Projects SI 28
The following is a collection of the projects conceived for the main event of Special Issue 28, that took place at Ubik, Rotterdam on 19th November 2025.
Writing Machine Ensemble
Participants: Robin, Ema, Daan
Description
With the Writing Machine Ensemble, rhythm and repetition will be experienced in a radically new form. Explorations in Potential Musicality is a musical journey through the sonic qualities of printers—with a strong emphasis on improvisation, yet promising dramatic intensity.
Co-founded by its current members, is an international group of experimental musicians from around the XPUB Studio. Independent and idealistic, they focus on blending the role of 'instrument' and 'musician' in an assemblage of artistic creation, striving to find the essential musical quality in tools of writing.
Media
Performance with dot matrix printer, pen plotter, typewriters.
Gesture Machine
Participants: Valentin
Currently working on:
Experimenting with open source motion capture datasets in touchdesigner.
Description
N. Katherine Hayles’ Cognitive Assemblages: People and technology made by people performing cognitive functions together. Only certain technologies considered as cognitive machines: The ones are capable of interpreting information of its own environment and act on the changes of the environment therefore changing its own context which creates meaning.
Volumetric Regimes are the industries that keep the technology 3D representation in a close circulation, iterating the same technology over and over again.
As a designer and amateur animator I take the position to make a cognitive animation table and attempting to explore free software provided by the above-mentioned industry through the lenses of Hayles’ Cognitive Assemblages.
Media
Hologram, stop-motion armature, human body
Keywords: gesture, non-verbal communication, body language, animation, stop-motion
-> Input -> Output ->
Input: hand gestures
Output: stop-motion animation
A story in a story in a story
Participants: Youjung Barbs Kiki
Description
"A story in a story in a story" invites you into an interactive narrative that lets you explore, gather and plot. Wander around in the virtual environment, pick up what you resonate with and that is what you take with you at the end of the day and becomes a tiny part of you.
Medium/Media
terminal, python, pen plotter, text adventure, fiction, paper & ink
The Calm Machine
Participants: Lea & Sibyl
Description
The Calm Machine is a quiet and cozy island in the buzzing and bustling of this event. Hidden away from the other stations, it provides privacy and a moment of peace. Come in, sit down, touch, listen and observe. We then invite you to go for a psychogeographic walk. Walking is a form of reading. Through the act of walking, you interpret and rewrite the city. You are a gear in the mechanics of the Calm Machine—by interacting, you make it come to life! Connect with your senses and surroundings, and perhaps generate a new sensation.
Medium/Media
touchdesigner, touchboard, sound, desk lamp
Marginalia
Participants: Luca
Currently working on:
Scripting pipeline to convert texts to graphs; Editorial research on specific textual archives
Description
Writing does something when published. Since the invention of text, it has functioned to flatten out a plurality of worlds from history, performing domination, differentiation and justifying violence. Marginalia takes selected texts in different historical contexts, and transforms them in experimental annotations engraved in canonical books. The resulting visual language communicates semiotics of displacement and a cartography manufactured by hegemonic world views. As a performance, layers of text, speech, and distortion present a writing machine as sonic warfare.
Media
Laser engraving on books, laser projection, live sound
Water Vessel: Dwelling in Temporality
Participants: Soda
Currently working on:
Exploring about this city and all the Europe
Description
This work begins with my personal experience of living in Rotterdam — a city that is structured and rhythmically defined by water. Surrounded by ponds, canals, and rainwater systems, I constantly sense a condition of floating dwelling: a way of living that feels both anchored and adrift, stable yet impermanent.
In response to this environment, I started collecting abandoned wooden materials around the city. These wooden materials came from the furniture and wooden waste thrown out by the people living here, construction sites, and branches sawn off by gardeners. This act of gathering is not only a process of reclaiming the city’s discarded fragments, but also a gesture of re-dwelling — an attempt to reconnect with the material traces of the place. Each piece of wood, marked by time, humidity, and human touch, carries the city’s sedimented memory. Its textures and scars speak of erosion, adaptation, and survival — revealing what I call the temporality of dwelling: the sense of being-in-time within unstable conditions.
