“Attention is the bridge that joins us to the world.”
— Johann Hari
Mind Bridges
Education Project
Projection Mapping
2024
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After having concluded 47 workshops on the nature of Attention with 1300 kids throughout the city, my latest artwork Mind Bridges was presented at Amsterdam Light Festival.
The projection mapping on the old bridge next to the famous seven bridges illuminates the value of undivided attention between human beings.
Nowadays, we are more distracted by our digital technology than ever, which is why the connections between us are crumbling. We should be more mindful of what we are paying our attention to, so we assigned kids to come up with rituals that help them be more attentive towards one another. These symbolic choreographies are recorded with a pointcloud camera and creatively visualized by Nikzad Arabshahi and myself to show you the normally invisible bridges in between us.
Education Project
Projection Mapping
2024
After having concluded 47 workshops on the nature of Attention with 1300 kids throughout the city, my latest artwork Mind Bridges was presented at Amsterdam Light Festival.The projection mapping on the old bridge next to the famous seven bridges illuminates the value of undivided attention between human beings.
Nowadays, we are more distracted by our digital technology than ever, which is why the connections between us are crumbling. We should be more mindful of what we are paying our attention to, so we assigned kids to come up with rituals that help them be more attentive towards one another. These symbolic choreographies are recorded with a pointcloud camera and creatively visualized by Nikzad Arabshahi and myself to show you the normally invisible bridges in between us.
The children are recorded using 3D camera’s which do not record a color image, but instead shoot out thousands of dots of light, measuring the time-of-flight it takes the photons to bounce back into the camera. This is how it reconstructs a 3-dimensional image. Actually, its true magic lies in the fact that it does not capture the color image of the kids, yet appears to illuminate their inner light.
This work came closest to my core reason for making art; to share the extraordinary value of our attention.
I still can’t fully believe to have been given this chance to create an educational program for Amsterdam Light Festival in close collaboration with Jasper van den Berg, Femke van Heerdt and Wenchin Fu.
Together we poured our hearts and souls into making the best workshop we could, introducing children age 9-12 to the abstract concepts of Mind and Attention. Thus we helped them get into meditative states of awareness and create new “attention rituals” using their bodies, forming physical and immaterial bridges in between them.
Credits:
Software Development and Visuals: Nikzad Arabshahi @nikzadarabshahi
Project Management: Wenchin Fu @wen.c.fu
Project Support: Instrument Inventors Initiative (iii) @instrumentinventors
Education Development: Jasper van den Berg @___jvdb & Femke van Heerdt @jesuis_femke
This work came closest to my core reason for making art; to share the extraordinary value of our attention.
I still can’t fully believe to have been given this chance to create an educational program for Amsterdam Light Festival in close collaboration with Jasper van den Berg, Femke van Heerdt and Wenchin Fu.
Together we poured our hearts and souls into making the best workshop we could, introducing children age 9-12 to the abstract concepts of Mind and Attention. Thus we helped them get into meditative states of awareness and create new “attention rituals” using their bodies, forming physical and immaterial bridges in between them.
Credits:
Software Development and Visuals: Nikzad Arabshahi @nikzadarabshahi
Project Management: Wenchin Fu @wen.c.fu
Project Support: Instrument Inventors Initiative (iii) @instrumentinventors
Education Development: Jasper van den Berg @___jvdb & Femke van Heerdt @jesuis_femke
Hardware
Two 20.000 Lumen 4K Projectors, Kinect Azure, RTX 3070 Laptops, RTX 4080 Desktop
Software
TouchDesigner
Two 20.000 Lumen 4K Projectors, Kinect Azure, RTX 3070 Laptops, RTX 4080 Desktop
Software
TouchDesigner