Category: all
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Welcome to .txt
Announcing .txt, the return of the blog! Wary of 20 years of social media platforms and general internet enshittification, I posted this little rant to LinkedIn, of all places, on May 18, 2026.
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Half Woord
(Dutch) Text written and read on the occasion of the book presentation and opening of the exhibition ‘Letters to Survivors’ by Toon Teeken in antiquarian book shop Demian, in Antwerp. April, 2026.
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New Media in Deep History
Originally published on my initial research blog, The Appeal of the Unreal, in april 2019, this (recently re-edited) post is part of a lineage of thoughts and research on how contemporary (media) art practice may relate to the widest possible scope of art history.
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Is there an ‘indigenous’ Europe?
What does “indigenous” mean in Western European countries like the Netherlands and Belgium? What stories and knowledge of the land have been lost over the course of centuries? Have we lost ourselves, perhaps, too? Is there a way to reconnect to our own ‘indigenousness’?
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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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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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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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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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The Fiction Fix: Cognitive Fluidity & Fake News
Steven Mithen explains cognitive fluidity in his book The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. Our brain mixes up different realities, leading to surprising combinations. I propose an idea that follows up on this: perhaps some people’s desperation for a fiction fix helps them fall into conspiracy traps.
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Bling: why people like shiny things
An insight on why people like shiny things, based on my own affinity with shiny surfaces.
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