On March 18th, 2018, Russian presidential election took place. Vladimir Putin has become the president for the fourth time, breaking the previous record with 77% of votes. His campaign didn’t include much personal involvement or presence, as Russian media has been working hard to sustain his popularity for years.

My project is an investigation into the news reports shown by 4 federal TV-channels within a week before the elections. By collecting and categorizing this footage I am able to paint a picture of how state propaganda occurs on television, hiding behind supposedly objective narratives. Just like socialist realism painting back in the USSR, these short pieces of footage come together as a mundane, yet utopian, scripted version of reality, that works in state’s best interests. “Engineers of the soul” is the way Joseph Stalin used to refer to socialist realists, whose template-based art have become the main tool of spreading propaganda across the Union.

Ever experienced sweat breaking out when you had to make a choice? Whenever the decisions were tough, you’d rather turn around or let the decision depend on someone else?

Then you might have suffered from decidophobia. The fear of making decisions. Some people just have slight signs of anxiety, while other’s life are influenced immensely.

Every day we are confronted with new dilemmas and our choices will be influenced and judged by society. Wrong decisions can be very costly. Even ordering in a restaurant can become stressful. So imagine what it is like when it comes to what to study, what job to take or whether to marry or not.

However, it is not a shame to be indecisive. Not knowing what road to take is all part of finding our way through life. Like how I was trying to make the right decisions to get where I am now.

The papers are full of articles reporting traumatic events, war news in particular. There is however very little attention in the media on the consequences of war. Effects that are not limited to the victims who experienced these wars themselves. Every year, Dutch soldiers return from peace missions abroad that have been in war situations. In addition, traumatized refugees arrive in The Netherlands. Refugees that have been forced to flee their country as a result of war. In both cases we speak of first generation victims of war. The Netherlands also has a large group of second, third and fourth generation victims of war. Descendants of victims of World War II. Scientists and experts found out that the effects of war have a trans generational character. Two, three and four generations of family members experience influences by nature or nurture that determine their daily wellbeing. It is becoming increasingly clear that epigenetics plays a major role in this.

0_0 reacts on the current society. It’s a graphic design and streetwear oriented performance titled One Hit Wonder. As a reaction on fast moving trends in society, where progressiveness and information overload can make ignorance feel like true bliss and an emoji as enough of an answer. 0_0 works with existing symbols from contemporary culture. The is goal of my project is to create a deception towards my visitors and put them in a state of oblivion.

What means nationalism and what is the complex meaning behind it.

As we might think that the world seems to be getting more open and connected, it shrinks at the same.

Far-right parties gain more support from [the?] society, and their claims mainly focuses on migrants.

Intrigued by the recent changes in the connotation to the word migrant we may witness how from positive and heroic it turned into negative and threatening.

Countries in which radical parties are gaining more power, are the countries that are sending the most of their own citizens abroad.

In other words, those countries which are against immigration, are at the same time taking a leadership role in emigration. For example, Germany, US, UK.

Statistics show that the group of elderly primigravida is increasing rapidly. Due to the accessibility of fertility treatments it is possible to pause, or even reset, the biological clock. It seems like the increasing numbers are just the beginning of a new standard. But despite the recent growth in amount, they still face strong resistance from society. Is this resistance justified? Who will decide the boundaries when nature is not a controlling factor anymore?

Elderly primigravida raise ethical questions regarding social pressure, age limits and artificial reproduction. This project introduces three different elderly primigravidae as a reflection on these recent developments and questions. Through the short documentary the statistics become tangible. By including factual research, different aspects are highlighted from the debate surrounding artificial reproduction and the rise of the elderly primigravida.

High probability of unemployment, low and falling incomes and no insurance in case of no income when incapable of work, are some of the defining attributes to 90% of self-employed visual artists in the Netherlands. Designers perceive funding plans as a promised land to potentially overcome precarity. But what is a designer confronted with when presenting oneself to art policies? Applications present competitive market systems and increased demand for usability. Good News investigates the semiotics of funding and questions how neoliberal art policies promote individuality, whilst controlling individual behavior. Through various visual narratives, the film unpacks the normative professional attributes prescribed by the creative industries.

