I am being watched. The gaze comes through the laptop screen, focusing on what is happening on the other side. It sees a picture of a face being formed behind the screen. An open mouth, a laugh, eyes screwed up, sleepy, concentrating hard, irritation and anxiety, teeth, nostrils, bags under the eyes, wrinkles on the forehead, minimal differences in an unchanging gaze. I never look my best, like I really want to have my portrait done.

The screen sees me the whole time while I am looking at it, I am not embarrassed by it, it is neutral, invisible even, I don’t register its existence, it is just a glowing surface.

The screen is inextricably connected to my life. It is a door that I pull shut behind me, which gives me access to a space where I can disappear. It is my gateway to information, it is my space for communication, it is a space where I carry out my work and enjoy myself. I entered into this connection and I am addicted to it. I seek it out, at all times of the day. I am no longer surprised by this phenomenon, instead I invite it into my daily life. The screen travels with me to the most diverse locations in the world, it is opened and closed, once a day, ten times a day, or sometimes it stays on.

Even if the journey that takes place in my head while I sit and watch, read, write or research is an eventful one, I might actually be sitting there motionless for hours on end. The images analyse my individual codes of behaviour and my characteristics. It is not just my facial expression that is being observed, but also the context in which it occurs: how is my hair sitting today, how am I holding my body, which clothes am I wearing (again), which other people, friends, supporters, students are hiding behind my screen? In what surroundings have I opened my screen? And the gaze keeps storing the image – every five minutes – in its memory.

The gaze is not only directed at me, but also at what exactly I am doing onscreen. Am I emailing or on Skype, am I looking for distraction, do I change application frequently – or even do I swap between active windows frequently? Is it text, images, video or sound that accompanies me throughout the day? Does my portrait match what is happening onscreen? If I am watching a film, does my expression fit the images in the film? Are there big differences between the four of us?

We can only discover the patterns and details when the enormous number of images are arranged and displayed in an accessible manner.

We captured the images for a whole year, starting in January 2009. Every five minutes during the day a portrait was taken by the built-in webcam and a screenshot taken, whenever we were using our laptops. The gaze was inescapable. To an extent we got used to this gaze that we had turned upon ourselves. However we often felt we were on show and under observation. Sometimes we were followed by the feeling of being watched at times where there was no computer screen nearby, for example while watching television. It even happened when we were looking at shop windows or a magazine: suddenly you were overcome by the oppressive feeling that we got when the green light next to the webcam flashed, as a sign that it was storing yet another image in its huge memory. We came to terms with it. The desire to discover patterns was greater than the inconvenience of the gaze. We also enjoyed the experiment, studying your self -portrait is fascinating. The sometimes claustrophobic feeling, the confrontation with our own daily routine alternated with the pleasure of knowing we have been recorded and being able to observe ourselves. We are thus more concerned with personal, subjective, even sensitive feelings: layers which will reveal themselves beyond the objective and concrete facts in the large number of images. We are looking for extraordinary connections and unpredictable arrangements, for series of images that no-one would put together.

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/laptop-reflections

The Vitruvian Paint Machine invites the visitors of the Van Abbemuseum to use Luna and Edo as a vehicle for mural paintings, in accordance with several specific rules. These rules are all based on the proportions of the human body and the interaction with the visitors.

See Vitruvian Paint Machine on Conditional Design for detailed information

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/vitruvian-paint-machine

"... The design of the catalogue is based on the most simple form of computation: numbering. Yet, in a reversal of standard technology, every single one of the 48,000 total pages of this catalogue was hand-numbered by students, staffers and designers in a couple of day-long sessions over the course of a full year. But this catalogue is not just the product of social computation and processual design, but continues to process while you are reading it. The charcoal pigments of the page numbers crumble, gradually contaminating the pages. ..." /Florian Cramern

With contributions by Dennis de Bel, Marc Chia, Timo Klok, Alexandre Leray, Leonie Urff, Stéphanie Vilayphiou, Serena Williams, Sauli Warmenhoven, Florian Cramer, Arie Altena, Aymeric Mansoux. Published by the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem De Kooning Academy Rotterdam University

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/pzi-graduation-catalogue

In collaboration with Kristin Maurer

The Steim building is full of objects and furniture of the last 27 years. Not much has changed. In the renovation procedure we wanted to emphasize the differences and the individually of the objects that have been accumulated, instead of replacing them with new ones.
The objects and architecture get accentuated by painting their - artificial - shadows. This dramaturgic element lets the space appear almost as a stage where objects are performing...

We painted the shadows on three floors and in the concert hall. The images show a small selection of the whole variety.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/steim-performing-interior

Living archive is an installation in the dunes, a nature reserve, in The Netherlands (map). During the year of 2009 everyone is invited to manifest him- or herself in the spirit of Jan Wolkers, a famous Dutch artist and author who died in 2007. A camera records everything that moves within a specific marked area by movement detection. The fragments generate a big archive of accidental video material, nature observations, animals passing the marked area as well as intentional material by people performing in front of the camera. Nature and culture melt in the digital archive www.levendarchief.nl. On the website people can see all the recorded fragments and drag their favourites in the timeline on top. The timeline creates a movie that can be edited by everyone. This collaborative and constantly changing movie is simultaneously projected in the museum.

