User:Quinten swagerman/steve/whathowwhy

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

What

Collective Waiting Portrait is a website that collects pictures of people waiting at pedestrian traffic lights. The pictures are taken by people from around the world, photographing the people on the opposite side of the street. The images 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, thus forming one long row. Under the images the location and date is given and the person who took the image is thanked.

How

People know of the site through 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.

After the image is submitted, it's processed as described above. Then, the contributor is thanked by e-mail. Sometimes the contributor asks for stickers, this way the project gets known in new places.

Why

The project came forth out of a picture my brother Paul took in Tokyo, back in 2008. It shows a large group of people waiting. The picture appealed to us for a few reasons. It looked like a family portrait, even though the people in it where most likely strangers to each other. You could see the peculiarities of the city, as well as the various gestures of waiting. We decided to start a collection. The collecting and combining of the pictures enhances the meaning of each separate contribution – and the collection as a whole. The more contributions, the wider the variety of places, people, gestures and the bigger the time-capsule of brief non-activity.

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 were chosen intuitively. Listening to the 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. During 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 practical (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).