Art - Page 2 - Arnold Hoogerwerf

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28/09/2008

Mozzhukhin

Mozzhukhin (2008) is a performance installation by cowboy bij nacht, inspired by a classic cinematic experiment by Lev Kuleshov, known today as the “Kuleshov effect”.

Around 1918, Lev Kuleshov edited a short film in which shots of actor Ivan Mozzhukhin, looking into the camera, were intercutted with fragments of various objects. The audience praised the acting skills of Mozzhukhin; first an object made him hungry, then sad, etc…   In reality the audience always watched the same shot of the actor, in which he actually looks quite expressionless.

Cowboy Bij Nacht is curious about the theatrical implications of this experiment, and invites the audience to act as a test person.

22/07/2008

Performance Installation — Body Navigation Festival

Body Navigation Festival

Audiovisual Performance Installation

A multi-hour audiovisual performance installation in the intimate setting of an apartment/gallery during the Body Navigation Festival 2008 in the centre of St. Petersburg (RUS).

Made by Flat Corner & MOVE Project: 7 artists from 6 different countries who found each other during the Cimatics Masterclass Live A/V 2007/2008 in Brussels (BE). We formed a group of artists collaborating on a common interest in exploring interaction of the body with live video-projection and live (generated) sound. The results of our research were presented during this audiovisual performance installation in St. Petersburg.

Cimatics is a Brussels based international platform for Live A/V. This Masterclass consisted of a series of 4 monthly workshops with lectures from different internationally renowned media artists / theorists (amongst others Marc Amerika, Lab[au], Yves de Mey, Jerry Galle, Brendan Byrne & Ana Carvalho, Boris Debackere). During the masterclass the selected artists, working in different fields of media-art (and with backgrounds ranging from choreography to architecture) formed groups and collaborated with each other, with the aim of creating an audiovisual performance project.

Year

2008

Kind

Audiovisual Performance Installation

In cooperation with

Charlotte Ruth (SWE)

Johannes Burström (DNK)

Tobias Leira (NOR)

Filip Sterckx (BEL)

Ambra Pittoni (ITA)

Alexandr Andriyashkin (RUS)

Location

Body Navigation Festival for Contemporary Arts, july 12/13 2008

Kryaznaya Gallery, St. Petersburg (RUS)

Credits

This project was made possible with (financial) support from:

European Cultural Foundation

Cimatics A/V Platform

Norden Nordic culture point

Kulturradet

Step Beyond

Transit Sweden

Dance Hotel Russia

Tseh Russia

31/03/2007

Lightroom

Lightroom is an interactive light/sound installation. 64 Lights are placed in a square grid on a floor filled with white shingle. The room is totally darkened when the visitor enters. By walking in between the lights, the visitor triggers the lights and influences the behaviour of the installation; the room becomes ‘filled’ with fluid-like waves of light and sound.

Inspiration for this project comes from the different concepts of ‘seeing’ that are developed throughout history. In antiquity, seeing is a humane activity, a movement of the eye towards the world. The eye was a candle that transmitted a ‘soft radiating light’, that lighted the world. In the 17th century, Descartes and others made the eye an inhuman, physical ‘instrument’, a sensor for light, independent of what it perceived. This idea is still very influential in modern science. In recent philosophy these separate views are being criticized however, and more comprehensive and nuanced ideas are developed that try to form a symbiosis of the observer and what is being observed.

These ideas form the basis of the project Lightroom; in order to be able to experience the room he is in, the spectator has to be active. If he’s not, he will not experience anything. The room exposes itself, depending on the activity of the visitor, and becomes ‘sensitive’.

In this article I explain a bit more about the video-based motion tracking system i developed to make this project technically work.

Year

2004

Kind

Interactive Light / Sound installation

Location

EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

Exhibition ‘4D’, curated by Joost Rekveld

31/03/2007

Film/Space

Film/Space is a monumental multi-channel video installation without sound. It consists of 24 projection-screens, placed in a precise spatial arrangement. The visitor walks around in a filmic landscape of continuously changing projected forms in perfect linear perspective. One’s ability to perceive space is constantly put to the test; the visitor is encouraged to view the installation from different perspectives and to see the projected images in relation to the physical space surrounding the installation.

The objective of this installation (created in cooperation with Seema Ouweneel) was to explore different relations between ‘real’ physical space and the ‘illusory’ space of linear perspective. Since the invention of linear perspective in Renaissance painting, the boundaries between reality and an image of reality become thinner and more ambiguous. Nowadays, through photograpy, film and television and, more recently, vr-techniques, we’re becoming more conditioned and more and more dependent on twodimensional images as the only ‘true’ reproduction of reality.

Film/Space tries to make this visible by showing both ‘realities’ simultaneously.

