16 minute read
Installations
Bionic Chair Blind Self Portrait
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Technology takes over ever more functions from our body, and we are heading for a future where we hardly need to activate our bodies anymore. We compensate this growing lack of exercise by going to the gym. Moving our bodies has become a choice, a lifestyle.
Inspired by dancers of the Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Govert Flint concluded that full-body movement is positively related to feelings of joy. The dancers showed him movements that actually can and should be used every day. He took the most static and dominant activity of people nowadays, being seated, and for this activity Govert designed an exoskeleton chair allowing the body to move completely freely, and in doing so controlling a mouse cursor. For example, kicking a leg results in a mouse click. With the Bionic Chair we use our bodies again for what they are meant to do. Only a full-body exercise enables technology to do something. In this work, the man-machine relationship is reversed – or is it equalised? Can we trust technology? The rapid advance of Artificial Intelligence raises more and more questions about our relationship with computers and machines. In 2020, the computer model GPT-3 became available for general use. GPT-3 can have conversations, write poetry, fiction and essays, it can program and compose. And it can reflect on the future and the meaning of life. We are impressed by everything computers are capable of, but the time-honoured fear that humanity will be taken over by machines is feeling more and more real.
In their work Blind Self Portrait, Kyle McDonald and Matt Mets challenge us to trust technology. The visitor is invited to take place next to a machine that will draw their portrait. Visitors hold the pen, and the machine controls their hand while drawing the portrait. It is a collaboration between man and machine... or is it? If you do not completely surrender to the machine, the portrait is doomed to fail and giving away complete control evokes a real feeling of anxiety. The result is a selfportrait created with the viewer’s hand and the machine’s ‘mind’. But who is the owner of the portrait? Who can sign it?
GOVERT FLINT, DESIGN STUDIO ENRICHERS
THE NETHERLANDS | 2014 | 6+
FACTS
Programmer Tonn van Bussel Research in collaboration with Scapino Ballet Rotterdam
KYLE MCDONALD, MATT METS
UNITED STATES | 2012 | 6+
FACTS
Producer Keira Heu-Jwyn Chan
Carbon Roller Coaster
Carbon Roller Coaster is an online interactive, multimedia experience accessible on Cinekid Play from a smartphone, tablet or computer. It tells the life story of a carbon atom, in the form of a chat conversation. The story unravels via various forms of interaction. The carbon atom sometimes sends videos to the user, sometimes audio messages, sometimes pictures, and sometimes questions.
This is the poetic life story of Carla the carbon atom, who lived inside a fart of a mammoth in the Antarctic ice floor for millennia, and is now a homeless atom roaming the oceans with her fellow carbon atoms, like tears, as a result of climate change.
Designer and researcher Janna Ullrich wants to make complex, political issues accessible and open for discussion by telling stories in social, interactive forms. In playful ways, she manages to present dystopic and utopian scenarios in her work.
Cinekid, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and Playgrounds jointly selected her to create an online work about the current state of the relationship between man and nature. For this project, she uses archive footage from the Open Archive of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.
JANNA ULLRICH
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 6+
FACTS
Commissioned by Cinekid, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Playgrounds This work can be experienced on www.cinekidplay.nl
Ever since you died…
Sinds jij dood bent…
The passing of a close or beloved person can have a huge impact. Still, in our society we lack the proper ways to deal with this occasion; it is still awkward and tough to openly discuss our feelings. When children experience a loss, we want to guard them from pain and sorrow, whereas it may be really healthy for them to keep expressing their emotions, in their own, open way. It is normal to mourn. It is part of life.
In simple and beautiful ways, media technology can offer ways to channel these emotions. Studio Moniker conceived the poetic web project Sinds jij dood bent... Ever since you died as a digital contribution to the four-part TV series The Apple Core on Loss & Grief, also screened at Cinekid 2021.
Ever since you died..., a cloud of paper notes swirl in the wind over a horizon. It is an almost hypnotic swarm. Each note contains a message from a child to a deceased loved one. Children are invited to finish the sentence. ‘Ever since you died… I sometimes call your voicemail. Everyone is welcome to contribute a note and let it fly away into the wind.
