The 'type tool' is an application in which you can type short texts. The letters are built from one stroke, referring to transparant tape strokes. The tool allows to replicate and grow the strokes so patterns will emerge. One cannot define the patterns exactly beforehand. The letter-shapes and the order of replicating and growing define how the patterns evolve. The tool also lets you change the parameters: width, overlap, transparency and color of the strokes.
The algorithm is written by Just van Rossum, the inner letter-shape is drawn by Erik van Blokland. The application is programmed in Python, for Mac OS X only.
STEIM is using the tool to design all their identity matters with it: newsletters, invitations, posters, letterhead etc.

In 2011 Crackle Type Tool will be for sale.


Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/steim-crackle-type-tool

These windows were the first experiments on which the STEIM Crackle Type Tool is based on.

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

Since spring 2008 we (Luna Maurer, Edo Paulus, Jonathan Puckey and Roel Wouters) come together every tuesday at Luna's kitchen table. Aside from working on the Conditional Design Manifesto we organize weekly Conditional Design workshops and publish the results on our Conditional Design website. These posters are also one of the results of these workshops.

For the posters, every week one of us had to define the rules that we will execute during one evening. We never know exactly how the patterns will emerge. Sometimes, the patterns are complex and the rules are simple and sometimes the patterns are simple and the rules as well.

Link to this project:
poly-luna.com/conditional-design-posters

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

The photographs are taken with a camera positioned on the roof of a building in the center of Amsterdam (De Balie) facing East. From July 2005 till december 2009, the camera captured images every 5 minutes.

Please visit the sky-catcher browser www.sky-catcher.nl to navigate through the archive of more than 400 000 thousand images and discover the emerging structures during the years.

Skycatcher wallpaper
Realized for At Random?, Museum de Paviljoens, 2007/2008
26m x 4.3 m
Visualization of 2 years of the skycatcher archive, with an interval of 10 minutes and about 88 000 images. In collaboration with Jonathan Puckey

Skycatcher staircase
Realized for the Quick Quick Slow exhibition in Lisbon curated by Emily Pathick, 11.09.09 - 03.01.10. The exhibition was part of the 5th edition of ExperimentaDesign 2009.
In collaboration with Jonathan Puckey

Skycatcher poster
A visualization of a year's cycle taken between Sept 2005 and Sept 2006.
You can buy it for 15.- euros at the sky-catcher shop.
size: 86 cm x 124 cm
Design by Luna Maurer & Jonathan Puckey
With support from Fonds BKVB


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

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