active with this.

www.nearfuturelaboratory.com
http://diydrones.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWDXsKlHvIs

Some sketches for the Opera

2009-09-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Some ideas for the stage design of the Nyman opera. The the one at the top is the most recent one. We think this one should be it. This because of the use of space, and the mix-up of the musicians with the singers and the stage. The walls behind the singers will be used for projections. And Wil of the Grand Theatre will do the light design. Now we are working on techniques to use movement and brain activity measurements of the singers to manipulate the images. Next Tuesday we have an appointment at the RUG to take a closer look at the scan equipment. After that we will meet the person who is going to build the stage design.

The man who mistook his wife for a hat by Michael Nyman

2009-09-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

As Ruben already mentioned in his blog, Snow was asked to develop a video concept for this opera. The play is inspired by the book with the similar name written by Oliver Sacks. The story investigates the world of a person with visual agnosia. Such persons see all the visual world of shapes, lines, colours, patterns, movement. But are unable to recognise what they see and have an emotional connection with it. Their world is no longer meaningful or familiar, but strange, abstract and chaotic. We are researching the possibilities to you use EEG scans to measure the brainwaves of the singers, but also for example to track the head movement. The data we, in a way, want to use to manipulate the video image. We have just started the research so...to be continued.

Blog

2009-09-11T06:01:00.001-07:00

Today I will start my blog. With this blog I like to share my thoughts, work and ideas with fellow students, teachers, and people with same interest and vision. Lets make it an inspiring place for everybody.

Adri