Swummoq

Update!

I noticed today that this site has not been updated in ages. Time for an update.
Last year Niels got offered a job as Director of Interactive Media at MediaCatalyst. Good luck there Niels!

In the mean time I haven't been sitting still either. But more on that soon.
Please come back on August 1st to check out the new site!

Zenit Zeppelin

>> Interactive installation at the Dutch Electronic Art
>> Festival

> Developed during the workshop at Victorian Circus this
> work was shown at unDEAF and DEAF and displays movement
> in space through movement in space.

Seventeen small robots were crawling independently over the ground. Each robot was attached to a big helium balloon above it. The balloon made each robot sensitive to any kind of movement in the space around them. Everything from plain air travel over passing by people up to the balloon of the robot next to it triggered response and little dances emerged from feedback with the movement of the balloon and the movement of the robot itself.

Nocturnal Emittors

>> Interactive installation at the Dutch Electronic Art
>> Festival

> Developed during the workshop at Victorion Circus this
> work was also shown at unDEAF and DEAF and raises the
> question of influences of your sole presents towards
> other species sharing the same niche.

Small independent units were dangling in a spotlight on a wall. Once a visitor wanted to approach the wall, he throw a shadow on it and it inhabitants. Standing in the shadow caused the units to react in panic and to display behavior of great disturbance.

Victorian Circus

>> Workshop at the new media festival Victorian Circus at
>> Brakke Grond.

> SWUMMOQ.NET was asked to organize and develop a concept
> for a workshop during the festival. The underlying
> concept of the workshop became the idea of "many and
> simple" and its emerging picture to humans.

During an intensive week six participants realized three art pieces under the theme "categorial novum". All three pieces were shown at an opening on the last day of the festival:
1.nocturnal emittors: A work over disturbing species through sole presents by Heerko van der Kooij (SWUMMOQ) and Tom Hillewaere
2.untitled: A sound-space piece over Amsterdam's bicycles by Xavier Borsu
3.zenit zeppelin: A work over movement by Dirk van Oosterbosch and Niels Wolf (SWUMMOQ).
For more pictures take a look at our blog

Kunst Koop

>> Touchscreen for the "Kunstkoop Regeling" of the
>> Mondriaan Stichting at Art Rotterdam and Art Amsterdam.

> SWUMMOQ developed the software for an info-point about
> the "Kunstkoop regeling" an initiative of the Mondriaan
> Stichting to subsidize the purchase of art by private
> buyers.

The user can find information like size and price of an artwork by selecting it through pictures or associative words. Meant for single visits, the interface was designed to be rather playful and appealing.

Van GOG- Ecards

>> E-cards application for Van GOG

> SWUMMOQ.NET developed an application to design your own
> e-card online.

By dragging and dropping items from a library users can compose their ecard. All items can be scaled and ordered as wished. The finished composition can then be either printed or send by email.

Watch your head

>>> Ironic installation about the cycle of violence

>> Exhibit at Hotel Noailles, Brussels.

Hotel Noailles is a vacant love-hotel in Brussels, Belgium. Tom Hillewaere organised an artist-in-residenceship for a group of about 20 artists in August 2006.

Two motors, hanging from the roof in the basement of the hotel, got equipped with a stick and connected to the same switch, turning one off and the other on at the same moment. By slapping the stick on a piece of rubber hose which is attached to the switch, the motors turned each other on and off constantly. Two lamps were used to emphasize the switching off and on.
The installation 'Watch Your Heads' is entirely made from material found at exhibition-space.

Nachtaktief

>> Electronic sound installation exhibited at the gallery
>> dubleBee, Amsterdam

> This installation breaks the expectations of the visitors
> of a gallery, displaying an object that unfolds its
> beauty after the gallery closes at night.

