Prinsessestraat 43
6828 JT Arnhem
The Netherlands
+31 6 45312337 mail@richardvijgen.nl
I'm an information designer working with dynamic and screen based media. My work is process based and often results in generative and/or semi-autonomous software and installations. The design process extends from the work's visual appearance to the editorial structure, all the way into the depth of the software and the subroutines it exists of. I believe form and function are interrelated. Therefore a project is a constant back and forth movement between designing and programming. I'm interested in exploring the boundaries between interactive media and the social, virtual and physical space.
you
38.107.191.86
Beverly Hills
United states
My work is object oriented in terms of development (object oriented programming) and perspective (the relationship with the physical object). This has resulted in projects connecting computers to books, performances, exhibitions, art in public space, air conditioners, and objects of all sorts.
I've been a self-employed designer and self taught programmer since 2005. I teach Information Design and Interactive Architecture at the Arnhem school of art and design (ArtEZ)
I work with artists, curators, architects, product designers, filmmakers, writers and students to make digital translations that transcend and sometimes reverse the intentions and economics of existing tools and frameworks.
"As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of 'do it yourself.'"
Every visitor to this page leaves a unique footprint in the form of the movement of their cursor on the page. This movement is recorded and visualized by grey lines each representing a single visitor. Click the show button above to view this movement. Roll over a line to reveal the ip adress of it's author and the date of recording.
From the sum of these traces emerges a collaborative drawing that aims to materialize the usage of non physical design.
commisioned by: research project 2010
Research for a LIVE book.
Typologies of Intellectual Property is a "living" book that graphically represents the world of intellectual property at the precise moment the book is ordered through one of several online retailers or via this website. It shows how a dense network of multi-national corporations, patent brokers and law firms dominates the world of intellectual property.
Whenever someone orders the book online, a newly generated version
of the book is printed on demand and sent by mail. Each time someone orders the book, a unique iteration serves as a graphic sample of a hidden world that shapes the future of ideas.
Typologies of Intellectual Property is a printed realtime visualization of the United States Patent and Trademark Office weekly dataset and is based on the website with the same name that I made in 2009.
presentation July 2010
I will be talking about the Pentacoste Atlas at Mediamatic as part of their Map Fest Evening named "Mapping for Change".
commisioned by: Mediafonds @ Sandberg 2010in collaboration with: Bregtje van der Haak
Project proposal developed together with documentary filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak as part of the "Follow the Money" project initiated by MediaFonds and the Sandberg Institute.
The Atlas of Pentecostalism is a proposal for a cross media documentary project on Pentecostalism as the fastest growing religion in the world. It aims to document the Pentecosta movement by archiving three channels of information. Cartographic: mapping it's many denominations across continents, iconographic: the visual manifestation of a religion through it's architecture, media and design, and videographic:
by conducting interviews with believers and their ministers. The online atlas constructs a linear narrative from a dynamic database of images, locations and video. It provides interactive access to the atlas as well as a timeline that uses information from the database to tell the story in 50 minutes. An on-demand printed version of the atlas can be generated from the database to serve as an "always up to date" book of reference on a culture in the making.
We presented the project at De Balie in Amsterdam may 2010 and aim to further develop the proposal over the course of a year.
Starting from october 2009, Morality is the yearlong leitmotiv of Witte de With, Center for contemporary art. This web platform is part of a constellation of exhibitions, a film program, a performance cycle, a symposium and a book.
The website levels the playing field between curators, artists and the general public by providing them with a tool for engaging in discussions and debate. By "crowd-sourcing" the artistic and theoretical discourse surrounding morality, all those who contribute
comply with the web 2.0 concept of the "user".
The platform aims to harness and visualize different levels of "user"-participation, from the visitor who does not contribute anything - but leaves a trace just by visiting - and the unaware twitter user whose conversations are overheard and integrated in the discussion, to the highly involved participants, guest contributors and curators who's (visual) comments, associations and stories make up a dynamic cloud of images and texts.
news December 2009
After two months installing heating, light, electricity and other requisites for good design, a stripped down 1930's garage is now the studio space I share with Daan, Bart en Luc. Best of all, it comes with a garden.
news August 2009
Onder Anderen has been awarded a Dutch Design Award for Best Website. The Rijkswaterstaat project has been awarded an award for best Interactive Application. WATT Systems monitor has been nominated.
