User:Jasper van Loenen/RWRM/description: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:17, 18 October 2011

Latest version

Test Screen Installation Description

draft revision

what

'Test Screen' is the title of an installation made out of a big (about 110x80x40 centimeters), black, wooden box with an equally wide and about 60 centimeters high wooden board on top of it. The board has a rectangular opening in the middle, through which you can see a flatscreen monitor which has been attached directly to the back of the board. On the left and right side of the monitor there are black plastic knobs - a total of 96 - which are divided into groups by thin white rectangles. Each of these groups holds six to eleven knobs and has a flip switch and the text 'element', followed by the number of the group, in its top left corner.

On the monitor you see an image representing a television test screen. Each group of dials controls a different element on the screen - such as a colored box or a gradient. By turning the knobs you can change the elements' properties like color, size, and position, enabling you to change the shown image and make your own composition.

how

After the code needed to run the installation was finished and proven to work in a small prototype, the big box was the first element to be made. Next was the top board: the measures of the monitor and knobs were taken so holes could be sawn and drilled in the appropriate places. All the wood was then painted black. Each group of electronics for the knobs was soldered separately and then put trough the holes in the board from the back. On the front, small plastic knobs were attached: these are the elements the visitor can rotate. Using a plotter cutter I made white stickers to put around each group of knobs. In the exhibition space an iMac was placed inside the box and connected to the electronics and the screen.

why

When looking for a subject for my graduation project I realized I find modern electronics interesting, but also boring in their appearance - many devices look just about the same and are obvious the result of mass producing. Another thing I found interesting was the fact that these devices are capable of doing many things, but you can never see how these things come to be. It is impossible to see trough their fancy exterior and see the inner workings. I wanted to combine these two realizations and create a computer or system which would feel more hand-made and which would give the user some clues as to what is happening when you use it. I also found it important to produce this system by myself, so it would really be my product - from the coding and woodcrafting to the electronics.

Previous version

Test Screen Installation Description

what

'Test Screen' is the title of an installation which was part of my graduation from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands. It is an installation made out of a big (about 110x80x40 centimeters), black, wooden box with an equally wide and about 60 centimeters high wooden board on top of it.

The board has a rectangular opening in the middle, through which you can see a flatscreen monitor which has been attached directly to the back of the board. On the left and right side of the monitor there are black plastic knobs - a total of 96 - which are divided into groups by thin white rectangles. Each of these groups holds six to eleven knobs and has a flip switch and the text 'element', followed by the number of the group, in its top left corner.

On the monitor you see an image representing a television test screen. Each group of dials controls a different element on the screen - such as a colored box or a gradient. By turning the knobs you can change the elements' properties like color, size, and position, enabling you to change the shown image and make your own compositi

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-== Visual identity for the Art Fair 7 ==
+== Latest version ==
+=== Test Screen Installation Description ===
+====''draft revision'' ====
 '''what'''
-Visual identity for Art Fair 7 (Velesajam kulture 7) was a low budget commissioned work made in collaboration with Katarina Zlatec and Niko Mihaljevic in 2011.
+'Test Screen' is the title of an installation made out of a big (about 110x80x40 centimeters), black, wooden box with an equally wide and about 60 centimeters high wooden board on top of it. The board has a rectangular opening in the middle, through which you can see a flatscreen monitor which has been attached directly to the back of the board. On the left and right side of the monitor there are black plastic knobs - a total of 96 - which are divided into groups by thin white rectangles. Each of these groups holds six to eleven knobs and has a flip switch and the text 'element', followed by the number of the group, in its top left corner.
-Art fair 7 was communicated through several mediums: billboard, teaser posters, common program billboard, individual posters and program booklets.
+On the monitor you see an image representing a television test screen. Each group of dials controls a different element on the screen - such as a colored box or a gradient. By turning the knobs you can change the elements' properties like color, size, and position, enabling you to change the shown image and make your own composition.
-All the elements of Art Fair’s visual identity were made of A4 sheets of paper in 6 colors. Sheets were printed with a b/w laser printer.
+'''how'''
-The billboard contained basic information “VELESAJAM KULTURE 7”, “STUDENTSKI CENTAR”, “20.-23.01.2011.” and was made out of hand-pasted A4 sheets in 6 random colors which were sorted so that each letter would fit on 4 A4 sheets.
-Pieces of the billboard, individual A4 sheets, were used as teasers and pasted all over the city. Since each of them had only 1/4 of one letter from the billboard, they were unclear and abstract. Additional information was stamped on the poster.
-Singular posters were used in three diferent ways. Each performer/artist got his own A4 poster, which he could use freely as a single poster for his own promotion. Those posters were also used for the modularly assambeled common program billboard. Also, the posters were pasted as single posters depending on the location in the Student Centre where the particular event was held, so they made a colorful composition on the entrances of several buildings in the Student Centre.
-Booklet covers were also made out of A4 pieces of billboard (bent to the size of A6) and stamped with additional information. Each of them was unique.
+After the code needed to run the installation was finished and proven to work in a small prototype, the big box was the first element to be made. Next was the top board: the measures of the monitor and knobs were taken so holes could be sawn and drilled in the appropriate places. All the wood was then painted black.
+Each group of electronics for the knobs was soldered separately and then put trough the holes in the board from the back. On the front, small plastic knobs were attached: these are the elements the visitor can rotate. Using a plotter cutter I made white stickers to put around each group of knobs.
+In the exhibition space an iMac was placed inside the box and connected to the electronics and the screen.
 '''why'''
-The Art Fair is a festival held every year in the Student Centre, Zagreb, Croatia. It is a place where various artists, designers, musicians, performers, etc. are presenting their work. Since we had to make one visual identity for the whole festival, and the festival was actually compounded of more than a hundred very different and very inividual artist, we decided to make it as individual as it is common. The concept was to make an individual poster for artist, which functioned as a whole when put together with another posters.
+When looking for a subject for my graduation project I realized I find modern electronics interesting, but also boring in their appearance - many devices look just about the same and are obvious the result of mass producing. Another thing I found interesting was the fact that these devices are capable of doing many things, but you can never see how these things come to be. It is impossible to see trough their fancy exterior and see the inner workings.
+I wanted to combine these two realizations and create a computer or system which would feel more hand-made and which would give the user some clues as to what is happening when you use it. I also found it important to produce this system by myself, so it would really be my product - from the coding and woodcrafting to the electronics.
-After assembling the billboard, we had some leftover sheets of paper which we didn’t want to throw away, so we used them as teaser posters.
-The other thing which shaped the visual identity of the 7th Art Fair ware the severe budget cuts. In order to make it as cheaper as possible, we decided to use already colored A4 sheets of paper, and to print the content, rather than pressing it. Also, we used only black ink and did the whole work by ourselves
-To simplify the managing in the festival’s program we decided to assign one color to each of the art field presented on the festival.
-'''how'''
-All the promo materials for the festival were made by hand. The billboard was hand-pasted on a white canvas using the wallpaper glue. Program booklets were folded two times and stamped manually. All the teaser posters and program billboard posters were pasted by ourselves. Each of the A4 sheets was printed by a black/white A4 laser printer. The leftover pieces of the billboard were used as teasers and the basic information was stamped with a with a changeable-letter stamp. The added text was applied so that it would make the best possible composition with the partial letterform from the billboard letters.
 ==Previous version ==