The installation existed out of three transparent cubes placed on three white pillars in a gallery space. Inside of each cube was an electronic device attached to a loudspeaker on top of the cube. The objects switched on at dusk, each one producing a distinctive sound, turning off as the sun rises.
Visitors are initially disappointed once they realized they would not be able to hear the sounds, but became intrigued as they imagine the textures of the sound produced at night.

StripX11

>> Short animation drawing engine.

> Online platform for expressive animations for teenagers
> at the psychiatry museum, het Dolhuys, in Haarlem.

In the context of the 'stripdagen', the dutch cartoon & animation festival, the museum asked Swummoq to design a online animation tool.
The game is targeted at secondary education students and teenagers in the same age group with psychological problems. Through the use of themes the game tries to challenge them to show some of their emotions.
The animations are all available online.

Drawing Robot

>> Installation on the conflict between perfection and its
>> manifestation in reality.

> Exhibited in May 2006 at the 6th KunstVlaai in Amsterdam.

The setup consists of a plain white floor and a robot on wheels. A crayon is attached to the "driving" robot.

The robot's single intention is driving in perfect circles. The crayon draws a line on the white floor, thereby documenting the robot's path and simultaneously its success or failure in complying with its own intention. However, the robot is not the only player in the game. Visitors are able to disturb the robot by walking on the white floor.

A circle is a mathematical ideal and an analogy for both perfection and failure of our ideas. The robot in its striving for perfection is hampered by its own physical limitations as well as the visitors' disturbances. The ideal form remains forever out of reach. The robot is able to approximate its ideal only through repetition, reflected by the lines drawn on the white floor. A line remains as the robot avoids the visitor, marking the latter's place in history - as a flaw in the struggle for perfection.

BO-KU-SHI-N-GU BA-GU

>> Interactive sound installation visualizing aggression
>> and meditation as part of one concept.

> Exhibited the first time at okno, a Brussels based
> gallery for new media art.

The installation exists out of one or more ordinary boxing bags. Through punching the bags intensively, the visitor triggers meditative music like a Buddhist singing "om". If the visitor gets slower, weaker or stops the beating at all the sound falls into noise and gets annoying loud. By placing the visitor in the arbitrary position of being forced to constantly beat the bag in order to experience a relaxing soundscape SWUMMOQ.NET draws a line between lived aggression and meditation.

Wonderkamers

>> Two touchscreen games for the Gemeente Museum den Haag.

> Kossmann & de Jong designed the "wonderkamers", an
> experience park for early teenagers in the art museum in
> den Haag and asked SWUMMOQ.NET for two applications.

>>> Value and valuation.

In order to educate pupils over parameters which define the market values of art, they were invited to play a game on little screens, attched next to elegant presented objects of art. The visitor can guess the price of the object by placing a marker on a scale. With every wrong suggestion the visitor is given a hint and the scale narrowed toward the value to be guessed. The game is finished once all suggestions are played out or the visitor gets close enough to the correct value.

>>> Berlage's room.

In a room special dedicated to the architect Berlage SWUMMOQ.NET created a 3D game in which the visitors can place and modify parts of the museum on a touchscreen embedded in big desks. This new created museum complex can be saved and downloaded from the webpage of the museum later. The game is part of a bigger application in which the pupils can learn about the implementation of Berlage's ideas in the museum itself.

Autobahn

>> Interactive installation above the city-ring of
>> Amsterdam.

> In a group exposition SWUMMOQ.NET put an installation in
> which the visitor can create musical compositions in
> interaction with the freeway going underneath the
> exhibition place.

On a low table the visitor has seen a life video image of the cars running on the freeway underneath. By placing little toy cars in bright colors on that image a tone was played when ever a car of the video image 'hit' a toy car on the table. To each color of a toy car a specific tone was associated. The visitor had to understand the 'uncontrolled' activities on the freeway for creating his 'compositions'.

INCEE

> Concept, design and technical realization of the
> community site of INCEE.