Latitude51 is a trip around the world along latitude 51. The project starts on the Greenwich meridian ( E 00° ) and systematically moves one degree in an eastward direction, following Latitude N 51°34.191. The drawings and scale-models that constitute this project are based on satellite pictures that, taken from a given height, cover
one degree of this specific latitude.
The latitude is the central line of all drawings; this line also connects a number of greatly enlarged constructions that have been developed into individual scale-models.
This website aims to document the process of the project. Drawings and scale models are added as they are finished.
presentation July 2010
Presentation on the interactive installation I made for the the Dutch Design Week for the city of Arnhem.
Project on the convergence of printed and digital books.
Over the last decade several attempts have been made to make the information stored in books available on the internet, some proprietary some open source. Even though some of these attempts have been very successful, they usually conform to the old idea of the library in digital form. As long as these works are being stored online, and printed for reading, the concept is simply an evolutionary process in production and distribution, most likely to be taken advantage of by the bookmaking industry in the form of print on demand. My research
will focus on the new paradigm of the non-physical book existing in a uniform database environment. The absence of physical limitations and the uniformity of the structure in which the book exists, opens up new ways of thinking about the book. The book no longer starts at the first page, and ends at the last, it can be a collection of quotes, pages or chapters from different books in the library. Like a DJ mixes records, readers or lecturers can recompose text by making connections or by sampling books. The uniform structure allows us to add data to the book, making it more valuable ...
exhibition July 2010
A selection of my work will be exhibited at the Art Directors Club New York. Projects that are on display include; Latitude 51, Realtime Bookdesign and Typologies of intellectual Property.
prototype January 2009
Hardware prototype for a BOM wekker (bomb timer) by designer Martijn Wildekamp. The purpose of the timer is to wake you from sleeping after a set amount of time has expired.
The display counts down to zero from a set amount of time. The final version adds to the overall feeling of nervousness by also displaying seconds. The timer is controlled by three flip switches to set the time, and to "arm" the alarm.
Since this is my first step into hardware, I have still to develop as Woody Allen says "A set of aestethic guidelines" when it comes to designing PCB's
commisioned by: Jan Spit 2005in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
Bluesky Forever is the title of the digital biography of Dutch artist Jan Spit. In 2004 Jan Spit has been awarded with the "Antony Kok Prize" for his complete oeuvre. I was asked to design and produce the CD-ROM containing an overview of the life and work of Jan Spit. After working for a year organizing the thousands of scans, slides, old video tapes and audio interviews with the artist, we created an online database for the parties involved to contribute, edit and sort the material.
The interface lies on top of this database and offers two distinct layers of access to the works of the artist; an archive, where stacks of work represent various projects and disciplines, and a narrative that provides context both text and spoken word. Because of the great involvement of the artist in organizing his life's work in this project, and because of the context it creates, it gives a new perspective on the work, and it might be seen as the artists last work.
commisioned by: self initiated 2007
The Interactive VJ game is an experimental installation that explores the boundaries between film, remix culture, and gaming experiences. By shooting at abstract representations of pieces of video footage the gamer tries to create a coherent composition of matching clips. The visual
residue of these attempts is traced by a scanline representing a one minute loop. By playing the game, the user is simultaniously creating a multi-layered video score, that is dispalyed in a seperate projection resulting in an interactive recreation of a cinematic image
Graduation website for the Arnhem school of art and design featuring student work and references to the passing of time.
This website is an online counterpart to the annual printed graduation catalog. Traditionally the printed version carried the digital version in it's cover as a CD-ROM. We decided to move the digital catalogue
online to put the medium to it's full use. The site works as a timesheet, covering a period from march 2004 to the graduation in july 2004. During this period student work is added to the site, where the moment something is added determines it's position in the grid, thereby leaving traces and visualizing the site's creation.
commisioned by: self initiated 2007
Music player designed for a joystick controlled console. This musicplayer visualizes an XML music database as a musical galaxy. Songs are particles revolving around music genres. By re-sizing and moving the "selection area" to include clusters of songs, a playlist is formed. Songs that are related to the dominant
genre within the current selection are attracted to the selection area, and thus included in the playlist.
