I n t e r a k t i o n s - L a b o r

 

 

Arjen Keesmaat

(Waag Society for old and new media, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

 

I'm an interaction designer and media artist, graduated at the Utrecht School of Arts (The Netherlands), faculty of Art, Media and Technology.

During my study I developed an interest in desiging user-unfriendly interfaces and applications that don't do what you want, or do what you don't want.

This was stimulated by the commercial and corporate focus of the school, and my growing dislike for the computer itsself as an interface.

From this later on I developed an interest in spatial interaction, responsive environments and interactive objects, which often involve computers, but now they are "put away in a corner somehere". My main interest in developing these kind of works are public spaces, but also applied situations, for instance theatre.

I developed installations like Eklektika, Lights/hallway, and the Talking Mirror (Ik en Ik). The last one was awarded the best work of art by the public of the Theatre Festival "Oerol" (http://www.oerol.nl), in a collection of works of young artists .

Oerol is an annual theatre festival on the wadden-island Terschelling in the north of Holland. As a result of this prize i'm working on a new work for this years Oerol called Bliep (http://bliep.hku.nl). I'll be working with a collective of artists who make their own work, with the condition that their work provides the Bliep Lab with the outcome of their project. This can be images, sounds, coordinates of objects transported away by sea and wind, poems or songs etc..In the lab, this data is stored, analysed and re-processed into a daily performance, that will show the constant changes of/on the island itsself, and the dynamics that are responsible for that.

I'm working at the Waag Society on a variety of projects, in the Sensing Presence - (KeyWorx, Connected/Anatomic) and the Creative Learning (ScratchWorx) departments of the Waag, conducting workshops, technical realisation and development.

 

website: http://www.arri.org