STUDIO MONIKER
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 6+
FACTS
Producer Studio Moniker Concept Het Klokhuis (NTR) This work can be experienced on www.cinekidplay.nl
Field Happy
What is a real interactive experience? The answer is given time and again in the work of Design I/O. This award-winning creative studio from the United States was founded in 2010 by Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille. They are true pioneers in the field of large-scale, immersive interactive installations, and their projects are a frequent source of inspiration for many younger studios and makers.
They specialise in creating magical worlds in a flowing and skillful combination of technological experiment with artistic imagination and design. In their work, they repeatedly manage to give their audiences a truly magical, intuitive and exciting experience.
Their work Field is a life-size, interactive plant world on a 15-meter-wide screen. In this beautiful installation, multiple visitors can enter a grass field-ecosystem. Everything causes a reaction, so does the visitor. Visitors run, jump, roll, walk or wave across all seasons in this wondrous world of grass stalks, plants, butterflies and flowers.
Field shows us how natural ecosystems form complex systems in which everything is interdependent and harmony based on intrinsic rules is possible. And that people are part of those complex systems, too.
DESIGN I/O
UNITED STATES, THE NETHERLANDS | 2019 | 6+
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Additional Design and Animation Josh Goodrich Sound Design M-OST, Anna Cataldo Commissioned by Franklin Park Conservatory, Botanical Gardens Happy is a VR experience in which visitors’ emotions have an influence on the journey they make through a magical world. They are invited to use all their feelings to shape this trip – after all, every emotion is equally important. The VR experience was conceived as an experiment to examine in which ways emotions can be read and translated real-time into an immersive experience.
Happy was developed by the XR Lab, where students, teachers and companies collaborate on state-of-the-art experiments to explore new media technologies. XR Lab previously made the AR project Fonies (2019) and the VR project Der Wanderer (2018) for Cinekid.
XR LAB
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 8+
FACTS
Game artist Joost Jordens, Noa van de Laak, Aidan Boelhouwer, Mette Nijenhuis, Aitana Bakker, Kay Ruwiel, Julian van het Loo Game developer: Milena Spaan, Richard Ram, Enzo Marguerink, Kelvin de Jong, Max Jansen, Jordan Pignato, Aldebert Rooijer, Christian Donker Concept Rufus Baas, Martijn Vorstenbosch UX Robin Schuur Scrummaster Steven Honders Projectleider Merel Booleman
Hexasynth
In our society, where technology is intrinsically linked to our daily lives, it is increasingly common to teach children computer programming at a young age. At Cinekid, we consider learning to program a vital part of media literacy. To understand how things work, to learn to think and solve problems, to experiment, and to gain confidence to be creative. There are many great apps and games that can playfully teach children the basic principles of computer code. What is an algorithm, a sequence, a for-loop?
Max Frimout and Gabey Tjon A Tham take it one step further. With their work Hexasynth, they want to introduce the players to the concept of ‘complex systems’, which is what a computer program: a set of basic rules that are interconnected and always react to and influence each other. Max’ starting point is sound synthesis, Gabey’s starting point is visual feedback using different hardware and materials. The result is the Hexasynth, an instrument allowing three players at a time to control algorithms. They jointly affect a soundscape through their (inter) actions, and learn how small changes in (their) algorithm can have consequences for the system as a whole.
Magical Lichens
Magische Korstmossen
Creative, technologists and artists Carolien Teunisse and Sabrina Verhage sporadically co-create works in which they express their (critical) fascination with the influence of technology on our society. In the subdued lockdowns during the recent pandemic, they, like so many, took strolls and were (re-)introduced to nature in our urban environment. The duo became fascinated with lichens, which still are quite common, even though half of the 700 Dutch species are being threatened due to air and soil pollution.
Lichens are basically a harmonic form of cohabitation between an alga and a fungus: a symbiosis. This fact underlies the work Magical Lichens, in which the twosome invites the public to bring together nature and technology, and to create new lichens with the help of Augmented Reality.
