It is an investigation in how we can use new technological developments in order to make the design more human, direct and that leaves space for imperfectness. By drawing all the texts of the catalogue by hand (with this tool) the whole book receives the character of a living organism. It also shows the possibilities of combining technology and the notion of 'handmade' (or drawing with its directness) in new ways.

Redrawing 'Drawing Typologies'
installation / animation, 45:26 min, 2008
in collaboration with Jonathan Puckey
The animation is developed for the exhibition 'De macht van het medium' at Fonds BKVB, Amsterdam, Jan-Feb 2008.

The design (drawing) process of the catalogue 'Drawing Typologies' gets processed another time.
The drawn typography of the catalogue is played letter by letter, page by page. The resulting animation is projected on the table in size of the catalogue itself.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/re-drawing-typologies

What contains this thinking is subject of the lectures by Monique Scheepers. The question to which "thinking as a rhizom" is the answer, is: How can we combine all elements of a non-homogenous whole and let them function together?

Luna Maurer refers to this situation by pointing out the concept of GREY, consisting of evenly spread black and white dots. By shifting them slightly a pattern emerges. In 'Grey Movie' new patterns emerge constantly but the grey value stays the same.

You can purchase the Grijsblok via Museum De Paviljoens, Almere
In collaboration with philosoper Monique Scheepers and Aaf van Essen

Grijsblok
Algorithms: Emiel Ver Loren van Themaat, Jürgen Sturm
Print: Calff & Meischke, edition: 250, published by Museum De Paviljoens, Almere
On the occasion of the exhibition AT RANDOM? Netwerken en Kruisbestuivingen, 2007
Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Grey movie
Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/grey-movie-grijsblok

During 3 hours I send the participants instructions by SMS according to which they had to behave while walking randomly through the city.
The instrucions let the participants investigate into conventions, rules, laws and limits we are dealing with in the public space.

SMS INSTRUCTIONS

1 walk on the left-hand side of the pavement and pass approaching pedestrians on the left-hand side

2 look for suspicious signs that predict imminent danger and warn the group

3 look inside the windows of street-level houses

4 search for eye contact with passing pedestrians

5 greet passing pedestrians

6 transform public space into private space

7 hand out sweets to strangers

8 cross the street whenever someone is walking in your direction

9 walk on the bicycle path

10 only cross the road when the traffic light is yellow - just before they get red

11 cross borders from public to private space, enter private terrains

12 pass pedestrians a bit too close

13 talk to yourself as if you're on the phone - make a fictive call to your mother

RINGTONE FORMATION
After the walk the participants were told to gather at the Central Station in The Hague and wait for new instructions. This time they became part of a principle called cellular automata.
Every participant was smsd simultaneusly the following instructions:

1 Hello cell - please take a position in the main hall with distance of 2 meters of your neighboring cells. Put the cell phone volume up and wait for instructions.
2 Look for your left-hand neighbor with the number (e.g. 0641935417) and your right-hand neighbor with the number (e.g. 0655706440) and stay together.
3 Kiss your right-hand neighbor goodbye bye -say something nice and swap place.

Every participant was smsd simultaneously two numbers of two of the other participants
. By calling and listening to where the ring-tone came from they had to find their neighbors.
This project couldn't be played till the end because the police interrupted the game due to the danger of accumulation of people.
Thanks to Jonathan Puckey and Dimitrt from Lust.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/city-walk

We have developed a new online format - the 'Mini documentary' for the presentation of exemplary projects, for innovative tools, strategies, and associations that demonstrate the potential of informal processes in urban developments.

Urbaniform provides the tool that enables you to publish a 'Mini documentary' of your project. With the online recorder you can upload images and record your voice explaining the images.

The result is an inspiring platform for discussion and mediation to officials, sponsors and institutions.

The project is initiated by Rainer Hehl and Joerg Stollmann, curators of the section 'Squat, The Informal City under Construction' of the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, IABR 2009.
Urbaninform is exhibited during the exhibition Small Scale Big Change at the MOMA, New York City.

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/urbaninform

Jubilator is performed on many different occasions - Lowlands music festival 2008, Synch, Electronic music and digital arts festival, Visual Power Show, Los Angeles

More in-depth documentation is available at www.jubilator.org.
Jubilator was first performed in October 2007 during the opening event of the new big videocreen CAS Zuidas in Amsterdam.
Jubilator is a ball of 120 cm diameter with a wireless built in camera and microphone. The image that is captured by the ball is live projected on the video screen in front of the crowd.

By watching the screen you can directly see the results of your own interactions with jubliator: while observing the crowd you suddenly see close-ups of faces, hands, arms and other body parts and together with this image you hear the emplified jubilating sounds people make by interacting with the ball.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/jubilator

A design concept
Talking about, and expressing opinions on the Middle East is a difficult and touchy subject. There is the potential for many misunderstandings. People can get hurt. Is one allowed to say what one wishes, even if it might be labeled discriminatory by others? [...]