The documentation images show the website, the location with the camera pal, stills of the video fragments, the promotion brochure and the 'new year card' of the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal.
Watch the documentation movie by SNS REAAL Fonds (Dutch spoken)

Technical realization: @Xit

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/jan-wolkers-levend-archief

INSTRUCTIONS
Start with a branch.
Tape an orange line ortogonal to the end of a branch, its length is one third of the branch.
New branches emerge from the middle of a branch segment, and touch the orange line at its end points.
The length of the brach is double the distance from its origin to the orange intersection
Now repeat the same steps.

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/tape-is-made-from-trees

This annual report was translated and spoken by the international workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowd-sourcing marketplace that enables computer programs to coordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do.

Next to the spoken version we designed also a simple pdf file with hyperlinks that guide directly to the corresponding sound files online.

We asked the workers to translate the Dutch annual report to English, creating an extrapolation of the meaning of this (to them) foreign piece of text. We specifically asked the workers not to look up any words in the dictionary and not to use services such as Babelfish. Instead we asked them to try translate the text to the best of their ability, using both the same sentence structure as the original and incorporating English words that looked or sounded the same as those in the Dutch text. We asked the workers to turn this extrapolation of meaning into a coherent story. We then asked other workers to record themselves speaking the translation and used the original text of the annual report as subtitles. (bringing about the question which is the translation and which the original) Thanks to more than 200 anonymous workers.

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/spoken-annual-report

The sea is filmed for patients of the St Jansdal hospital, who can watch the sea live on their televisions from their beds. The camera and sound setup at the Oosterscheldekering gives 24 hours per day experience of the sea for a period of a year. The images will be sent by internet to one of the hospital's TV channels, making it possible for viewers to experience the waves, tides, surf, and sea sounds at any time of the day.
On the roof of the central operating building of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management in Zeeland an Axis 214 camera has been placed in north-north-western direction. A directional microphone in an outdoor housing records the sounds of the sea.

Archive and postcard
Every 5 minutes - i.e. 288 times a day - a film still is shot and saved on an ever-growing online archive which can be visited on: www.dezeenaarharderwijk.nl.
In addition to live images of the sea on their televisions, the hospital's patients will also receive a weekly post card featuring sea images that were shot during the previous week.

Press and TV
TV Gelderland, 6 january 2009
Trouw, 6 january 2009
Volkskrant, 6 january 2009
De Stentor, 7 january 2009


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/zee-naar-harderwijk

Further documentation on the Conditional Design website:
www.conditionaldesign.org/workshops/dynamic-manifestos

The fall of typography
Long live the Staedelschule
The Dutch king in Berlin
The war of the iPods
Used look
World machine
Playing between ground and level.
German technocrats and Dutch drinkers

Dynamic Manifestos is something in between a fantasy trip, a discussion and a game. It was played on four different nights in the studio of B.A.S. with different designers that Luna Maurer invited.
The idea is to generate a collective world with influences from the field of art and design as well as Berlin and Holland.

The scene from Amsterdam, where Luna Maurer, Edo Paulus, Jonathan Puckey, und Roel Wouters meet each Tuesday at Lunas kitchen table, gets re-enacted in Berlin. Four players sit around the table. On the computer monitor one can read four instructions (each player has four different instructions) that each player has to execute. In each round the instructions get randomly assembled. One round lasts three minutes. The stop watch is running.

The goal is to experience what kind of thoughts get generated through the tight limitations of the instructions. They stimulate absurd and radical statements. By reacting on one another slowly a story evolves. It is not necessarily a true story but it shows interresting new connections and paths. In the process of playing slowly the characteristics of the different designers get visible.

PLAYERS
Tuesday 28.10.2008: Cornelia, Tobias, Julian, Luna
Thursday 30.10.2008: Serge, Anders, Dominik, Luna
Friday 31.10.2008: Roman, Katja, Henrike, Luna
Sunday 2.11.2008: Ian, Sebastian, Laure, Luna

1st instruction (medium): use words - draw - use tape

2nd instruction (elements. different on the 4 evenings):

28.10.: bookstore - programmer - studio - computer - internet - client - public space - art school
30.10.: printed medium - digital medium - institution - individual - Berlin or The Netherlands
31.10.: human element - mechanical element - personal fascination - formal element - element in conjunction with your work
02.1.: organizational element - futuristic element - trend - numerical element -a new law

3rd instruction (treatment): - add detail - constrain - exaggerate - radicalize - destroy - attack - simplify - defend - make beautiful - protect - complain

4th instruction (relations): show change - add a condition - make a reference - make a relationship - create a dependency - make a comparison - make a temporal connection - show difference - show a consequence

B.A.S.
From September 1st 2008 to January 1st 2009, five leading Dutch graphic designers will move their studio temporarily to Berlin. They will work by the name B.A.S. in the project studio of The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture on design projects which will take place in the (Berlin) public domain. www.bas-berlin.org

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/dynamic-manifestos

Visitors to the exhibition are given a sheet of four stickers when they enter the museum. They are allowed to affix these stickers somewhere in the exhibition, according to a simple set of rules. Patterns emerge because people will observe what previous visitors have done and will react to that. So, ultimately the visitors work as a collective to formulate an image. Blue Fungus is about the comparison between 'computational randomness' and (un)conscious human action.

Rules:
1. Stickers may be only attached to the floor.
2. Place your stickers next to stickers that are already in position. The distance between the stickers may not exceed the size of a single sticker.
3. You are not allowed to affix stickers in a new location.
4. Stickers must not be stuck anywhere other than in the Deep Screen exhibition space and the public spaces of the museum. It is not allowed to to attach the stickers in the other exhibition spaces.

The pictures were taken three weeks after the opening.

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/blue-fungus

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/milen-en-joes-gaan-trouwen