The work consists of a physical installation displaying virtual lichens, and an app with which lichens can be identified outdoors and with which users can make their own augmentations. They represent a kind of new unnatural symbiotic relationship: virtual and physical, online and offline.
MAX FRIMOUT, GABEY TJON A THAM
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 6+
FACTS
Commissioned by Cinekid and MU
CAROLIEN TEUNISSE, SABRINA VERHAGE
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 6+
The Miracle Basket Osmo
Through storytelling, people have imparted others with a better understanding of the world around them. The best storytellers are those who do not just present facts, but turn stories into a personal and emotional experience for their audience. In ancient Arab times, when all stories were still told orally, Hakawatis presented tales that were spun out like complex fabric. They were experts in a motif-rich narrative style, leaping from one story to the next, incorporating multiple layers simultaneously. They used allegory, folklore, satire, music and visual spectacle: everything to offer their public an unforgettable experience.
The brilliant storyteller Abner Preis is like a modern Hakawati. His VR stories form a collage full of visual techniques. His latest work The Miracle Basket premieres at Cinekid and explores the recent history of humanity: from colonialism to imperialism, from the harmonic relationship of indigenous people with nature to the recent climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity, wrapped in a vulnerable story about a grandfather and his grandson.
Works like these make us pause and help us reflect on the state of the world around us. The majority of learning games for children focus on competition and artificial rewards and leave players little room for expression, self-reflection or creativity. Interactive design offers a huge reservoir of new possibilities, based on Homo Ludens, playing man, to incorporate free play in learning games.
Osmo assumes that children learn best through play. Games stimulate children to step out of their screen and become active. Osmo offers tactile, embodied learning: using physical game pieces in the real world they challenge even the youngest children hands-on to think creatively and solve abstract problems in interactions with the digital world on their tablets.
Tangible Play Inc. — the business behind the Osmo brand — was founded in 2013 by Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler. By 2014, the first three Osmo games Newton, Tangram and Worlds had been launched to universal praise from parents, educators, industry experts, and children. Since its début, Osmo has expanded its family of games to include Numbers, Masterpiece, Coding Awbie, Monster and Pizza Co.
ABNER PREIS
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 6+
FACTS
Producer Valk Producties Co-Producer Institute of Time Executive Producer Kecia Benvenuto The Miracle Basket is co-presented by Cinekid, IDFA DocLab
TANGIBLE PLAY INC.
UNITED STATES | 2014 | 4+
Technology has become the forefront of communication and social interaction, especially in recent days where we have been forced to be physically distant from each other. Have we lost a sense of communication with our social surroundings and body language?
Proxemic is an interactive installation by students of Interactive/Media/Design Mariela Popova and Samriddhi Ghattak. They found their inspiration in the branch of knowledge that deals with the amount of space that people feel necessary to set between themselves and others. In their work, they created a space where new interactions of our bodies can be explored through absurd positions. Wearing playful shoe pieces, two participants are confronted with each other and are given the space to connect and explore intimacies which we are not used to (anymore) in our daily lives, leaving room to investigate what feels comfortable or confronting and adjusting to it accordingly.
Using body language and non-verbal communication, participants are invited to cooperate, collaborate and re-connect with one another after the long disconnect we have had. AI voice assistants are spreading rapidly. Alexas, Google Assistants and Siris seem to be the next step in the history of voice technology, after the radio, telephone and sound recordings. Not only do they replace hands and eyes with mouths and ears in our human-computer interaction, but in the process human and machine seem to truly grow closer to one another. Voice assistants are software, but their voices make us believe they have a soul and consciousness. We do not just use them as an intermediary to access the web or shop online; we communicate with them. With their ‘character’ and ‘personality’, they influence the rules defining meaningful interaction. Alexa, for example, confirms the gender stereotype of a female voice, ever obedient and attentive. But they have also proven to alleviate loneliness.
Neil Mendoza acutely mocks our fascination with these smart assistants. His work Robotic Voice-Activated Word Kicking Machine is Alexa’s opposite. This AI with a male robotic voice does listen, but – consciously – does not understand you. Your sentences are merely iterated, before being torn apart and sometimes literally given back to you, in a not very friendly, let alone meaningful way.