As INCEE, the International Community for Enterprise Education, is a young international community of schools exploring corporate orientated models of learning and teaching. SWUMMOQ.NET came up with a flexible design that not only represented the philosophy of this community but also to enable every national branch to keep its records online, share with other branches and post examples to the public to promote the total.
--
online link

Het Dolhuys

>> Video-installation and touch-screen based information
>> point for the first museum in the Netherlands covering
>> views on psychic disorders through the centuries.

> Video-installation questioning the border between
> 'normal' and 'crazy' people.

On multiple screens, hanging at head hight in a dark room, the visitor sees in smooth transitions portraits of people with disorders as well as healthy people. While most images are photographs once in a while either short videoclip with very subtle movements are pasted in or the screens turn black and simply reflect the face of the visitor. Written statements are shown to stimulate the visitor to think about our current point of view on disorders.

> FAQs presented in a touch-screen based game.

In a library two huge desks are placed. Each desk embedding a touch-screen displaying a book. The visitor can choose from different lists of frequently asked questions or clichés about disorders. Each question has multiple short answers from authorities through different epochs. The visitor could either read more about the author or more details about the answer.
P.S.: The Dolhuys won the Dutch Design Price for Exhibition and experience design, 2005.

De Educatieve Stad

>> Redesign of 'De Educatieve Stad' and concept and design
>> for the internet representation of INCEE.

> Transforming the old flash based website into html
> keeping into account experiences in the shortcoming of
> the former layout.

SWUMMOQ.NET took the name 'De Educatieve Stad' (The Educational City) literal and used a photo of a city as the backdrop for the navigation, zooming in and out into different sections of the image as a metaphor for services at the different levels this company provides.

architectuurgids

>> Online encyclopedia of architectural information.

> Interface design for a content heavy site.

With empasis on high usability the design guides the user through the process of finding information on all information related to architecture in a growing number of urban areas of the Netherlands.

Bulb-TV

>> Interactive installation of 48 ordinary bulb lights at
>> the Kunstvlaai 2004.

> Gallery NP3 from Groningen offered SWUMMOQ.NET to
> participate at the anti-bienale.

A wall of 8x6 lightbulbs displays the people passing, by switching on the lights in the shapes of their silhouettes. Once the passing person stops to watch his 'reflection' on the wall it vanishes and all lamps turn to black. In this piece you only exist as a moving being. And your reflection dies as soon as you stop to look at it

VROM rom

>> CD ROM presentation for the Dutch Ministery of VROM.

> The exhibition architects Kossmann & de Jong were
> asked by the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spacial
> planning and the Environment to present a report on city
> deployment in the countryside in form of a interactive
> CD-ROM with a extensive booklet.

SWUMMOQ.NET delivered the CD-ROM with its own application to maintain the content till the last moment of production.

other online projects

>>> Swummoq occasionally developes ideas for websites,
>>> designs and/or builds them.

>> Here you will find a selection of websites we build.
>> With some of them we also were involved developing the
>> idea and the design. Most of them use our content
>> management system 'Wheel'.

van Gog
Crazy website with lots of randomness assigned to the company's website. Design by Barbara Pilipp from van Gog.

hellojulia
Intimate and personal way of presenting a portfolio. Design by Julia Mueller from hellojulia.

v-i-a-v-i-a:
Pictures of illustrations with assignable borders for single entries. Design Lennard Schuurmans van v-i-a-v-i-a.

Like
Portfolio of the designer group with random logos. Design by Like.

Rob Marinnissen
Portfolio where single examples of Marinnissen's work can be selected and downloaded to a PDF. Design by Alexander Zeh from DMOS.

Rudo Menge
Colorful portfolio with assignable 'color moods' to single entries. Design by Rudo Menge.

Sabine Moeller
Portfolio for a photographer, using a metaphor of unfocus/focus in a graphical manner. Concept and design in cooperation with Timm Toenissen from deepool.

Luxoom
Big exhibition design with multilingual content. Design by Nico Schwenke from Animatodesign.