By visualizing the files in a spatial context, the user regains a level of control over his music selection that would otherwise be limited in absence of a keyboard and mouse.
commisioned by: T(C)HM 2005in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
Leidsche Rhino is the alterego of "Beyond Utrecht", an organisation promoting art in public space in the municipality of Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht. Various artists take the role of the Rhino, creating art interventions in the city. The website reports
on, and sometimes is a manifestation of these interventions. The site is build as a "squatted weblog" taking standard interface elements, and re-arranging them to create a new space, mimicking the methodology of the Rhino. Leidsche Rhino has had four editions, all published in 2005
commisioned by: Seoul International Biennale of Media Art 2010
The website for the Seoul International Biennale of Media Art is both the official communication channel for the Seoul Biennale as well as an autonomous process based application that scrapes various news sources and networks for the meaning
of the curatorial theme "trust" in both English and Korean. The result of this ongoing search for definition is a series of dynamic clusters of (moving) images and texts that form a backdrop for the formal information on the Biennale.
presentation July 2010
The final presentation of the Pentacoste Atlas will take place at De Balie in Amsterdam. Together with Bregtje van der Haak i'll present our proposal for a multi-channel documentary project.
Typologies of intellectual property is an interactive visualization of patent data issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Every week an xml file with about 3000 new patents is published by the USPTO and made available through data.gov. This webapplication provides a way to navigate, explore and discover the complex and interconnected world of ideas, inventions and big business. Patents
are categorized by classification (subject of the patent), agents (lawyers), company, inventor and country. Within each category, unique icons are generated based on the values of each instance, and how they relate to other categories.
The web application is not meant as a reference utility for patent grants, but as an interactive and graphical insight into the world of intellectual property
commisioned by: Huijbers en Agelink 2010
commisioned by: Huijbers en Agelink 2009in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
The Website Onder-anderen is part of an Art in public space project by Huijbers en Agelink (Germa Huijbers en Carolina Agelink) in a neighbourhood of Delft. The artwork was developed in close collaboration with the residents with the goal of disclosing their (childhood) memories.
The resulting image archive has been made accessible by developing a website and 30 aluminum photo signs that are permanently displayed in the street and act as a reference to specific
themes within the website. The signs are therefor a physical representation of the structure of the online archive, and at the same time, encourage people to visit the website.
Apart from the geographic approach, the website provides a chronologic perspective. When switching between these views, a swarm of hundreds of images moves from their geographic position to their chronologic position.
Dutch Design Award 2009 - Best internet application
news July 2010
Onder Anderen, WATT Systems Monitor and the Rijkswaterstaat project are being exhibited in Shanghai as part of the Shanghai Creative Industries Week 2010.
commisioned by: self initiated
The Geologger is an installation that visualizes the usage statistics of a website by monitoring ip adresses of people who visit the site. The Ip adresses are geocoded to a latitude and longitude coördinate and the name of a city. The installation consists of a wall-mounted
barebone industrial display that slowly "scans" the area of the last visitor. Once a new visitor is detected, the scan jumps to a new location. The installation provides a more concrete image of the abstract notion of the internet as a "global village".
commisioned by: the city of Arnhem 2009
During the Dutch Design week 2009 a group of six designers was asked to join a one day research project on the social, aesthetic, environmental and audiological consequences of future (electrified) transportation.
A mixed reality environment documents and contextualizes their proceedings. Sketches and concepts are scanned and photographed continuously during the day, and added to the ever morphing image cloud. By looping through the database of concepts and images, the cloud visualizes
the proccess of individual designers, as well as the entire group.
Once a concept becomes tangible it's placed on a projected grid, and added to the database. A software loop highlights the objects on the grid and adds contextual information such as a title, who made it and why.
By creating a spatial, mixed reality environment for pencil and paper sketches, digital files and physical objects, the process and interaction between the designers is made visible to the public.
commisioned by: Rijkswaterstaat 2008in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger Ralf Brandenstein
Immersive media theatre for Rijkswaterstaat LEF, a research and innovation platform for the Dutch Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management. The media theatre is a space in which walls and floor consist of projection surfaces. By running specific interactive and audiovisual applications the entire space can be transformed to fit any occasion. We have been asked to develop a series of audiovisual and interactive applications to be used in the discussion and decisionmaking process.
For this we developed a total of nine applications, one of which is a interactive
cartographic simulation giving a variety of perspectives on the Netherlands by using the vast amount of cartographic material Rijkswaterstaat keeps.
