Engineering For Creatives

I did some prototyping for Jelle Hamers, wood-craftsman in the yachtbuilding industry. He was asked to make a physical sculpture of the Epifanes yachtpaints logo. The teak-wooden wings are mounted onto a stainless-steel-frame with magnets. So the whole thing can be taken apart, fitted in a briefcase and fly to the next expo.

Interesting option for company’s to pimp their logo with a chique 3D version right? Contact me.

I have been prototyping, building and testing a new piece of art by Germaine Kruip: 24 Hours A Room

First display of the work in Hiroshima MOCA, Japan.

As part of the exposition SILENT, starting november 3rd.

The work is based upon a lightsource, rotating once per 24 hours..

The siren-orchestra venued on Festival Key of Life: Premiering a new composition by Wouter Snoei: Hysteresis.

And the NS try-out festival in Leiden. More or less on top of the railway-station!

Upcoming gigs:

November Music, november 15th, Den Bosch.

Kunstenfestival S5 @ Scheltema, november 28th, Leiden.

Dag in de branding @ Korzo5hoog, december 12, Den Haag.

GOOD NEWS: I’ve started a renovating & innovating the siren-instruments, commissioned by the Veenfabriek.

After 5 days of deforming and moaning bodywork, these German baby’s were pretty much airborne!

Looking back on this sensational project gives me a very satisfied and warm feeling. Thanks, Jonathan, Amelia and Carl!

Check out the last pictures made by Jonathan S. here.

Bovenbeste vriend of bekende,

sinds deze zomer werk ik zelfstandig, onder de naam RenéBakker.com.  Bijzondere projecten van en voor bijzondere kunstenaars. Op de valreep nodig ik u uit voor een bijzonder kunstwerk dat ik geplaatst heb met Jonathan Schipper (NY, USA). Een slowmotion botsing van twee benzineslurpers. Nieuwsgierig? Kom kijken tussen 25 en 29 september tijdens het TodaysArt festival in het stadhuis van Den Haag. Of kijk eens rond op mijn weblog RenéBakker.com

Tot ziens @ TodaysArt of ‘n andere keer.

{ENGLISH}

New York based artist Jonathan Schipper is showing a selection of his work at the Todaysart festival in The Hague. For Jonathan and Todaysart, I’m working on the installation “slow inevitable death of amercan muscle”. This installation can be described as a “slowmotion carcrash”. The crash is in action from friday the 24th untill tuesday the 29th of september. The crash takes place, right in front of the main entrance of the Cityhal, The Hague.During TodaysArt (24 & 25 september) installations of Jonathan Schipper can be seen at cityhall and <TAG>.Check out the picture-blog of the project right here.

I constructed an installation for the shoot of a videoclip. It’s releasing pretty soon. Check for a link in this post in a few days..

For Germaine Kruip, I developed and built a sculpture: “Sunray”.

It is part of the international exhibition Stardust, situated in baroque forest De Oude Warande in Tilburg, NL.

A mirror follows the path of the sun during daytime.

A construction is suspended to a tree; 11 meters above ground.

The mirror makes one rotation from east to west every day.

Reflecting a path of sunlight onto the soil around the tree.

With respect to the ever changing times of sunrise and sunset.

Picasa photo album

A new compositon for The Siren orchestra at the Holland Festival ’09. A Beautiful outdoor concert-series, while floating in a circle-shaped pond. Theme of the concerts was the work of Edgar Varese, composer.

Picasa photo-album

Youtube impression

Siren orchestra in Holland Festival Journal

Together with Roel Wouters, Erik Borra and Vincent Lindeboom, I designed and built a physical installation, wich behold the website for W 139: The WEX machine.

Quote Xelor:

“The WEX Machine has two different faces: a physical installation within W139 itself, and virtually on the web. These two faces are intertwined. Installation The installation consists of a table with a touch screen or projection, a silver ball, a paper notebook and a printer. A digital camera is suspended over the table taking pictures of the installation at regular intervals.”

The whole idea is based on the memex, which was seen decades later as a pioneering concept for the World Wide Web.

The website’s background will always show the most recent picture taken. On the projection site at the installation the website will feature the archive

The WEX Machine is a project by Roel Wouters & Erik Borra, a Vincent Lindeboom production, developed together with the staff members of W139 and Rene Bakker.