Year

2003

Kind

multiscreen video installation

loop

no sound

Location

Netherlands Media Art Institute , Amsterdam

exhibition Spatial Media Special, april 1 — april 19 2003

curated by Michael van Hoogenhuyze

Credits

Film/Space is made possible by funds from Rotterdams Fonds voor de Film en Audiovisuele Media and Rotterdamse Kunststichting

31/03/2007

(Un)Aimed

(un)aimed

(Un)Aimed is a multichannel, interactive sound installation. It consists of several rotating parabolic speakers. These speakers produce extremely narrow beams of sound that appear very near to the visitor, when standing in such a beam (and almost silent when standing outside of it). Because the speakers turn around and the walls of the room function like ‘acoustic mirrors’, it appears as if there are an innumerable amount of soundsources, thereby creating a strange ‘acoustic image’ of the room.

The installation reacts on the presence of people in the room; if more people are entering the room, the installation will become more active and will sound more ominous. If there’s nobody in the room, the installation will become almost silent. Inspiration for this project comes from old and new military technology and engineering, like radar, sonar and fortresses.

This project was exhibited on location in an old fortress, part of ‘De Hollandse Waterlinie’, a series of water based defences. Built and used from 1629 until 1940, it was planned to protect the economic heartland of the Dutch Republic with a line of flooded land protected by fortresses.

Year

2002

Kind

Multichannel, interactive sound installation

Location

Fort Werk aan de Waalse Wetering, Tull en ‘t Waal (NL) •

Exhibition Fortenmaand •

This exhibition was partly in cooperation with Bart Visser, who presented his own sound installation in the same fortress. The installations were connected with each other through the movement sensors placed in the different rooms of the fortress.

31/03/2007

Bouwnummer 1077

Performance / Sound installation

Bouwnummer 1077 is a ‘heavy physical sound performance’ by Bart Visser, Remco de Jong and Arnold Hoogerwerf. This project is both a performance and a sound installation. The installation scans the surrounding space of the installation with microphones and speakers, which are built into hanging cubes. It can be played like an instrument, by grasping, swinging and rotating the cubes. By playing sounds into the room and subsequently recording and replaying the same sound, an acoustic resonance scan is being made of the space and the room will reveal, bit by bit, its ‘true acoustical identity’.

A computer program is developed to give the possibility for live coupling of speakers and microphones in various ‘loops’. By varying these loops with this program, the space and installation becomes a dynamic electro-acoustic organism.

This project is inspired by a composition of American composer Alvin Lucier (1931): ‘I Am Sitting in a Room’. Originally from 1970 (and performed and recorded on various other ocassions afterwards), this piece consists of thirty-two generations of Alvin Lucier’s speech. The piece begins with “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice…” etc. etc., and is then repeated again and again until only the resonant frequencies of the room remain. (More info on this piece and Alvin Lucier can be found here and here)

Originally commissioned by Stichting Werkspoor and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, this project was part of a collective research project in which artists, archeologists, writers, local residents and city officials made a plan for the urban development of the Oostenburger Eiland area in Amsterdam. Since then, an adapted version of this project is being performed on various international media art festivals.

Year

2001–2003

Kind

Performance / Sound installation

In cooperation with

Bart Visser

Remco de Jong

Location

september 2001, Manifestatie Werkspoor 2001, Oostenburger Eiland, Amsterdam, NL

november 2001, Dialog Festival, Der Alte Kaserne, Winterthur, CH

january 2003, Transmediale Festival (Opening Act), Maria am Ufer, Berlin, GER

february 2003, New Concepts in Live Electronic Music, Korzo Theatre, The Hague, NL

Credits

Bouwnummer 1077 was made possible by funds from Stichting Werkspoor and Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst

Performance during New Concepts in Live Electronic Music, Korzo Theatre, The Hague

30/03/2007

Ontleding Van Het Filmische

Ontleding van het filmische

Ontleding Van Het Filmische is a performance / light installation. In this performance, a mechanical light construction is built and carefully tested, with the ultimate goal of creating one ‘cinematic’ moment. This project is an ode to the pioneers of cinema: all the artists, priests, alchemists and scientists that passionately worked on the invention of the cinematic apparatus, an apparatus that laid the base for our contemporary visual culture.

With this project, i graduated from the Interfaculty Sound and Image (now ArtScience Interfaculty). It was sort of a roundup of all the ideas i had during my study. In a way, this project is also a self portrait: in total darkness, the performer is turning a big steering wheel. This causes two moving lights to light a series of hanging cut out silhouettes. The stroboscopic effect gives the illusion of a person turning around a big steering wheel…

Year

1999

Kind

Performance / light installation

Location

Gallery Toussaintkade, Stroom HCBK, The Hague (NL)

Eindtermen (graduate exhibition)

30/03/2007

Secret Places

Performance installation

Secret Places was a performance installation by Forced Entertainment with 13 performers of the Rotterdam and The Hague Art Academies. In this 4 hours lasting performance, the performers were sitting next to each other with their eyes closed, telling each other stories from memory.

“Surrounded by 1000 snapshots of the city 13 performers embark upon a marathon of memory. Hundreds of stories are told, forgotten places are re-discovered and fragments of reminiscence are whispered in the half-light. You are invited to eavesdrop.”

This project was the result of a three week workshop by Forced Entertainment from Sheffield, UK. I was one of the participants / performers. In the weeks preceding the performance, we took thousands of photos of all kinds of places in Rotterdam. These photos were placed on the exhibition floor, all with a little note chalked next to it: ‘A Good Place for.…”.