Petervan Studios — Update Dec 2023
As we close the year, here is the latest update on Petervan Studios.
The previous update was in March 2023. In a sense, this update is an update on the whole year. A lot has happened since then. A lot did not happen. An overview.
Quick catch-up
I studied architecture (art school), never practiced (dropped out), and stumbled into a nice corporate career. In 2017 I took a sabbatical and never went back. I left the corporate world. I am now officially “retired”
Family
On 18 Dec 2023, Astrid became 18 years, officially “of age”, driving our car (good driver, final exam in Feb 2024), and started higher studies (a four years bachelor nursery), and horses, of course. And in May, we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. Time flies. Happy times.
Cosy Birthday Breakfast for Astrid The Art Studio
The Art Studio is nicely rippling along. I did not have the feeling that I accomplished much, but with hindsight, it’s not too bad, and there are a lot of good foundations for the year to come.
Some of the new projects include:
Claim your word Something has dissipated New paintings New digital artworks New soundscapes Experimenting with interfaces for IRL and VR installations
You can find most of them via the “Artworks” tab on my website.
© Petervan Artworks 2023 — Pears — Acryl on Canvas
The “Something has Dissipated” project got some traction. There are now about 20 spoken language versions by real humans, including Mongolian and Chinese. But also some synthetic non-human avatar versions like this one:
I registered for the Stability.AI residency by the HUG Innovation Laboratory, participating online between 8 Jan and 18 Feb 2024.
In the planning is a personal solo art exhibition in VR coming and maybe IRL. Some installation concepts will try-out first in VR, and maybe later IRL.
A new performance lecture “City of Play” is in the making, about the New New Babylon (and the power of imagination). Target date first shows: March 2024. With the emphasis on “target”.
New New Babylon — City of Play
I am kind of obsessed with the New Babylon project of artist Constant Nieuwenhuys, who co-founded the avant-garde COBRA art movement in the 1950s.
For 25 years he worked on New Babylon, an imagined city for the playful and creative human being. The oeuvre consists of hundreds of drawings, sketches, and maquettes. His work was inspired by the book Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga.
The NEW New Babylon is an artistic research project where we use 2023 technologies.
At the time of writing, we are trying to set up a team/consortium to overlay an existing city (district) with a VR environment for A/B Testing of the urbanistic, economic, governance aspects of the city.
It probably will involve expertise from worlding experts, interactive fiction, procedural games, autonomous worlds, protocol language patterns, etc
More high-level info here: https://petervanstudios.com/new-new-babylon-city-of-play/ .
I have more details, so if you are really interested in putting skin in this game, DM me.
Performance
The script is more or less done now. Starting to make the first soundscapes for this.
This trailer of Hilma af Klint’s “The Temple” experience keeps haunting me.
As well as this painting by Léon Spilliaert from 1908 called “De Duizeling” aka “The Dizziness/Vertigo”
At this moment I am exploring a whole slew of tools: videosync, BEAM, BAM, Procreate Dreams, Capture for scene design, and spending lots of time on learning/trying to understand Blender, Unity, Unreal Engine, new Ableton packs, the new version of Apple Logic Pro X, and hopefully soon Apple Vision Pro.
Timing slips. No problem, I have time. And it has to be right. And not sloppy.
Delicacies
Delicacies are back! This time on Substack
Writings
Loads of notes, draft blogs, reflections, etc in the pipeline. When I look at some of the material, it feels like I am in a different reality.
The next one is probably about wormholes.
No idea when and if I will publish what when.
It’s probably going to come in bursts.
Books
Highlights:
Making Meaning with Machines: Somatic Strategies, Choreographic Technologies, and Notational Abstractions through a Laban/Bartenieff Lens
The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are
Other books I am reading: See my GoodReads:
https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscompetervan Exhibitions
Since March 2023, I visited many art exhibitions and galleries. If I had to pick one or two highlights, it would be Jan De Vlieger at Mudel and the Inspired By Love expo at Belfius Art Gallery. Picture below is work by Emilie Terlinden.
Detail Jan De Vlieger’s San Marco People — picture by Petervan
Detail of Emilie Verlinden’s The Farm 2023 — Picture by Petervan
Also, the works of David Claerbout and his practice are a continuous inspiration for my own work. Here is a great talk by David at Schaulager Basel as part of the Out of the Box exhibition.
David Claerbout discusses a range of artworks, among them Nightscape Lightboxes (2002–2003), Wildfire (meditation on fire) (2001), and Backwards Growing Tree and Birdcage (both from 2023), the latter two on show at the Gallerie Greta Meert in Brussels till 3 Feb 2024.
What’s next?
I don’t know. Focus areas are:
The New New Babylon project The upcoming solo exhibition in VR The Performance
But there are some promising smouldering sparks deep in the camp fire that may suddenly light up. Life is full of surprises. Only the fool don’t change their mind.
So, that’s it for this edition.
Happy New Year to all of you!
If there is something worth reporting, the next update is for April 2024.
Warmest,
Originally published at http://petervanstudios.com on December 23, 2023.