The 2017 election programs of the Dutch political parties contain 41 statements which are in direct violation of constitutional articles. I Hereby Pledge My Allegiance is a dynamic installation which portrays the impact and consequences for Dutch citizens of politicians ignoring the constitution. Presented as a game the installation invites the visitors to act as politicians and experience how their choices can either weaken or strengthen the constitution.

Recent advances in the field of artificial intelligence have opened the door to many unforeseen possibilities. One of these is the ability to combine knowledge and data from vast amounts of people into a single combined intelligence. This technology allows us to communicate with a whole website and all of it’s users merged into one being.

Artificial Swarm Intelligence is an installation focused on content from reddit.com, a website consisting of numerous “subreddits”, which are boards covering a wide variety of specific topics. Several chatbots were trained with data from certain subreddits, such as r/christianity, r/feminism, r/history, etc. This allows the visitors of the exhibition to talk to these websites as single intelligent entities. Additionally, the chatbots are able to speak to each other, exchange information and learn from each other. The bots become a representation of their respective website as a whole, and result in a new way of compiling and accessing information.

Growing Decay is an installation that monitors and depicts the process of entropy, showing how the so-called “once in a 10.000-year storm” develops in the Netherlands. Based on the databases and prediction models of the The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, the installation visualizes the cycles of different climate variables. Upon coincidental combination, they can create a storm of 0.0001% probability, which could possibly cause flooding in the country. The process is a metaphor of how the state of things gets more disordered over time as entropy increases.

Our bodies constantly produce data that can be measured, recorded, and analysed. This has become fundamental to scientific research and healthcare as well as for setting standards and policy-making. On the surface, data seems like a magical box that makes decisions for you, but what can we truly learn about ourselves from it?

“Cabinet of accurate delusions” stages the experience of collecting data, whereby the visitor is asked to participate in order to be let in. This ‘payment’ grants access to the gathered data, the visual abstraction of which is prioritized over informative value. The visitor is confronted with numbers without units or reference marks; they are not judgmental, evaluative, or enumerative and in this sense they are pure. At the same time, this data doesn't produce any knowledge, and only by applying categories or asking questions can one make sense of it.

How can struggle, pain and effort be glorified? In a society where tools and processes have been simplified in such a way that they can offer us instant gratification, we lack discipline and perseverance. We have the ability to make things happen without having to wait. We seek calculability, efficiency and profit. Basically, we have a hard-wired desire for doing minimal effort with maximum results, and have found more creative ways to outwit this struggle. However, it is precisely the struggle, time, pain and effort that helps us to reach fulfilment and happiness. Why do we avoid it so much? And in what ways are we trying to compensate for our behaviour? Inspired by the greek tragedy of Sisyphus, this project aims to trigger a switch between the results we desire, and the physical and emotional suffering that leads us to our goals. “The Perfect Struggle” is a video-installation that celebrates struggle in a world that only celebrates success.

How to discover what your sexual needs are and how to talk about them with other people?’

Iris Lam asked this question to a very diverse group of people: three prostitutes, two a seksual girls, students from the Minerva association, an eighty-six year old lady, a tantra-couple and she worked as a telephone prostitute for two days herself.

Lam recorded all these amazing stories and used the audio in her animations.

The contrast between the audio of the serious interviews and the ‘funny’ drawings is a bit alienating. It forces the viewer to think about the content in a different way, in a more light and humorous way.

We accept new technology, but we are not aware that this new technology also changes our behavior. We live in an era that’s constantly in contact with each other; we connect with family, friends, and lovers all the time. Which is made possible by the advanced smartphone.

The device that is always there to interrupt all kinds of social interaction can unnoticed lead to loneliness, FOMO, apathy, phubbing or even a digital burn out.

Instead of physically connecting as in face to face conversation, we prefer to turn to our smartphone in social situations. This new form of behaviour that gives in to the attention yelling demands of the device, creates a fragmented and overstimulated life, actions happen with half of our focus.

I aim to reverse this new accepted form of behaviour. Playing a physical game is the solution to experience real connection without the disturbance of the smartphone.