The proposal that most of the texts in the publication would be in the form of interviews suggested that they are one of the most direct, straight forward forms of dialogue. As a visual approach to the catalogue and website, the hope is to combine the complexity of communication with a visualisation of dialogue.

The design is based on analyses of all the conversations with the artists. However the parameters for the graphics have been based not on WHAT is said, but on HOW things are said, by focusing on the uses of language, punctuation, grammar and other characteristics of communication. By doing this communication is visualised without commenting on its contents.

On the one hand the attempt is to be as objective as possible by applying the graphical treatments using the same rules, on the other hand who invented those rules?

By giving the interviews a major presence, the focus is on dialogue. The choice was to represent dialogue in a graphic form as a speech bubble. Speech bubbles date back to the 13th century when they were used to depict speech in art using scrolls, flags or sheets of paper. They could be seen as an icon for dialogue across all cultures.

The physical parameters of the text on the page influences different sorts of modifications to the speech bubble


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/infocus

This class was taught by Luna Maurer and Jonathan Puckey. The other participating teachers were Jeroen Bodewits, Katja Prins, Ine Lamers and Rob de Vree.
Students: Lena, Inna, Arina, Ana (Dimitrovsgrad), Dima (Dimitrovsgrad), Farida, Olga, Sveta, Tolik. All the students were from Samara except for Ana and Dima.

Before the start of the Summer School we had no idea how Russian students work and think. Because of this we tried to set up our part of the workshop in a way that staid close to our own personal interests and professional approach to design. We wanted to show them the way we work and think and let them decide what they find interesting and usable in their own work.

The workshop ended with the exhibition: The accidental tourist (see the series of posters announcing the exhibition)
The assignmet was to create a "tourist guide" to the city Samara and it had to be a series.
Four projects were developed in our class:

1. "Moscow Highway" by Lena, Inna, Arina (a series of bags)
White textile bags were thrown on the biggest street of Samara, the Moscow Highway, so they would be driven over by cars. De car tires functioned as a printing technique that created the patterns that emerged on the bags.

2. "What do you want to sell to a foreigner?" by Farida, Olga and Sveta (a performance, installation and book)
Farida, Olga and Sveta addressed the relation between the intimate, private and public in Samara. Their project investigated the tear-off advertisements that Samara is littered with. They asked passers-by in the city what they would like to sell to a foreigner and asked them to write it on a bed sheet with their phone number. They filmed this action and projected it on a bed sheet inside the exhibition. The completed sheets were hung in the back yard of the exhibition space.

3. "Contrasts in Samara" by Tolik (a d.i.y. guide)
Tolik was fascinated by the big contrasts in the city of Samara. He developed a kit consisting of stickers, instructions and a specially designed, empty booklet. Visitors were asked to take a walking tour and create compositions based on the views that Tolik had chosen. Some stickers referred to old Samara, and some referred to modern Samara. The visitor is free to decide how to make the compositions, but is forced to look at these differences because of the ingredients of the kit.

4. "Reflections of Samara" by Ana and Dima (a series of photos)
Ana and Dima developed a tool that they could use to create special images. They cut bottles of typical drinks in two and looked at the different reflective properties of the liquids. In the end they created a photo series of special locations and routs in the city of Samara reflected on Pepsi Cola, Samara beer, Kvas (a traditional Russian drink made with fermented bread) and pure water.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/the-accidental-tourist

The information on the website is evenly divided in four sections, the Casco logo is placed in the centre. The left side contains the navigation (top: chronological / down: themewise). The right side contains content (top: images / down: text). The division stays always in proportion when resizing the browser window. The typeface used for the navigation on the left side is designed for Casco by Laurenz Brunner.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/casco-website

One-week-residency in the Museum Het Domein, Stittard, The Netherlands, September 2005.
Each color represents a project, the red vertical stripes indicate the months.

The same installation I made for the exhibition 'Inside out' at the Fonds BKVB in Amsterdam, January 2006. This time the projects don't have a colour code but its vertical position indicates what kind of project it is.
Later I made a visualization of the agenda of the Museum De Paviljoens called Meeting Structures

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/living-agenda

It is a series of 10 posters that is created during the workshop 'Conditional Design' at the art academy St. Joost, Breda, led by Luna Maurer and Jonathan Puckey. Each of the ten participants received a design kit as material to create the poster with: The kit contained diferent colors of tape, text, stickers and a code that had to be executed. The code determined the position of the elements on the paper. The sheet had to be passed on after each run of the code.

The posters are exhibited during the exhibition 'Graphic Design in the White Cube' from June till October 2006, curated by Peter Bil'ak.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/graphic-design-bienale-brno