The WEX machine is permanently installed in W139: An exhibition and production house for contemporary art @ Warmoesstraat 139, Amsterdam. Open whole day, every day..

Take a look at the most recent picture! W139.NL

More info: xelor

Picasa photo album

For Studio Xelor I built an installation:

Quote Xelor: 

“A silver sphere on an endless checkerboard floor is the default for many 3D modelling applications. It can be seen as an icon for a sterile, makeable world. Reality is dirty and unpredictable. By recreating this icon in reality, the beauty of imperfection gets emphasized.”

The installation is used in the making of a trailer for the first edition of International Film Festival Breda, from 25 – 29 march 2009. The trailer will circulate through the cinema’s in Holland to promote the festival.

Could a combination of letters, spraycans and mechanism make grafitti art?

I built a tool for Letman, so he can get busy with this question.

Check the first expiriments on the pic.. 

Today, I helped Manuel Boutreur in building a prototype. An elegant pump for an elegant goal; pumping freshwater from a well. Waterlevels can be as low as 8 meters below ground level. Standard PVC parts and a very basic design make a handdriven membrane-pump. The discharge-head in our test is 8m. The pump works axially, with a stroke varying from approximately 10 to 50 centimeters. Click here and scroll down, to watch video in two parts. Enjoy!

I built a neat little gyrostat, to experience the fascinating effects that take place when spinning the gyrostat.
Wikipedia quote on a Gyrostat:

A gyrostat is a variant of the gyroscope. The first gyrostat was designed by Lord Kelvin to illustrate the more complicated state of motion of a spinning body when free to wander about on a horizontal plane, like a top spun on the pavement, or a hoop or bicycle on the road. It consists of a massive flywheel concealed in a solid casing. Its behaviour on a table, or with various modes of suspension or support, serves to illustrate the curious reversal of the ordinary laws of static equilibrium due to the gyrostatic behaviour of the interior invisible flywheel when rotated rapidly.

At the moment it’s more or less a fascinating toy. Nonetheless, the gyrostatic behaviour is widely used, varying from positioning satelites to the functioning of a Nintendo Wii-controller.

Dutch talkshow gave us a few minutes of their valuable time to present the Siren-orchestra!

We have started studying the siren-instruments last week. All very curious what musical potential these intruments have to offer..

Below you get an impression of the “Intona Rumori”. Reconstructions of Luigi Russolo’s Intona Rumori.

These instruments are part of the siren orchestra and are built by Wessel Westerveld.

Assembly of the parts. Are my drawings correct? Should I have spent more time checking them?

So far everything takes time and precaution, but seems to fit. Thanks to extra steady hands.

No more doubts. This machine works!

After developing and experimenting with the Helmholtz-prototype, based on the Helmholtz double-siren, I concluded a lot of things. In a nutshell; precision is important. Important for musical variables, like pitch, timbre, volume, harmonics, interference and more. But precision is also important for the ability to reproduce the same sounds with the siren-instrument, over and over again; studying the instrument.

I redesigned parts, based on the prototype. For production I seeked collaboration with a CNC-machining company; Rijfers Metaalbewerking in Alphen a/d Rijn. Basically, my technical drawings are adapted and sent to numerical controlled machines, capable of producing the parts. With the capabilities of these milling- and lathing-machines in mind, you can produce smart parts, with great precision.. 

First testruns made with Loman-siren.

Its 12 tones are based on equal temperament.

It is played by a klavier, one octave wide.

The double siren, based on Helmholtz’ double-siren, wich he used for measurement purposes, has got various just intervals. The intervals that we will be able to use for the first compositions are gathered in a scheme:

The green column represents  series of holes resulting in tones of different pitch. These series of holes will be available for the first compositions. The names of familiar intervals are standing above the musical intervals. source: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_intervallen

The Siren-orchestra will be presented on the Symposium On Sound on the 27th of april.

for details, check www.veenfabriek.nl

This is the new soprano-siren setup.

Some pictures of the Loman-siren coming together in the workshop.

The images above are details of the prototype-Helmholtz-siren. They will be used for publicity purposes.