Nou&Herkauw MicroGarden VJ-Set

A couple of weeks ago Nou&Herkauw did a new VJ experiment. For a special party in the Blokhuis Poort, a former prison in Leeuwarden, we created a small garden, extracted all kinds of organic colour liquids, collected some finger cams and usb microscopes, bought very old books about nature, developed some loop and buffer software, created 2 stop-motion sets, and used all this as source for a bio-vj-set. Here are some pics. :) Many thanks to Marin de Boer for growing the garden, and Erwin Zantinga for his great animating efforts!

GiantMiniMediaLab

We developed a new workshop for kids. The GiantMiniMediaLab is a studio set-up where kids (also parents) can create and edit 3 spectaculair short movies. The theme is gigantic and mini. Like giant robots, mini people, and big insects.

With scale models, miniature puppets and cars, cardboard, costumes, a greenscreen, finger-camera's, and the kids as actors and actresses, we create on the spot and live movie scenes with wonderfull environments and special effects. After the workshop we add a soundtrack and sound effects. It was hilarious!

Nou&Herkauw @ Clash2011

Photo's by Mieke Lindeman.

Nou&Herkauw @ DutchBloggies

On December the first, the DutchBloggies had their Ninth Award show for the best blog in several categories. Nou&Herkauw was happy to be part of it and did a performance more emphasized on blogging.

New modules and contributions:

HumanTweetBox developed by Gerrald van de Kolk.
Write your tweets, and record yourself to express your tweets visually. The tweets combined with the recordings are used as source material for the N&H veejaays.

TweejayTool by Erik Katerborg.
A tool that integrates tweets from Twitter in Module 8. Based on tags or topics, search for tweets. The tool translates the tweets into typographic animations used for vj-ing.

Flickr/Moby photo download tool developed by myself. Is not fully working yet. Based on topics and tags automatically downloads pictures from mobypicture and flickr, and integrates them as a photostream in the N&H Veejaytool.

Nou&Herkauw @ Noordelijk Film Festival

Last Saturday the 14th of November Nou&Herkauw did a new experimental performance at the NFF party. The party was the first collaboration with the NFF and the Popfabryk, a new production house for innovative, popculture related projects. For some time already we had the idea to extend the N&H performance with musicians. The NFF was the perfect occasion to experiment with this idea. The starting point of the project was Sound=Vision. Musicians, a singer, designers and media artist collaborating in a live improvisation to visualize sound.

 

Photo's by www.fotografieke.com, for more photo's of the NFF check Marieke her Flickr.

To visualize sound we experimented with several techniques. One of them was inspired by Cymatics. With Cymatics you are able to visualize frequencies of sound trough the use of matter. For example, liquids, dust, sand and even cornstarch. We got inspired by this after seeing some video's on the net. One of them a rare, strange, and epic movie by Hans Jenny. More video's: TEDTalks and a DIY video on Make. To use the frequencies of the music performance we used a collection of speakers which were connected to the output of the audio mixer. We prepared all kinds of liquids, tiny pieces of colored paper, beans and much more.

 

 

 

Always an important part of an Nou&Herkauw performance is the participation of the audience. One of the most popular components of a N&H set-up is the stop-motion animation table. People can join and start animating.

The interactive and collaborative process is maybe more important than the final result. N&H is a project which emphasizes the process and the creative energy of the collective. We started our N&H experiments four years ago in reaction to the VJ performances we did under our 'Snow' name. These performances were less interactive, more straight forward performing with some vj-software and a DJ, and with a lot of visual preparation in advance. Nevertheless also very enjoyable.

Dennis van Tilburg, a fliendly musician/sound designer with whom we work intensively, build a set up with Ableton, al lot of small instruments, and synthesizers. In collaboration with Laurens Vermeulen at the stage piano with lots of effects, Adriaan Groffen at the drum, and singer Merel van Dijk, they created a music and sound composition based on improvisation, sampling and looping. It was great!

Also a group of students of the Academy of Popculture did a great job producing and experimenting during the whole project.

All together 13 N&H'ers were jamming their pants off!

Report N&H VJ Farm

My fellow Snowman Ruben wrote a very nice report about the Nou&Herkauw VJ Farm at the Cinekid Festival. Here is a link to his blog Sneeuwig. Freely translated into English as Snowy;). Ruben and I are collaborating in almost every media art project, I think, for about nine years now. Together we form the artist duo Snow. We both are graduated in sculpture at the Artez. An Art Academy formerly based in the small town of Kampen, but moved to Zwolle for a couple of years already.

N&H VJ Farm @ Cinekid 2009

The Farm

Some pictures of the farm almost finished.

IME the E of building a Vee-Jay Farm

Snow has a side-project which carries the name Nou & Herkauw. Freely translated in English Now & Ruminate. N&H is VJ-collective with a variable formation of designers, artists, poets and musicians. The aim of N&H is to create a audio/visual performance by starting with completely nothing and create all the content on the spot during the performance. What starts with nothing ends up into a performance made out of beats, loops, glitches, buffers, animations, errors, and more.
For the Cinekid Festival N&H is developing a worklab for kids with the age of 8 to 14. Its called the Nou&Herkauw Veejay Farm and is a combination of a playful animal farm and animation vj/dj workshop. At this moment we are executing the design of the farm. We asked Richard, Gerrald, and Willemijn to collaborate in this project. The three of them are design students from the Academy of Popculture.