Through joining, sanding, and bending these fragments, I assembled them into the form of a water vessel — a wooden pool suspended in midair. The vessel, as an object, embodies both containment and permeability. Water gives the vessel its meaning, yet constantly transforms its surface and temperature. Their coexistence suggests a reciprocal relationship between dwelling and being dwelled: to inhabit and to be shaped by what we inhabit.
For me, this vessel reflects the experience of living as an immigrant — of existing between lands, languages, and temporalities. In Rotterdam, a city of water and migration, this wooden container becomes a metaphor for temporary belonging, for the fragile balance between stability and drift. It is a space where time gathers, where the act of dwelling is never complete but always in the process of becoming.
Medium/Media
Wood Sculpture / Installation Keywords: Fluidity, Temporality of Dwelling, Nonlinear Memory, Liminality, Fragmentation
Love Machine
Participants: Phillip
Currently working on:
Picture storybook, comes with slides different images using AI and using my own word to tell the story of my characters such as Clara.
Description
I use AI to write my novel, and then I use AI again to create images for a picture storybook. The prompts are heavily supervised by me, so it is based on my own plot, story, and characters. It includes original storyline as well, and some scenes in the picture storybook are not in my original novel. The story conveys touch as an important means to show love, such as hugging and kissing. It also explores the human condition and what is instinctive. What you do out of heart and what you do just because it is the right thing can be two very different things. I also liked to explore what other people perceive as love and how they feel loved. I do this by engaging with the audience.
This chapter explores how my main character, Clara, travels around the world, interacting with various cultures and indigenous tribes such as the Awa tribe, the Inuits, The Tibetans, and Native Americans. I did research on their customs and traditions, and how endangered and isolated they are. The Awa tribe for example is based in the Amazon Rainforest and is so isolated that some of them are uncontacted, which would make reach much more difficult since it could cause disease and widespread epidemic. Only a handful are contacted and vaccinated which makes it easier for Clara to reach them. Even then, they are wary of outsiders due to their experience with illegal loggers, and armed groups. The Sentinelese are another example of an uncontacted tribe that chose isolation willingly and has been isolated for centuries. They are protected under international law and any contact with them could risk widespread disease and unintended death. They are isolated for survival. Because of these issues, my character cannot always use touch to get close to them. Instead, she learns their customs and practices, and helping them in everyday life. The Maori in Polynesia, for example, use the honghi as a method to show love and respect for one another. This comes when two individuals from the same tribe touch their foreheads while holding arms. The point that I want to make is that my character breaks boundaries with her love to reach outcasts and those who are isolated, even getting married to an outcast of an already isolated tribe. This outcast possesses Down Syndrome and a disability. My intention is not to promote stereotype but to make a point that true love looks past and breaks stereotypes. The character then goes on to save people during natural disasters and worldwide chaos and issues, often sheltering them with her own body and choosing to sacrifice herself. I researched different issues that parts of the world faces, such as the Haiti earthquake, the Banda Aceh tsunami, a volcanic eruption in Iceland, a typhoon disaster in the Philippines, the Ethiopian drought and famine, the Californian wildfire, the Covid pandemic, refugee crises and displacement such as the Rohingya tribe in Myanmar facing persecution and genocide, and the Syrian refugee crisis, and several wars including the Vietnam War, Agent Orange victims, ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. These scenes are based on real world events and real life issues which makes them sensitive to some readers as they show distressing images.
This chapter is part of my wider arc, my second book, Death in London, which touches on the present day when Clara has died as London's guardian superhero and the public is mourning her and paying tribute by remembering her past.
The Metathinking Metamachine
Participants: Tommi
Description
A fictional seance with the Gods of Tools
, using The Ultimate Tool
to finally solve all Tommi’s software quests, utopian dreams, and issues.
Media
Performance with pen plotter.