Another example is a ad-hoc social network in which datavisualizations are generated in real-time, based on questions answered by participants with a handheld computer
The applications use a projection surface consisting of a total of 15 projectors and 7.1 surround sound.
in coöperation with Kossmann.deJong
Dutch Design Award 2009 - Best Interactive application
European Design Award 2009 - Silver
Realtime environmental systems monitor for the world's first sustainable danceclub.
WATT Rotterdam is the world's first sustainable danceclub. This sustainability is accomplished by incorporating a gray water system (collecting rain water from the roof), an efficient climate management system and a minimal waste policy a.o.
These systems do not only reduce energy consumption, they also generate data that is used by the WATT Systems Monitor to visualize the activity of the danceclub. The software shows, that as more people enter
the buidling all systems start working harder and the buidling comes to life. A dynamic VJ show is generated based on the club's overall activity and a CNN style bizbar provides live updates on the activity of all the systems.
The goal of this dynamic digital installation is to raise awareness among visitors about their ecological impact in a positive way and illustrate the interconnection between human activity and the infrastructure that facilitates this activity
European Design Award 2009 - Gold
Dutch Design Awards 2009 - Finalist
commisioned by: Ontwerp Platform Arnhem 2008in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
For the yearly lecture series of graduates from the Arnhem School of Art and Design selected by the Arnhemse Nieuwe jury, We produced a series of animated leaders and video loops. The concept
is based around images of the works of the artists that are masked using Moiré patterns. These images interfere with oneanother in a constant loop morphing one image into the other.
commisioned by: ArtEZ Arnhem 2005in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
Artez-academiearnhem.nl is the portal site for the Arnhem School of Art and Design. It is based on an organisation-wide CMS that was already in place. Having very serious limitations on customization, we were forced to "hack the system" and put all possible outputs of the system into a framseset, showing all the pages at once. By doing so, we eliminated the very hierarchic nature of the system,
and made all the information accessible through scrollbars. The top of each frame dislpays a piece of a picture that is constantly resizing in such a way that a full picture is always visible when all the frames are "closed". By scrolling the user distorts the picture while revealing information. The Portal site for the Arnhem School of Arts first came online in 2005.
In cooperation with Properpropaganda VJ collective Deadpixelsociety (Richard Vijgen, Thomas Kopperschlaeger and Ralf Brandenstein) had it's
own vj night at Club 11 in Amsterdam. Using the 12 screens of Club 11, we tried to establish a convergence of visuals and architecture.
commisioned by: Ontwerp Platform Arnhem 2007in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
Arnhemse Nieuwe is the title of an exhibition organized by O.P.A. (Design Platform Arnhem). It features nine art school allumni from different fields such as fashion design, graphic design, product design and architecture. The exhibition manifests itself in two ways. One is the space itself in which prints of the works of the students
are displayed. The other is via mobile phones. Each allumni has his own phone number. When visitors call this number, a description of the work is given. Businesscards with the works of the participants are handed out to visitors, along with index cards with an overview of all the participants and their phone numbers.
commisioned by: Amsterdams Historisch Museum 2007in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
Large videowall and interactive information displays.
For the new entrance to the Amsterdam Historic Museum designed by Kossmann.deJong, we designed and produced a 16 meter wide animation based on the collection of the Museum. The animation immerses the visitors in a world composed of anything from 17th century
paintings to 20th century artifacts found in the canals. In addition to this animation we designed and produced a series of touchscreen interfaces acting as an interactive caption system to the object cloud designed by Kossmann.deJong. The new entrance to the museum first opened to the public november 2007
commisioned by: Joods Historisch Museum 2006in collaboration with: Thomas Kopperschläger
Ausiovisual and interaction design for the "Joods Historisch Museum" (Jewish Historic Musuem) in Amsterdam.
1. Interactive caption system.
The interactive caption system is a virtual representation of the exhibition space. By using touch screens, users can interact with the space: navigating to an object of interest by rotating a graphic representation of the exhibition.
The system then provides captions and references and completely replaces traditional physial captions.
2. Thematic Touchscreens
14 Touch screens, located throughout the exhibition show interviews, historic film clips and referential documents referring to a physical object located next to the screen. Exhibition design by Kossmann.deJong
