After a way to early but very pleasant flight (out of bed at 4:am) I arrived at Lisbon airport. 2 Ours later I’m walking around at the OFFF Festival in Oeiras and I have to say that this year’s location is very big! There are 3 rooms for presentations and performances.
A massive Hanger for the main stage, a room for presentations of new talents in the digital scene and especially for the fans of experimental electronic sounds there is a room called “loopita”. There is also a big merchandising and book market, a computer room, an energy spot for recharging your phone or laptop and a really big showplace where the main exhibition of the festival is situated. Naturally there is also a bar and something that should be the restaurant where you can get horrible spongy sandwiches and baguettes.

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Neville Brody

The first speaker of the day was Neville Brody. This guru of graphic/type/magazine design opened this year’s seminar and this year’s theme ‘Fail Gracefully’ by telling us to free yourself and our projects.  “Damn the consequences!”

Personally I was pleasantly surprised to hear that his studio was behind The beautiful Kenzo campaigns.

(portfolio website)

(live presentation @ offf)

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Multitouch Barcelona

Multitouch Barcelona made a pleading for bringing people and technology closer to each other. By adding some human warmth to their installations they not only make people interact with the screen but also bring people closer to each other. Here you can read the full report on their talk at OFFF 2009. In the main exebition hall you could play a game they made.

In de tentoonstellingsruimte van OFFF kon je ook een door hen ontwikkeld _nogal onconventioneel_ spelletje SPACE INVADERS spelen:

(Photo’s by Red Bull Music Academy Team, via:Multitouch Barcelona )

“Multitouch Space Invaders searches a new way to interact besides the classical multitouch applications that we’re familiarized to. We wanted to change the vision of typical finger based application to another concept that increases the collaboration with other users. Using balls as inputs versus fingers, the players could play in a totally collaborative environment.” (bron: Multitouch Barcelona)

Demo:

http://www.vimeo.com/2295367

Similar interactief work:

“Designed for the Red Bull Music Academy 08, Guten Touch is an interactive art installation that involves people into a natural relationship with technology. A two projected displays system plus a 3m x 2m multitouch wall showcase applications designed to engage us into human friendly experiences rather than flashy and jaw-dropping visualizations. … Guten Touch is our enthusiastic good morning to natural interaction.” (bron: Multitouch Barcelona)

http://www.vimeo.com/3288753

(live presentation @ offf)

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Karsten Schmidt – Toxic

Karsten Schmidt from ‘Toxic’ took us into his beautiful computer generated world. This designer/programmer frequently teams up with Matt Pyke from ‘Universal everything’ (Concept and Art direction) and together they make many different code generated designs like the wind tunnel for Audi and the monster postcards.

But we already saw those at OFFF 2007 and I was more interested in their new work.
So they repeated their unique postcards idea but this time with colourful computer simulated clothes. The idea was to hang a virtual piece of wire and move the lowest point around. Than they filled in the space the wire passed by with this cloth-like surface.

And of course like I expected someone would do, Karsten and Sascha Pohflepp made the ‘Social Collider’ commissioned by Google for their Chrome Experiments collection, to visualise how memes are created and how they propagate.

An other amazing graphic of a very different kind was this cover he made for Print Magazine. This typographic visual is a picture of a 3D print! After some trial and error trying to fail gracefully they managed to print this extremely detailed sculpture from a computer generated 3D model. I was really pleased to see that 3D printing is becoming a fully integrated medium in our visual culture. This looks like the future to me!

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Eva Vermandel

Eva Vermandel the lady from Sint-Niklaas (in Belgium) who lives and works in London had a very well prepared speech about her photographic work.

Eva Vermandel: “Mijn werk draait om de zoektocht het lineaire terug te vinden in een wereld die zwaar gefragmenteerd is door digitalisering en globalisering. Ik ga tegen het idee van ‘momenten’ in en probeer de onderliggende, doorlopende golfbeweging die tussen mensen onderling en mensen en hun omgeving ligt.”

All do she spoke perfect English I had a hard time understanding her. Probably because I was sitting in a bad spot and the eco in the room was really bad. On top of that she had a rather soft voice, so I can only recommend you to go to her website and let her work speak for itself.

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Jason Bruges Studio

Anyone who likes light, interactivity and architecture should see the amazing portfolio of the Jason Bruges Studio. Jason and his colleague are masters in ‘Visualising the invisible’ in their studio they are constantly experimenting with all kinds of electronics. But besides electronic devices they always use an interactive element to create their installations. This interactive element can of course be the actions or even reactions of people (for example: 02 Memory project, Recall) but for me their most moving installations were the ‘wind tower’ and the ‘moving chandelier’ because they use an invisible force and make it visual in the most unexpected and  a very esthetical way.
The  ‘Aeolian Tower’ installation is actually a building covered by little wind mills. Every mill has a red let light inside that only burns when the wind blows into the mill. So without using any extra electricity the tower lights up like a red northern light.

A similar installation was build commissioned by a law firm who wanted to do something special inside the 8 story high atrium of there building. So Jason and his colleagues made this gouge chandelier of little balls with blue let lights inside. When the wind on the roof blows in to the atrium and the balls in the chandelier start to shake they turn from deep blue to bright white. So if the wind blows harder the balls shine brighter.

The same wind trick was also used in a different installation in the museum for … where big tubes where hanged from the sailing. In every tube there was a ball and when the wind blows over the roof of the building inside the balls go up and down like waves.

I strongly recommend you to visit there website where you can check out all of there work.
Jason Bruges: “We make people think, we don’t give it on a plate”

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U.V.A. (United Visual Artists)

Just after the lecture of Jason Bruges we continued to play with light, interactivity and architecture because next in line there was U.V.A. (United Visual Artists)

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InsertSilence (James Patterson & Amit Pitaru)

Time for something else, InsertSilence did not insert silence! This is what you get if you put a graphic designer and a musician together for to long. This is a story of an idea going musical and visual. After experimenting with James Patterson ‘s illustrations to make code based animations Amit Pitaru felt the need to go back to making music. And because the music he wanted to make was impossible to create with conventional instruments he wanted to make his own instrument. So he created a little but very cool flash tool that make music just by drawing lines on the white screen. How higher your line in the screen how higher the note you get.

Of course if you don’t know how to play the instrument you find yourself in a dilemma, is this music or is this a drawing? Amit put the tool in different exhibitions around the world and people just draw pictures with it and made horrible sounds. So thinking about these facts made the boys of InsertSilence realise that this tool had an other great potential. So Amit modified it and made a quite unconventional 3D drawing tool out of it. James on the other hand had a great time with it because the tool was the perfect extension for his personal illustration style. After playing around with it and animating his 3D drawings the duo made a very extraordinary looking computer game.

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Chris Milk

The last speaker of this day was Chris Milk.

I have to say that he is just as peculiar, ironic and funny as his work suggests. Chris Milk has a trouble speaking for a big crowd so a staff member interviewed him about his life and work. But during this interview the most bold comments came out of the man’s mouth.
I think he’s work speaks for itself.