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Very happy to announce that after many years of work Portret van een mislukt schrijver (Portrait of a failed writer) is selected to premiere the 27th of September at Nederlands Film Festival.  The feature length film participates in the Gouden Kalf competition for best long documentary and best debut; it is made by first time director & producer Joris Koptod Nioky and myself as first time producer.  The film will also have it’s world premiere this month at Fidba (International Documentary Film Festival of Buenos Aires), the largest documentary film festival of Latin America, where it competes for the best debut.

At the age of twenty-three Joris writes his first novel and starts filming himself while opening letters from publishing houses. He receives nothing but rejections letters, but keeps on writing. Eight novels in seventeen years. No one wants to publish his work, but he keeps on filming. He turns out documenting the distance between who he wants to be and who he actually is.

The film is supported by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Mediafonds and was part of Summer Documentary Lab of UnionDocs New York 2015.

www.misluktschrijver.nl

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During the monthly planet B meetings, scientists, artists and citizens are invited to have a dialogue about the social and ecological challenges of our time.

The starting point of each meeting is the artistic work in progress of artists whose research is focused on these challenges. Meetup #4 will take place on Thursday 17 October, at the outpost of Waag at Amsterdam Science Park.

In this meetup we feature Aesthetics of Exclusion, a collaborative design research project. They question how we can use computer vision techniques and machine learning to explore and analyse aesthetical styles that relate with gentrification in StreetView archives and Instagram.

During the meetup, the collective will show experiments and works in progress that focus on the representations of Amsterdam bar culture on Instagram. We will also look at GAN’s (Generative Adversarial Networks) that are trained on Amsterdam Streetview imagery with the aim to transform inputted Streetview images back and forth between the past, present and future.

Programme expedition meetup #4 12:00 - 13:30 Lunch & presentations Waag, Planet B, Science Park 608, Startup Village

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Botanica Variegata is a system of classification and taxonomy of plants, according to their online presence on Instagram. An algorithmic structure analyses tens of thousands of plant images in relation to their surroundings — ranging from cats, dogs, colours, design objects and art to human demographics. It was presented at Alcova Sassetti during the Milan Designweek 2019. Read more.

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Alcova Sassetti Via Sassetti 31, Milan, Italy. Tuesday 9 – Sunday 14 April 2019, 11 am - 7 pm Aesthetics of Exclusion presents Botanica Variegata Contrary to popular belief, it is not the human species that selects the houseplant to furnish the domestic environment; it is the plant itself that proliferates in the area of its own choosing. Botanica Variegata creates a system of classification and taxonomy of plants, according to their online presence on Instagram. An algorithmic structure analyses tens of thousands of plant images in relation to their surroundings – ranging from cats, dogs, colours, design objects and art to human demographics. In the exhibition, different plant species compete with one another through a special system that assesses, favours, and values photographic settings; the more homogenous the context of the plant, the higher its score. Plants in the winning compositions are presented as part of the installation. The photogenic arrangement of the exhibition will provoke visitors of the Milan Design Week to form a feedback loop that influences both the digital and the physical world. What is first seen as a variety ultimately results in a process of homogenization. Read more. 

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Last week Mark Jan van Tellingen and I won the Icarus Award: a Dutch prize for art works reflecting about technology and society! It was awarded by the jury president and former Minister of State Tineke Netelenbos with the words: “De jury roemde dit werk unaniem als ‘slim en goed uitgewerkt. Interessant om groepen in kaart te brengen die we voor die tijd niet in kaart konden brengen, uitgewerkt in een helder en visueel aantrekkelijk verhaal. Als tool voor antropologisch onderzoek zit dit werk op het snijvlak van wetenschap en kunst en loopt het voorop in de trend Art en Science.”

Big thanks to all our collaborators: Jorrit Schaap (programming), Mark IJzerman (sound design), our science team (Thomas Smits and Melvin Wevers), the Summer Sessions program by Art Center Nabi & V2_ Lab for Unstable Media, the Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie and everyone in Seoul who helped us with our research.

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The Hmm is a real-life Tumblr, an evening of high-speed scrolling and discovering 10 new things on the way. Tuesday the 6th of November 2018 at the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam I will give a presentation about Aesthetics of Exclusion. More info here. 

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Last summer I worked on the ongoing design research project Aesthetics of Exclusion. It questions how computer vision can be used to examine urban changes such as gentrification. By witnessing the birth, life and death of objects, aesthetics and urban phenomena through extensive Street View archives, technology becomes like a fortune teller: reading, analyzing and predicting the future of the city.  Aesthetics of Exclusion is a design research project by Mark Jan van Tellingen (visual researcher), Thomas Smits (Radboud University), dr. Melvin Wevers (KNAW, Royal Academy of Sciences, Digital Humanities Lab) and Sjoerd ter Borg.The project is being developed this summer at Art Center Nabi in Seoul (Korea), in collaboration with V2_  (Lab for the Unstable Media) in Rotterdam and is supported by the Creative Industries Fund Netherlands. More info. 

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Aesthetics of Exclusion

Beach Umbrella (파라솔) is nominated for an Icarus Award! It's a Dutch prize for art works reflecting about technology and society. The film will be exhibited the 14th of November at the yearly conference of the ECP in the Fokker terminal (The Hague) where the winner will be announced. 