Lets play in order to reclaim social interaction.

The smell of burned flesh and melted plastic is penetrating your nose at the moment you wake up from what seemed to be a foolish nightmare. But the surroundings tell you something different. While exploring the area you encounter zombie-like creatures who are haunting the streets.

Together with other survivors, you find yourself inside a 90’s apocalypse world. Identical to your dream everything around you, including the zombies, shows a clear sign of 90’s appearance.

Did it really happen? Has the overconsumption and recycling of 90’s pop culture led to a nostalgic feedback loop with fatal consequences?

It sounds like there is a sign of survivors. There are rumours about a shelter, that contains some crucial information.

An investigation into one of the fuzziest magnetizing fringes of our society: witches. We live in a period of pop culture re-enchantment, revival of celestial journey seekers and a regained awareness of our spiritual essence.

Through employing spiritual signs and characters to hyperbolic ends, WITCHES BREW is a first introductory dip into the witchy water. Inspired by five encounters with beautiful spirits who have given their concrete views upon contemporary witchcraft, five fictitious pets have sprung into life. A cyber coven gets brewed, and the taste is bitter-sweet.

#BabaYagaBabyWitch #NeoZen #DigitalMystic #AvatarLab #UrbanHealing

How do we share the commonality through an object? ‘Objects of Worship’ is a collection of semi-ordinary artifacts that re-encounter between the boundary of familiar and unfamiliar culture or belief. Ranging from world's largest religion 'Christianity' to parody religion 'Flying Spaghetti Monster', an object itself doesn’t function the way it was originally intended. By showing a different usage, it becomes not only representation of each belief or culture but it also shows the possible extension of an object that incarnates a specific system of belief. A step-by-step instruction allows the viewer to find a new relationship between object and culture and open the spare space for understanding other cultures.

The coming years promise the advent of the voice interface era.

This technology is being implemented everywhere such as our cars, fridges and the things we wear. This causes very high user-expectations. Every voice assistant comes with misunderstandings since they are still unable to fully understand our evident invention called language. Especially when it comes to spoken language. I want to introduce to you: George.io. A voice assistant that helps you with very basic design tasks. In this particular model, you can design your own business card, a very basic design entity. An entity that might be even obsolete in a few years. George.io emphasizes the flaws in natural language understanding between human and machine and covers issues like privacy and surveillance that come along with that.

In her project, Laura de Rijk raises questions around exoticism and normality in the Dutch society.

This work started from Laura’s fascination with the beauty, the mystery and the richness of exotic plants, in terms of form, color and mechanical properties. Her installation invite the visitor to look at exoticism from a novel perspective. Here, the complexities of human migration will be visualized through a plant-story video installation. The topics include established exotics and naturalization.

MUNDANOTOLOGY is a practice that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain awareness of the essence of the daily rite.

What is most meaningful to us is the worship of the simple everyday rituals, the power of repetition, and the transient origin of all routines.

The Altar of the Mundane is a sacred space to honour and cherish the ordinary, to take a step back, to reflect, and to ground. It is a place to worship the daily rituals, the ones necessary to be able to go about the bigger gestures in life—the long term human endeavours. Loved ones, friends, careers, they come and go, but your dishes won't leave you till your grave.

Graphic design is no longer subjective. At least online, every small decision can be tested: Chose the blue or the red button to optimise your conversion rate. A/B testing, formerly a tool used by a handful of tech giants to sell more products, has now become a product in itself. With the help of a number of platforms, you can also make your design decisions based on metrics—and you don’t even have to understand how it works!

41 Shades of Blue is a mostly-true documentary that explores the origins, the implications and the future of this new, evidence driven design practice. Between the Uncanny Silicon Valley and the Black Rock Desert of the Real it digs through layers of branding and looks at a world in which data has made design obsolete.

We write now more than ever. Text is a substantial part of constructing our persona and our relationship to the modern world. Yet writing is a mysterious craft — an alchemy of sensibility, emotions, and memories casted into words — that often carries an effect beyond the writer’s control. The strive for control over the effect on a reader, or Unity of Effect as Edgar Allan Poe once called it, has been a lifelong devotion for many writers.

