Author: Alexandra Crouwers
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Exhibiting Absence and The Trail of Hansel & Gretel
This chapter (in progress) touches upon the contradictory nature of the habitat diorama in particular. Featuring Karen Wonders, Donna Haraway, Palais de Tokyo and Ludwig Museum Budapest.
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WAGMI: an awkward dance of art and crypto
Article for HART art magazine about collecting digital art in the NFT space. Published on paper in issue 222, March 2022 in tandem with the first of an online column series highlighting a work from my collection.
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The Plot, The Compositor, and Mourning/Mistakes
A peer reviewed publication, as part of VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research issue #6, Contagion by Alexandra Crouwers. October 19, 2021.
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Digital dioramas at the Moesgaard Museum (DK)
A report on a research visit to the Moesgaard Museum, and its digital stereoscopic prehistory dioramas. Augustus 2021. Aarhus, Denmark.
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Non-fungible experiments
NFTs: an adventuresque experimenza into the world of blockchain and crypto. In 2021, I ventured into the NFT phenomenon as part of a cohort of eco-aware artists that began to engage with an energy-efficient alternative to the more well known blockchains. It was riveting: a report.
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Living Planet, Dead Space
The representation of biodiversity, animals, and ecologies at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels. A critical review of the Living Planet hall at the Brussels Museum of Natural Sciences (“…resembles a high-end shopping mall more than a natural history museum”), which opened in the Fall of 2020.
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Ips Typography
A collaboration with Joebob Graphics. Ips typography is a font of which the design is based on spruce bark beetle traces. The European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus) leaves intricate traces in bark, resembling an alien alphabet. The font is only partly legible.
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The hand stencil and stone tool emoji proposals
It can be difficult to find agency in an internet dominated by large corporations. By way of an artistic contribution, I submitted two proposals for emoji, new additions to the expanding digital pictogram vocabulary.
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195.1 million views (and counting)
This is a report on the astonishing potential of reaching audiences of millions through web-based art – in this case, distributed through a GIPHY artist account. 2019 – 2020 and 2023 – ongoing. Counter update May 2026: the gifs on my account are at 534.6M views.
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Mistakes: the artist talk
‘Mistakes: the artist talk’ (2020) is a video essay (or rather: Powerpoint on steroids), made during the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. It responds with immediacy to the unusual situation, connecting the European spruce bark beetle outbreaks to the human respiratory virus, and pop culture to eco-anxieties.
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The dioramas of the AMNH
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York is famous for its dioramas. This post is a report of my research visit to the AMNH in March, 2019. It was part of a residency, which unfortunately was cut short due to the Covid pandemic. See also: Mistakes. The artist talk.
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Skeuomorphism
A skeuomorph object desires to be something else. Skeuomorphism imitates another material or object. It is intwined with simulation technologies. This post is a WIP.
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A life-sized doll house.
Château de Breteuil near Paris, houses a collection of automata and period room dioramas, depicting historical events that may or may not have taken place in the castle. Visited Oct. 2019.
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A Brief History of Visual Trickery.
A timeline overview of visual illusions and illusionist effects: from Paleolithic to the present.
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Choir of a gothic church diorama
Report of a research visit to Daguerre and Bouton’s only remaining diorama at the church of Bry-sur-Marne: a 19th century high-tech religious theatre experience.
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Titanic sinks in real time
Here are some highlights from a YouTube playlist I made for animation and film students of LUCA in Brussels, in the hopes it would help them understand (digital) media art better.
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Hark! The clock of Notre Dame strikes!
A review, published in 1844, of the Diorama theatre show in London by reporter J. Saunders: a lively account of this pre-cinematic, immersive experience. Diorama theatres showed enormous, semi-translucent paintings that were animated using light- and sound-effects.
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The Artist in His Museum
In different ways, Peale’s 1822 self-portrait ‘The Artist in his Museum’ finds itself on a threshold. I like to use the painting as an analogy for artistic research, lifting the curtain to reveal the knowledge of other disciplines to feed the art.
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Forced Perspective, Avian Edition
It turns out humans are not the only species that uses visual trickery: the bowerbird constructs elaborate architectural seductions, complete with forced perspective.
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Himalaya at Dawn
Powell Cotton Museum | Quex House & Gardens | Birchington, UK | quexmuseum.org | Visited June 2019 | Himalaya at dawn (constructed in 1905) is considered to be ‘the oldest untouched diorama of its type in any museum around the world’ (1: PC Museum Souvenir Guide, page 6) All animals on display were collected by…
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On screens as dioramas as screens
Note: this is a repost of an April 2019 entry on my portfolio website. Illusions behind glass The screen has become omnipresent in our lives: starting with TVs entering our homes, then computer monitors, smartphones, tablets, VR sets. We’re all looking through glass walls at illusions. The illusion is not confined to films, tv programs,…
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