Went to the opening of ‘De Stad en het Water’/’The City and the Water‘ at museum Flehite in Amersfoort yesterday, where my work ‘Waterwoorden’/’Waterwords‘ is on show. Beautifully situated: the waterwords flow over a whitewashed brick wall in the entry room of the exhibition, integrating themselves with the historic building. The words are accompanied by river sounds and a QR code giving access to an app that explains the waterwords. For some are very archaic indeed.

And the words flowed! That is to say: everything worked. The river of words is generated by software in real time, in order to never have the same river twice. This is a bit more complicated than showing a film or video. All components (laptops, Windows operating system, Processing platform, Minim sound library, my code, beamer, sound boxes, QR code, Waterwoorden app) have to work together to make this possible. And believe you me, lots of problems have popped up that artists that paint, draw or make photographs or videos never have to deal with. Maybe I should simplify my life, too …

It was exhilarating seeing my work in context with other works of art. My work being shown next to a Claudy Jongstra: this gives me a small frisson of pleasure.

More works in the exhibition that spoke to me: