User:Quinten swagerman/steve/whathowwhy

Note: In process

One Page Flip

What

One Page Flip is a flip book – a little book which, when held in the left hand and flipped through with the right, shows an animation. The cover is white and on it it says in bold, black, capital letters:

ONE
PAGE
FLIP

The book has 75 pages. On them: a thin black line-drawn animation of two hands flipping an empty flip book. One page is being flipped. In other words: within the span of flipping 75 pages, one page flips in the flip book within the flip book.

How

I took a photograph of my hands holding a flip book, then traced the photograph, creating a line-drawing. Next I animated the movement of one page flipping and added some slight movements to the hands holding the flip book. I exported the frames of the animation, printed them, cut them out and bound them together.

Why

While working on another flip book the idea popped up. From this point on I could not help myself.

Collective Waiting Portrait

Collective Waiting Portrait is a website that collects pictures of people waiting at pedestrian traffic lights. The pictures are taken from the other side of the street, so that the people photographed look in the direction of the camera.

Two red buttons in the form of a circle hover over the images in the top left corner. The 'Collective Waiting Portrait' button opens a window which gives a brief description of the aim of the site: ‘Collective Waiting Portrait collects people waiting for the light to turn green’, under this description: a Facebook ‘Like’ button. The 'Submit' button opens another window, with the e-mail address that people can use to submit images to.

People know of the site by a yellow sticker to be found on traffic lights. This sticker is based on the existing sticker to be found near the button on most pedestrian traffic lights in The Netherlands. On it: an illustration of a man taking a picture of two people on the other end of the zebra crossing, and, under this, the instructions: 1) take a picture of the people on the other side, 2) send to submit@collectivewaitingportrait.net.

How

The photographs are scaled so that the peoples’ sizes match, rotated so that the horizon is horizontal, and placed horizontally next to each other, the pavements connecting. The image taken last is placed left, scrolling to the right shows the earlier taken images. Under the pictures: the name of the city in which the image was taken, the date on which it was taken, the first name of the person that took it, preceded by the two words ‘thank’ and ‘you’.

The sticker was made by tracing sticker as found on most traffic lights in The Netherlands, giving the man waiting on it a camera and adding two men waiting on the opposite side of the street. Some investigations where done to see if the graphic was clear: I asked people what the waiting man was photographing. Some thought the street, and thus some changes where made, primarily raising the camera.

Why

Blip Listening

What

Blip Listening is a series of animations based on field recordings, to be seen on smartphones at the location where the sound was recorded. The animations are short, from 30 seconds to one minute and 30 seconds, and visualize one sound element from the recording in a minimal and abstract manner. For example: a white bar on a black background visualizes the bleep of a cash register in a supermarket.

How

At places in Rotterdam - bus stops, zebra crossings, supermarkets, metro stations - translucent stickers are placed. On the sticker: a QR-code and one or more shapes. When the QR-code is scanned, the animation launches. The shapes on the sticker are now seen moving on the screen, visualizing one element from the field recording. This field recording might blend with the sounds of the environment, as an echo from the near past, particularly when the viewer/listener is wearing headphones and his volume isn't set too high.

The shapes where chosen intuitively. Listening to the field recordings, I picked out one sound element and scribbled down shapes that I associated with it. The ones that seemed to fit best, I animated.

Why

The animations came forth out of an interest in experiencing places through sound. In idle moments – lying on my back in a park or sitting on the balcony - I sometimes found myself listening intensely, trying to hear as much as possible. The world unfolds in a different way when listening. Dziga Vertov puts it like this:

"One day in the spring of 1918… returning from a train station. There lingered in my ears the sights and rumble of the departing train… someone's swearing… a kiss… someone's exclamation… laughter, a whistle, the ringing of the station bell, the puffing of the locomotive… whispers, cries, farewells… And thoughts while walking. I must get a piece of equipment that won't describe, but will record, photograph these sounds."

I wanted to create tiny reminders of the sounds surrounding us, and tried to point to this mode of listening that's not primarily functional (as in: the sound of a car warning you that it is about to pass, the alarm clock waking you up, someone's voice asking you if you feel like having pancakes for dinner).