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Aesthetics of Exclusion: how can we use computer vision techniques and machine learning to explore and analyse aesthetical styles that correlate with gentrification in StreetView images of the Google Maps Archive? Aesthetics of Exclusion is a design research project by Mark Jan van Tellingen (visual researcher), Thomas Smits (Radboud University), dr. Melvin Wevers (KNAW, Royal Academy of Sciences, Digital Humanities Lab) and Sjoerd ter Borg. The project is being developed this summer at Art Center Nabi in Seoul (Korea), in collaboration with V2_  (Lab for the Unstable Media) in Rotterdam and is supported by the Creative Industries Fund Netherlands. Read more about the project here.

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In 2013 I asked Franca Treur to write a story from within and about a vacant bridge watching house in Amsterdam, as part of the Uitgeverij van Leegstand. The story is now used for a contemporary performance of Joseph Haydns 'Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze' made together with the Pynarello orchestra. 

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•-•• •••- (Light Vessel) transmits light pulses in Morse code to communicate real-time data of ships entering the waters of Amsterdam, connecting the city's maritime past, present and future. The installation is placed inside the tower of a light vessel next to the Marineterrein in Amsterdam. It is connected to a mobile website where the light signals are translated into letters and where you can find more information about the vessels.

The Marineterrein has hosted the Royal Dutch Navy for the last 360 years. In 2018 they will leave the area, concluding the city's maritime history. The installation honours this legacy by applying communication methods taught at the Marineterrein's 'Verbindingsschool' ('Connection School'). This method is combined with real-time maritime traffic data from an 18KM radius of the greater Amsterdam area, based on the maximum distance a light vessel is able to reach with it's signals. Each ship entering this radius is welcomed by Morse code light pulses, spelling out the name of the ship. To create the signals, the lighthouse mechanism, including concave mirrors, has been restored to its original state, augmented by algorithms translating the maritime data. 

.-.. ...- (Light Vessel) is part of the Amsterdam Light Festival 2017-2018, located at the Marineterrein, Amsterdam. On view daily from 5 - 10 PM from December 14th (2017) until January 7th (2018).

Concept & realization: Nick Verstand & Sjoerd ter Borg Head of Production: Koen van Oosterhout Management & communication: Sophie de Krom Backend installation & website: Jorrit Schaap Graphic design: Daniel Maarleveld Morse Typeface: konst & teknik Mattias Jakobsson Photo light vessel: Saskia Vader

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At the beginning of this year Nick Verstand and I sent a proposal to the Amsterdam Light Festival. From a total of around 900 submissions, we were selected to realize our installation .-.. …- (LV). Coming december we will shed some light on the Marineterrein Amsterdam and reflect about the past, present and future of Amsterdam as a maritime city. 

.-.. …- (LV) Concept & realization by Nick Verstand & Sjoerd ter Borg Backend light installation & web: Jorrit Schaap Typography and graphic design: Daniel van Maarleveld Technical production: Koen van Oosterhout Management and communication: Sophie de Krom Video stills: young marine men learning to read light signals at Marineterrein Amsterdam from „Make a Signal” by Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie (NIMH), 1969.  

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Together with Anja Groten I developed the Sandberg Series. The Sandberg Instituut is the Master’s Program of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and offers master’s programs in Fine Arts, Interior Architecture, Applied Arts, and Design. Jurgen Bey, director since 2010, has sought to align the institute with the dynamics of contemporary society. He introduced one-off, two-year programs developed in relation to urgent global issues. These temporary programs form an intense “insertion” in the Sandberg Instituut, challenging and influencing the regular programs in different ways, with the ultimate aim to develop education and learning further from within the institution.
To create a record of the temporary programs and as a platform for critical reflection on what temporality could potentially bring to an institute of continuous education, as well as to society at large, the Sandberg Instituut initiated the Sandberg Series, which focuses on changes in art education and in which the issues and urgencies of each of the programs are put forward and reflected upon. More info. 

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Mei - juli 2017 - Expositie Het land binnen de muren in de bibliotheek van Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam. Portretten door Koos Breukel. Foto’s door Sander van Wettum.

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March this year I started teaching at the MA of the Design Academy. I ran a project about the redevelopment of a former prison in the context of the aging population, commissioned by the Rijksbouwmeester. The student projects will be exhibited this Saturday in the prison itself (De Kruisberg in Doetinchem), during the Open Monumentendag: https://goo.gl/61EbzK.

Image: design research 'The Act'; a speculative scenario where humans become immortal and a need arises for spaces where you choose to leave this world. By Elisa Otañez, Jae Jang, Sho Ota and Vivien Tauchmann.

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During the coming two months my project 'The land inside the walls' be exhibited at the library of Het Scheepvaartmuseum. (Consisting of the book made in collaboration with Das Mag and photographs by Koos Breukel). I'm also pleased to announce I will be developing a follow up project about the history of the Marineterrein together with Het Scheepvaartmuseum, the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam and Van Gisteren. This project will be presented in July 2018 when the remaining (and largest) part of the Marineterrein will be opened for public and 360 years of military history in the city of Amsterdam will come to an end. At ease!