The Ghostwriting Collective, formed by infamous writers, is here to assist you in your modern textual creations. As complex as writing often becomes, the tool’s functionality is not replaceable or reproducible with algorithms. It transcends, it reflects, it communicates.

This project is a plea for attention in language, and a celebration of writers from praised to unnoticed (yes, even invisible).

Welcome to our house.

A house where rules are broken, reconstructed and wiped off like smudged mascara.

The Family Pack is a home tour guiding you through several interpretations of family and their comfort-zones. The perfect, nuclear family is spread throughout culture in many ways. How do we digest this idea of family? This guided tour is guaranteed to give you a fresh, raw or new perspective.

Take a tour and binge eat a beefy, lasagna bolognese XXL, look for hardcore, masculine daddies and cleanse your skin with funky, powdery, wet baby wipes. Don’t you love the smell of it?

Yearning for escape from our imperfect human bodies, we called for Prometheus to bring us the divine fire. We are not supposed to be weak. Our current physical state is a system error. We will liberate ourselves as soon as we find the right tools. Since the first laboratory manipulations of human genes in the ‘50s, the passion for escaping our limits has not ceased. It still can be seen in contemporary biotechnology and life extension projects. Paradoxically, transhumanistic anticipation of the future evokes similar kind of nostalgic feelings as the optimistic scenarios of earlier visionaries. In Thought Experiments, placed in the time right before the Singularity, you will be looking back at stories about a future that has never happened.

Thank you for tuning in to TST news.

The Shocking Truth is a literal fake news program, divided in 4 different media platforms. The first a state funded news program, second a spectacle news program, third a trendy Youtube channel focussing on youth culture and last a conspiracy, vlog based Youtube channel run by one individual. TST focuses on how much influence aesthetics and personality have on the credibility of news and the likelihood of a viewer to absorb the information. Although the concept of “fake news” is widely known, fact checking still seems to struggle with the general public. We can not rely on a single news source anymore.

The truth is out there.

Which stories lay hidden in an archive? How to recall memories that you have never had? How to navigate through a stage-set which masks reality? The Unknown Planet is a metaphor for Hungary’s recent past, yet, it is a fictional space. Archival photographs from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s are analyzed and collaged together seamlessly to create a narrative labyrinth. A close-reading reveals the staged nature of the late socialist everyday life, and the recreations of iconic objects serve as props for this scene. You are invited to explore this excavation-site of collective memory, where methods of interpreting archivers and ways of curating the truth are examined.

Sorry! I was late for work. The page didn’t load, so it took ages to find a proper route through the traffic and I still had to get a juice for during my shift. I must have forgotten all my things in the store.By the time I started working I was already fed up with it. And then I got into this fight with another rider. I don’t really remember what happened. I think I fainted.

Well, Whatever! I am just gonna make the best out of it. Things can only get better from here anyway. I woke up at an undisclosed location. But I know where I forgot my belongings. I’m tired and I can’t go home. There are guests staying in my room tonight. Where is my phone? As I reach into my pocket, I find the key. But I don’t have a second pair. I guess I have to tell dispatch that there is an issue I have to fix before I can continue working. That’s the spirit!

With recent events concerning data-privacy and algorithmic practices, it has become evident that how we interact with technology can have dire impact on our socio-cultural and political-economic systems. And how we interact with technology is determined by its design. Consider the design of the smartphone, and its products and services. Products and services come in the form of applications. We interact with the device through predefined motions on its sleek delicious surface. These gestures are performed with ease, and the applications are simple and easy on the mind to use. What is the intention that guides the design and dissemination of the smartphone? The incentive is simple: tech companies profit off of users attention. The more time we spend scrolling and tapping the more ad revenue they accrue. They do this by manufacturing habits, and there is a formula for how to do that, based on the psychology of human behavior. With this project, one robot creature, one touchscreen device, and one interface, are used to reveal how manipulation works on the user through interface design and to question dominant designs of technology.

A series of first hand experiences that re-contextualizes/visits the stigma of video-games.