MARIELA POPOVA, SAMRIDDHI GHATTAK
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 |
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Commissioned by Cinekid, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten
NEIL MENDOZA
UNITED STATES | 2016 | 4+
Shadow Forms Sorting Song
Can computer code be poetic? A growing group of computer scientists and/or artists and/or designers, so-called creative coders, demonstrate it can be. Zach Lieberman and Molmol Kuo are at the forefront of this field. Zach is a true educator of the poetic computation approach as one of the co-founders of the School for Poetic Computation. Both consider themselves artist, educator and researcher all at once. Together, they create interactive installations that invite participants to become performers. Zach contributes his self-written code, focussing on experimental drawing and animation tools. Molmol takes her background in film and dance into their work, creating performative scenes where visitors’ bodies, movement, and dances are transformed. The duo uses human gestures as an input and magnify them in ever changing ways: the bundling of muscles turns into smoke or a flash of light, drawings come alive, voices are visualised, silhouettes change to music.
Shadow Forms is their latest work commissioned by Cinekid. As a visitor of Shadow Forms, you put strange figures in the spotlight by means of poses, dance steps and movements. Standing eye to eye with these alienating shapes you discover how your body language becomes a choreography.
ZACH LIEBERMAN, MOLMOL KUO
UNITED STATES | 2021 | 6+
FACTS
Commissioned by Cinekid
In the discipline Machine Learning which uses AI and algorithms to imitate the way humans learn, Computer Vision still forms a big challenge. It turns out to be harder than expected to teach computers to recognise all sorts of objects. Cameras detect contours, colours and movement. But what exactly do they see?
In Sorting Song, designer and researcher Simone Niquille exposes the problem around ‘categorization’. To do so, she made a video in six parts explaining the issue. What makes a vase a vase, and not a cup? And when is something with spots a cow, and when is it a couch with a cowhide cover?
The open gaze with which computers approach an object is closely akin to the unbiased, open view of the world that children have. In her work, Simone asks participating children to actually deconstruct the recognition of objects and to express in their own visual way what makes an object a specific object.
SIMONE NIQUILLE
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 6+
FACTS
Commissioned by Cinekid and Noorderlicht Festival This work can be experienced on www.cinekidplay.nl
SoulPaint StoryScope
At a time when we have been leading isolated and secluded lives for the past 18 months, it is more important than ever to offer playful and active experiences that enable us to reflect on our mental and physical condition. The work of Sarah Ticho (Hatsumi VR) and Monobanda provides people with the necessary tools to do so. Their work SoulPaint premieres at Cinekid and combines two well-tried methods for self-reflection: body mapping and dance.
With the help of body mapping, people can tell their personal stories by visualising their feelings and sorrows in an outline of the human body on paper. Hatsumi VR previously made a VR prototype to do this in VR. Monobanda creates interactive experiences based on the playing man: Homo Ludens. Their expertise in playful interaction and the connection with the body and social space produces work that transforms not only art, but also science, education and healthcare.
In SoulPaint’s VR environment, visitors can paint their emotions and experiences on a 3D avatar. Next, they are they eventually will be incited to dance with their avatar, so they eventually will be dancing with their own emotions. StoryScope is a movie theatre and a story tool in one. This interactive installation stimulates the fantasy and creativity of toddlers. The installation challenges them to tell a story, alone or together. Players are invited to move different film elements in the shape of blocks over a light box. With this they affect the world on the screen, and projected figures come alive. By jointly playing, devising and telling, children create their own stories.
Players can also add their own elements to this story world. To this end, a special template was developed, which consists of multiple separate boxes. In each of these boxes, the user can draw a body part of an invented animal. As soon as the drawing is placed on the glass plate, the StoryScope transforms it into an animated character.
HATSUMI VR, MONOBANDA
THE NETHERLANDS | 2021 | 6+
SEBASTIAAN HENSEN, STICHTING INTERACTIVE CULTURE
THE NETHERLANDS | 2017 | 4+
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Producer Mira van Kuijeren
