My Digital Backyard Extended is een verlengstuk van de serie My Digital Backyard. Een uitgebreider tekst over deze nieuwe insteek volgt…

In the fall of 2018 Artphy invited me, among a group of twelve international artists, to develop an idea for a work in public space, for the upcoming art manifestation Beek in Beeld 2.0. We were asked to respond to the changing landscape and possible future of Westerwolde. This in order to realize a large outdoor exhibition in 2020, spread along the meandering river that crosses the area.

As Bergarde Galleries already knew that I was developing ideas on transforming my drawings from 2D into 3D they challenged me to make my first work for outdoor. I had some real big ideas, but for the moment I had to stick to a first step on how to translate my drawings into a(n affordable) form that could survive when being placed outside.

I started working on this series of drawing during my artist in residence in het ‘Pompgemaal’ Den Helder, from the Mondriaan Fonds. For now, more about this series can be found in my blog (in dutch, sorry) on that working period: Pompgemaal Den Helder 3

My Digital Backyard is geïnspireerd op beelden die ik heb gevonden in Google Maps. In tegenstelling tot de gebieden die ten grondslag lagen aan Glitches en Rare Digital Phenomena is hier niets fout gegaan bij het in kaart brengen van een gebied. De techniek is in dit geval simpelweg nog niet geavanceerd genoeg om een kloppende weergave van de realiteit te maken. Deze serie toont de beperkingen van Google Maps bij het vormgeven van de natuur. Bomen lijken in Maps vaak meer op abstracte glazen sculpturen waarin een boom gevangen zit of op geometrische bouwsels waarbij de boom als een platte tekening op een driedimensionale vorm is geplakt. De beelden die dit oplevert typeren voor mij het idee dat de natuur moet wijken voor de technologische vooruitgang.

The series ‘Rare Digital Phenomena’ is a follow up from the series ‘Glitches’.

During my work on this series, I encountered forms in this virtual world that are
derived from reality, but that I could no longer recognize or explain. By now, the
digital world has developed and expanded to such an extent that it may contain
phenomena forming a class of their own; in this digital world, just as in nature, we
may discover complex phenomena that cannot be directly understood. This idea
formed the starting point for my sequel series, ‘Rare Digital Phenomena’.

Tijdens het werken aan deze serie stuitte ik op vormen in deze virtuele wereld die een afgeleide zijn van de werkelijkheid, maar die ik zelf niet meer kon herkennen of verklaren. Inmiddels is de digitale wereld dus zo ver ontwikkeld en uitgedijd dat het eigensoortige fenomenen kan bevatten. Dat er net als in de natuur complexe en niet direct te begrijpen verschijnselen in te ontdekken zijn. Dit idee vormt het uitgangspunt voor mijn nieuwe serie ‘Rare Digital Phenomena’.

The series Glitches is based on the idea of people losing control over their inventions and that a new world is created by that. These drawings are based on photos that I made from my computer screen, during a walk through an about 16 km wide area in the US on Google Streetview, where there had been a distortion during the process of mapping. The area turned out to look like a combination between a fairytale and a set for a horror movie and you could walk around in it for hours between trees that look like they were melting down and houses that appeared burned or haunted.

De belangrijkste vraag in mijn werk is in hoeverre technologische ontwikkelingen daadwerkelijk de vooruitgang opleveren die ze beogen. In 2014 heb ik gewerkt aan de serie ‘Glitches’. In deze serie tekeningen ligt de focus op het idee dat de mens controle verliest over zijn eigen uitvindingen. De tekeningen zijn afgeleid van foto’s die ik heb gemaakt tijdens een wandeling met Google Street View, waar een omgeving over een breedte van circa 16 kilometer vervormd is geraakt door een fout in de opnameapparatuur. Het landschap ziet er hierdoor uit als een mix tussen een sprookjeswereld en een set voor een horrorfilm.

In the series ‘Clouds of paint and walls of water’ I worked with the idea of our inventions taking over in a more direct way. The series is based on a distortion in my computer that accidentally created 16 new images, by seemingly random putting parts of photos from different files together. I say seemingly random as it seemed, after taking a closer look at the files that there where similarities in color or atmosphere in the parts that were combined. Inspired by these images I started putting parts of photos from different files in my computer together too. Parts that originally didn’t have any connection, but pure by their appearance seemed to match. The clouds are drawn after abstract details of old paintings that I thought looked like skies or clouds. Using these refers also to the idea of make believe, that connects to the idea of a second layer of reality.

This series of drawings is inspired by modern citycenters where videoscreens, billboards and neonsigns scream for attention. The moving images and the giants on the advertisements seem to overrule the people in the streets. Even the architecture is colored by the light from neonsigns.

In these series I show the idea of people losing control over their inventions and that a second layer of reality is taking over.

This series is made after my visit to Shanghai.

It shows reflections of skyscrapers in the windows of other skyscrapers. In these reflections the buildings appear in fragmented and more organic forms. They look like beautiful castles up in the sky and could resemble something we long for, but are in fact only mirages that cannot be touched.

Development and new inventions seem to be of big importance. The world starts to depend more and more on computers. Even our communication starts to rely on extern equipement. To me it seems we are starting to loose contact with our human nature this way.

In ‘Atoms’, I want to show that everything is made out of the same atoms and focus on an image where people are only part of a bigger system and where everything is in balance and connected.

‘Zero’s and ones’ shows the by humans created version of atoms, which resambles the ideas of how we create a second layer of reality and slowly get seperated from our human nature.

This series shows the fragmented way of living that appears in our modern zap culture. In the streets of  big busy modern cities it seems as if everyone is in a hurry.

People don’t have time to speak to eachother and when they are at one place they are already with their minds at another place. They want to do as much as possible in the time they have affraid to miss out on something, but thereby only experiencing things superficially.

These drawings and paintings are based on movies and photos made in the crowded area’s Shinjuku and Shibuya in Tokyo, Japan.

In this series I wanted to show the passing of time.

As a startingpoint for the paintings I shot photographs with a long schuttertime from movies. For the following drawings I used my own movies shot at Central Station Amsterdam.

In this series of drawings and paintings in which I wanted to show the passing of time and time related aspect such as finity and infinity and the relativity of the concept time.

I made photographs with a long schuttertime from my selfmade movies of people in movement. In these images people got blurred, they got transparant and they sometimes seem to appear more then once in one image. These different forms I used to show different aspects of time. The transparent people seemed ghosts from another time and I used them to show the past and idea of finity. Later on when I looked  closer at my photos I saw the architecture in the background shine through the transparent persons and when I mixed these forms the people all of a sudden started to look like robots. I used these forms to show an idea of the future and of infinity.

Schetsen, try-outs en op zichzelf staande tekeningen.