This is done through the telling of three different yet equally relatable case studies that are home to the gaming culture of today. These stories are translated into video format diorama’s. Diorama’s that will showcase a symbiosis of worlds that for these individuals merges real life and their video-game artificial counterparts. The goal is to provide a relatable insight into a rather unfamiliar way of mental healing that contradicts the common understanding of video-games solely beings a means for unprofound escapism.

If you could reclaim the missing third of your life, how would you spend it? Catch up on emails and work stuff? Windows Without a View explores the bedroom as the new office cubicle, a place where people inexhaustibly complete HITs* as digital sweatshop workers or live stream their sleep, altogether restlessly delving into potential new revenues of sleep. The merciless work ethos of the virtual economy has brought about a 24/7 labour of self-management making the disposition of every hour a matter of choice. Windows Without a View fosters the commodification of time and obscures the distinctions between the virtual and the dreamed.

* Human Intelligence Task, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

A hard day for disbelievers

When I was twenty years old, I burned the Quran in front of my mother’s eyes. I was extremely angry, but not particularly at the Quran. My problem was the contradictory face of religion. On one hand, the Quran as an important and poetic document that could help us to be better people. On the other hand, the religious authorities who are exploiting their power for their own sake. My mother, she cried and prayed desperately for her young son.

My project shows two different approaches to share my ambivalence. While one medium (painting) shows the aesthetic and poetic side of Quran, the other medium (performance) shows my self-punishment by reciting Quran and writing and erasing those verses over and over, a desperate effort for repentance.

My graduation is an attempt to make it up to my mother, even if it’s just a little, and also to the Quran.

As of the past few years Augmented Reality (AR) has been introduced and accepted in our society, but this is not a part of our daily routine yet. When AR becomes a norm, our augmented space is where corporations and governments will be fighting for our attention. This technology adds the possibility for more content being shown, information being shared, more influence and attention being manipulated. This speculative project takes form as an installation. An installation that that shows examples and demonstrates what a simple trip to the supermarket could look like in a world filled with an augmented war of information. While this war takes place in AR, the physical objects become purely based on the functionality of AR technology, using recognition points and creating it’s own unique identity. A chaotic beautiful mess. Can our augmented space be colonised by corporations and governments through the use of packaging?

Privatisation and securitisation of public spaces change their political meaning and turn them into ‘non-places’, where the entrance is not by right, but by permission. They have a departicularized character, that looks very much alike and pretends to be public. On one hand current solution (‘supervision and enforcement’) is aiming to make the urban environment safe, but on the other, it’s turning it into a space of increasing discrimination, where every individual is treated as a customer and at the same time–potential criminal.

Based on the historical research of one particular non-place, this project draws a picture of constant resistance between ‘The Station’ and the ‘The Undesirables’. The story takes it’s beginning in the 19th century and continues till this day, when new security measures like wi-fi trackers, security cameras, turnstiles and targeted supervision is being used to find the undesirables among us.

Many forms of bias are found in cartography, ranging back to the Middle Ages. Cartographers and mapmakers consciously and unconsciously alter and influence maps and their interpretation. Communist parties mapped out conflicts one-sided, royal families were glorified, subjective and suggestive symbols indicated military deployment, and Biblical information was cited to spread ideology and pass on history.

This project is an attempt to disregard the cartographers influence by stimulating people to understand conflicts better and thereby formulate an authentic opinion. Layering subjective information into the dynamic interface allows the spectator to explore the subjective statements and identify contradiction. The transparent interface functions both as a attempt to enable authentic interpretation of conflicts, while at the same time confronts visitors with the presence of subjective, misleading, selective, one-sided (cartographic) information.

Human is commodity, one for which, at the end of the day, everyone longs. When all life needs are met by app-based systems like Uber, Foodora or Tinder, why do we not have one that covers all the functions a human has to offer? From social interaction, sexual activity or intellectual support, ending with fertility and organ donation - an individual can satisfy a whole range of needs. This video installation explores the broad area of hyper-objectification. In this sci-fi scenario, a person is seen as a collection of assets and body parts and their value is determined by functionality. In this parallel culture, objectification is independent of gender. Hence, instead of being a tool of oppression, objectifying becomes an omnipotent form of human perception.