News

On this page I'll tell you about new developments, few as they are.

January 4th, 2010

Finally, I got around to update this website. I'm still working on some texts but decided to put it up nonetheless, or else it'd be another year.

December, 2009

Recently I got contacted by someone working at the Utrecht School of Arts, where I graduated. As it turned out, someone from the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam noticed Life and wanted to display it as part of their Friday evening programme their upcoming Paul Gauguin exhibition.

Of course, I'm very flattered with this attention and said 'yes', so on the evening of Friday, March 12 2010 I will present this work!

January 6th, 2009

Starting up your own company is hard work... I'm glad if I don't have to face my computer for a change! Never thought that would happen. Needless to say, aside from some research on the hardware I haven't worked much on Life. Time and funds are seriously lacking.

Speaking of our proud startup: We've changed its name from '2209 Media' to 'Catch Interactive'. It turned out that '2209' was quite hard to remember for people, plus that it carried no meaning to anyone except us. After quite a few brainstorms and beers we decided upon 'Catch Interactive': we're working on interactive projects to catch your customers. So there we are!

We've a new website, and it's to be found at catchinteractive.nl. See you there!

November 1st, 2008

We've found an office space for our company! You can find us at Savannahweg 60, in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Give us a call if you're in need of a fresh brew of coffee: +31 (0)30 241 2571.

September 23rd, 2008

Last weekend was the Graduation Exposition at Beeld en Geluid in Hilversum and I thought it a great success. During the expo, I’ve gotten a lot of very positive reactions from the visitors, so it was totally worth it. Many people also asked if they could buy my installation which I totally did not expect to happen. Needless to say, I am very flattered with such attention.

This made me decide to continue developing my project, in order to get something that would be easier for people to install in their home. At the moment it is quite bulky, so I will see if I can somehow fit it into a single package. It will take some time, though, because I have to do this in my free time which I don’t have much, having just started a company with a few fellows. Of course, if you very badly want more Life in your home and don’t mind some DIY’ing (or hiring a professional or two), you can always contact me so we can make an arrangement.

Home

I am Niels Keetlaer, a Digital Media graduate from the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands.

I’d like to work with interaction with groups of people especially in the public space, as well as smaller scale installations for promotional use. I like to work with displays and real time image manipulation.I’d like to work with interaction with groups of people especially in the public space, as well as smaller scale installations for promotional use. I like to work with displays and real time image manipulation.

For my graduation project, I will developed a responsive painting. While conducting my research and experimenting with various possibilities, I posted about it on a weblog (which was formerly hosted here), which doubled as my master’s thesis. You can now download my thesis from the download page.

Responsive painting

I had a little trouble starting of in the right direction. After a few tries, about which you can read in the first few posts, I started on a new project using the key ingredient from my former concepts.

My key ingredient is the use of (virtual) genetics to create something that would evolve due to interaction with the public. I decided to build a painting that would build a landscape based on its real world surroundings. I will use a camera for that, because of its accessibility (low price) and my previous experience with using camera feeds in installations. These surroundings include the beholders of the painting, so this landscape would alter itself as people come and go. In this landscape, creatures would live and have to evolve to be able to survive their land.

Research question

In order to create my painting I formulated the following research question:

How to create a responsive painting that would respond to the public trough evolutionary patterns?

Then, I split this in the following sub questions:

How do genes work, and how can I make them work in my painting?

What will it look like?

How can I convert the painting’s surroundings to a landscape? (Or: how will the interaction work?)

I will research genetic make-up and how this is used in evolution. Also, I will make a motivated choice as to what my painting should look like, so there’s a reason behind every element of it. Lastly, I will experiment with cameras (which register the space in front of the painting), and how to create a landscape from that.

Weblog = Thesis?

Yes. As of this year, at our school it is now possible to write your thesis in any form you want. Most still opt for a traditional thesis, but if you want you can, for example, create an interactive DVD or a comic. Of course, it does have to communicate what you want to tell, and you’ll need to have a motivation as to why exactly you want to deviate from the traditional path.

My motivation for writing a weblog is that I see this project more of an adventure than anything else. I am trying to express myself, and along the way I will discover the means to do so. My supervisor agreed, and so here it is.

This ‘Thesis in a weblog’-thing is quite a new experience: not only for me but also for the supervisors. There are quite a few differences.

First and foremost is the organization of the data: contrary to a normal thesis where related subjects are grouped together, they will be spread out over time, and mixed with other information. Categories are used to group related subjects, but this is not as clear a distinction as in a normal thesis. You can click on the name of a category name to see the entries in it. Some entries fit in multiple categories.

Second, information is spread out over more ‘chapters’ than would normally the case, because information is not grouped afterwards.

Third is that the text is much less informal on a weblog. It is written from a more personal point of view, and besides mentioning the results of the research the weblogger has more freedom to express his own feelings. Perhaps even (an attempt at) a joke...

Lastly, a weblog is much more interactive. Not necessarily with the visitors (I choose to disable the possibility of comments), but links to other websites may be added, movies can be shown and interactive applets my enlighten the experience.

Summary

This is the thesis of me, Niels Keetlaer. I am an EMMA DMD student at the Utrecht School of Arts, in the year of 2007-2008.

I have been working on the creation of a responsive painting, that would respond to its surroundings. The painting will build a virtual landscape based on a camera feed of the room it is in. In this landscape live virtual creatures, which will have to evolve to survive the changing land.

For my research, I started with the following question:

How to create a responsive painting that would respond to the public through evolutionary patterns?

I have found answers to this in genetics, and the art and theories of Wassily Kandinsky. In short:

The painting will sport a virtual landscape, which is based on its surroundings. In this landscape, a species of virtual creatures will have to survive. The ability of the creatures to survive is based in nature’s own ways, and through natural selection, hopefully a strong species will develop. The design of the painting will be based on Kandinsky’s art and theories.

My thesis is written in the form of a weblog, because I found that more appropriate since this project felt as an adventure to me. My supervisor agreed on this. Even though a weblog differs greatly from a normal thesis, I think it worked very well to convey the results of my research, even though I did have a little trouble with it along the way.

Conclusion

During my research, I have tried to answer my research question:

How to create a responsive painting that would respond to the public trough evolutionary patterns?

The subquestions this posed were:

How do genes work, and how can I make them work in my painting?

I have been able to devise a genetic description for virtual creatures that will live in the painting. This description mainly determines how able they are to survive. Also, I have created an algorithm based on the workings of nature to let the creatures create offspring. Through natural selection, only the ‘good’ genes should survive and the ‘bad’ ones should witter away. I have not yet been able to test this, as I am still working on my project.

What will it look like?

The answer to this question was found in Kandinsky’s theories and art. The choice for Kandinsky is arbitrairy: I choose it because I felt it was the right thing. The rest of the design is derrived from his abstract paintings and theories about colour and shape.

How can I convert the painting’s surroundings to a landscape? (Or: how does the interaction work?)

Through experimenting, I have found a way which builds an abstract and soft clouded image from a camera feed which registers the surroundings of the painting. This image will serve as a background for the painting, as well as be the most important part of the landscape the creatures will live in. If the image from the camera changes, so does the landscape. The creatures will have to adapt to that, which brings us back to the first subquestion.

To answer the main question in short: