Ruben van de Ven
type: Person
job title: digital artist / researcher of software culture
nationality: The Netherlands

Plotting Data: dramatisation as tactic
type: PerformingGroup
temporal coverage: 2018-2020
description: A research into Data Dramatisation as a tactic to make data visualisations more transparent in their underlying procedures of data collection. We advocate a form of data literacy that is not so much focussed on programming skill, but rather one that brings an understanding of data infrastructures: allowing for restistance against data driven governance. With support of the Creative Industries Fund NL.
member: Cristina Cochior
member: Ruben van de Ven

Acts of Collection and Omission
type: Event
start date: 2020-03-11 19:30
end date: 2020-03-11 22:00
organizer: Centre for Digital Cultures & Institute for Culture and Society
description: The event will host three rounds of conversations that will introduce various datasets and artistic ways of interfacing them. Algorithmic models learn to distinguish patterns and make predictions by attempting to imitate existing structures in vast collections of data. In the process of creating these datasets, conflict and ambiguity are omitted in favour of turning the world into its computable double. How do we bring forth narratives that make other interpretations possible? Plotting Data was a series of workshops held by Cristina Cochior & Ruben van de Ven in 2019, which explored the biases and tensions within datasets that underlie systems for automated decision making. Discussions, presentations and performances fed into the creation of digital interfaces that emphasise the inherently performative characteristics of datasets. This final event marks the end of this project and the release of the Acts of Collection and Omission digital publication. Two tables will be hosted by invited artists Julie Boschat Thorez & Sami Hammana and Nicolas Malevé, while the third table will give an overview of the publication.
location: Framer Framed & Netwerk Democratie, Amsterdam
about: Plotting Data: dramatisation as tactic

Digital Cultures: Knowledge / Culture / Technology
type: Event
start date: 2018-09-19
end date: 2018-09-22
organizer: Centre for Digital Cultures & Institute for Culture and Society
description: As Plotting Data, we gave a presentation at the Digital Cultures Conference
location: Leuphana University, Lüneburg
about: Plotting Data: dramatisation as tactic

Workshop: Urban Frictions
type: EducationEvent
alternate name: Critical Making of Frictional Urban Interfaces
start date: 2018-03-06
end date: 2018-03-06
organizer: Urban Interfaces, Utrecht University
location: Utrecht
about: Plotting Data: dramatisation as tactic

Data Flâneur
type: Event
alternate name: Data Flâneur - seeing and being seen in the data driven city
start date: 2018-11-04
end date: 2018-11-04
description: Inspired by Alison Powell’s ‘data walk’, the Flaneur twists her concept by not only making participants aware of data collection within the city, but also by making them experiment with data collection for their own purposes. By zooming in on the procedures of selection, classification and digitisation, participants experience the intricacies of data collection.
super event: Hello World!
organizer: Plotting Data: dramatisation as tactic

Hello World!
type: ExhibitionEvent
start date: 2018-11-02
end date: 2018-11-04
organizer: Creative Coding Utrecht

Creative Coding Utrecht
type: Organization

Workshop @ DAS Theatre
type: Event
alternate name: Plotting the Enron Corpus
start date: 2019-02-21
end date: 2018-02-21
description: As part of the series Broadcast from Babylon.
organizer: Plotting Data: dramatisation as tactic

Workshop @ Onomatopee
type: Event
alternate name: Plotting Data: Function Creep in the Wild
start date: 2019-06-12 16:00
end date: 2018-06-12 18:30
location: Onomatopee
description: Datasets form a basis on which a city is made readable and interpretable foralgorithms, such as the those that process the endless streams of information coming from the cameras and sensors that stand scattered throughoutEindhoven. In this workshop, we will get acquainted with various ways in which data is collected and imagined. Who is being collected and what are the (dis)advantages of being represented? After an introduction into the types of biases that are inherent to their creation, we will combine hands-on work with pre-made scripts and discuss ways in which fiction and performance play a role in seeing like a dataset.
organizer: Plotting Data: dramatisation as tactic

Workshop - API: Artistic Point Of Interferance
type: EducationEvent
alternate name: API-art & situated fictions
location: AKV St. Joost, Breda
description: A presentation & workshop about working with APIs as an artist. In collaboration with Manetta Berends & Max Dovey
start date: 2017-03-13
end date: 2017-03-14
organiser: Max Dovey
organiser: Manetta Berends
organiser: Ruben van de Ven

Guest Worker
type: MediaObject
date created: 2019
description: Nowadays, we are not only increasingly delegating and automating tasks and processes, there also new forms of work that are being created for people. With the emergence of services such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk, specific parts of automatic processes are being outsourced to human workers. These Human Intelligence Tasks are tasks that a machine cannot execute, for example retyping a scanned receipt or entering a Captcha code. In this way machines selectively delegate tasks to humans, creating a human working class that remains largely invisible.Merijn van Moll and Ruben van de Ven want to make this feedback loop between man and machine visible. This creates a new ritual in which the spirit of the worker is invoked again and again. This project was developed in light of Future scenarios for AI and the job market by Setup and the NSvP (Dutch Foundation for Psycho technology)
video: outcome
video: process
author: Merijn van Moll
author: Ruben van de Ven

outcome
type: VideoObject
encoding format: video/mp4
video frame size: 1920x1080

process
type: VideoObject
encoding format: video/mp4
video frame size: 1920x1080

Merijn van Moll
type: Person

Beyond Human
type: ExhibitionEvent
organizer: Setup
organizer: Nederlandse Stichting voor Psychotechniek
location: Naturalis, Leiden
description: SETUP x NSVP: future scenarios for AI and the job market Algorithms that assess application letters. Voice assistants who take over the job interview. Predicting the perfect candidate for a vacancy. The possibilities of AI for recruitment and selection of employees seem endless. What does the future of this development look like? And how does AI facilitate - or frustrate - diversity in the labor market? Eight selected makers worked on this theme in four teams. From programmer to writer of historical novels, and from costume designer to cultural anthropologist. With installations, performances and other works they make the social consequences of AI in the HR sector tangible. Because reading about it is one thing, but the consequences can only be felt if you yourself undergo an algorithmic interview. Would you still be hired for your own job if you had to apply with these systems?
start date: 2019-11-04
end date: 2019-11-06
work featured: Guest Worker

Nederlandse Stichting voor Psychotechniek
type: Organization

re:connect | Digital Art Expo
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Janskerk, Utrecht
start date: 2019-11-16
end date: 2019-11-16
organizer: Setup
work featured: Guest Worker

Setup
type: Organization
address: Utrecht

ECP Conference
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Fokker Terminal
start date: 2019-11-13
end date: 2019-11-13
work featured: Guest Worker

Privacyrede 2020: the internet is broken
type: ExhibitionEvent
description: (NL) Het internet is stuk. Hoe kunnen we het weer repareren? Daarover vertelt Marleen Stikker, auteur van Het internet is stuk, op 23 januari tijdens de Privacyrede 2020. Met de 50e verjaardag van het internet is dit hét moment om terug te blikken en vooruit te kijken.
location: Tivoli Vredeburg
start date: 2020-01-23
end date: 2020-01-23
work featured: Guest Worker

Tivoli Vredeburg
type: EventVenue

Presentation @ Creative Coding Utrecht
type: Event
start date: 2019-10-31
organizer: Creative Coding Utrecht
location: Nijverheidsloods, Utrecht
work featured: Guest Worker
work featured: Exercises in overfitting

Guest Worker Research Report
type: Report
description: A brief report written in light of Guest Worker (2019). In Dutch.
date published: 2019-11-26
about: Guest Worker

Exercises in overfitting
type: MediaObject
date created: 2019
description: I taught a computer how to write the name of my son. The progression of this machine learning processes is materialised with a pen plotter.
author: Ruben van de Ven

Data double black market
type: MediaObject
date created: 2018
description: Why buy live access to heartbeats? Insurance companies give you discounts for monitoring a healthy lifestyle. Because you can re-sell it to data hoarding companies. To chill out with the soothing sound on your headphones. Use it as input data for your amazing new media art installation. Because it's cheap!
author: Ruben van de Ven

Yama Ichi Black Market
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Tivoli Vredeburg
work featured: Data double black market

Sustaining Gazes
type: MediaObject
date created: 2018
description: In analytics and statistics, data visualisations, such as the heatmap, are used as tools bring forward patterns in data. These data visualisations, are often presented as objective tools of knowledge: data supposedly do not lie. What is often neglected however, are the subjective and political intricacies embedded within the datasets, and its method of visualisation. In collaboration with Cristina Cochior I am exploring the concept of data dramatisations, as an opposite to data visualisations. Rather than aiming for the objective, we explore the affective & performative aspects of data gathering and processing. Sustaining Gazes is a data dramatisation which looks at the role between the visualisation and its subject. A heatmap is generated by looking at it, which directly influences the looking. Areas which are looked at turn into interesting shapes, inviting even more observation. The pattern of looking is reinforced though its visualisation. This cycle reveals both a hierarchy of power between algorithm and subject, as well as a point for intervention.
author: Ruben van de Ven

Route du Nord
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: ZOHO
start date: 2018-05
end date: 2018-05
work featured: Sustaining Gazes

ZOHO
type: EventVenue
address: Rotterdam

The New Current
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Cruise Terminal
start date: 2019-02-06
end date: 2019-02-10
work featured: Sustaining Gazes

Cruise Terminal
type: EventVenue
address: Rotterdam

MVPs
type: CreativeWorkSeries
about: November 2017 In4Art approached me to be part of their KickstART project. They commissioned three works to be part of their auction. The goal was to explicitly develop works that fitted the commercial art scene. Rather than creating 'sellable' works myself, I took the start-up culture that forms the foundation of In4Art, as my object of my series. I augmented the works of three other participants with business models taken from the online/digital realm. This resulted in three Minimum Viable Products. Recontextualising these business models towards an arts context, results in new perspectives on both the arts as well as start-up culture.
date created: 2018
has part: MVP#1 Gathering viewing statistics for Donald Schenkel
has part: MVP#2 Joseph Huot's Limited Edition
has part: MVP#3 Customiseyour.art - Mikel Folgerts 1/3
author: Ruben van de Ven

MVP#1 Gathering viewing statistics for Donald Schenkel
type: MediaObject
date created: 2018
description: The work of Donald Schenkel is augmented with a camera which keeps track of how long people look at the work. Like an electricity meter, the value increases the more the work is used. This data is then sent to a server, and provides the artist —in this case Donald Schenkel— with live statistics. But who owns this data generated by the work? The buyer, the artist, or the mediator — which is me? This is the first augmentation that is part of the MVP series created for KickstART.
width: 45cm + 15cm
height: 55cm + 8cm
artwork surface: Oilpaint on wood + WiFi-connected RaspberryPi in ABS enclosure
contributor: Donald Schenkel

Donald Schenkel
type: Person

KickstART II
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: In4Art Project Space
start date: 2018-03-28
end date: 2018-03-28
work featured: MVP#1 Gathering viewing statistics for Donald Schenkel
work featured: MVP#2 Joseph Huot's Limited Edition
work featured: MVP#3 Customiseyour.art - Mikel Folgerts 1/3

In4Art Project Space
type: EventVenue
address: Amsterdam

Salon VI - Innovatism
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: In4Art Project Space
start date: 2018-05-18
end date: 2018-05-27
work featured: MVP#1 Gathering viewing statistics for Donald Schenkel

MVP#2 Joseph Huot's Limited Edition
type: MediaObject
date created: 2018
description: In September 2017, huricane Irma was racing towards Florida. Everybody tried to get away from there as quick as possible. Stuck were those with the electric Tesla Model S with the cheaper battery option (60kWh). Then, all of a sudden, Tesla send a software update to these cars. The cars could drive futher then ever before. Until 72 hours later, Tesla reversed the software update. Exactly the same car could drive shorter distances. This is the business of software companies: just like Apple limits performance on old iPhones, Tesla used softare to limit the reach of its cars in order to make more money. While physically the exact same product, it can do less. Minimum Viable Product #2 brings this business model to the art world. It provides a limited edition of a drawing by Joseph Huot.
width: 32.5cm
height: 50cm
artwork surface: Pencil drawing in metal LCD enclosure
contributor: Joseph Huot

Joseph Huot
type: Person

MVP#3 Customiseyour.art - Mikel Folgerts 1/3
type: MediaObject
date created: 2018
description: On YouTube, Instagram, and many other online platforms, celebrities get paid to place consumer products in their videos. Not prominently, but hidden in plain sight. Can precarious artists finance their work by employing this product placement? Minimum Viable Product #3 allows buyers to customise the work they bought —Rotterdam, by Mikel Folgerts—, linking the status of the artist to their product.
width: 40cm
height: 40cm
artwork surface: Personalised print on perspex
contributor: Mikel Folgerts

Mikel Folgerts
type: Person

Spectacular Spectator Mood Meter
type: MediaObject
date created: 2017
description: Commisioned by V2_ for Evening of the Black Box Concern. Researchers of digital culture often regard artificial intelligence as black boxes. However, developers of these systems often regard the humans that are analysed as black boxes. What happens when we use black boxes (AI) to analyse black boxes (humans) and present these back to black boxes (humans)? This prototype used emotion recognition software by Affectiva to analyse the audience of the talks. It then highlighted the moments in the talks for which outliers in the data were found. Can we use this data to analyse either of the black boxes?
producer: V2_
author: Ruben van de Ven

Evening of the Black Box Concerns
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: V2_
start date: 2017-12-7
work featured: Spectacular Spectator Mood Meter

Emotion Hero
type: MediaObject
date created: 2016
description: Emotion recognition software is being used both as a tool for ‘objective’ measurements as well as a tool for training one’s facial expressions, eg. for job interviews. Emotion Hero is a literal translation of the paradoxical relation between these applications of the technology. Emotion Hero is a two-part artwork. On the one hand is a video-game that is freely downloadable for everybody with an Android device (see Google Play). Inspired by Guitar Hero, the user scores points by following given cues. It provides detailed feedback on the mechanics of the face (eg. “You showed on 10% Joy when you had to show 100%, smile 99.32% more.”), revealing that rather than being a window into the brain, the face is a controllable surface. The second part is a projection that shows the aggregated scores of the game. In order to substantiate their discourse, companies in facial expression measurement employ a huge amount of data collection and processing. The results are displayed in a fixed grid, recalling historical practices that, trough extensive measurement and administration, also aimed to delineate something which is conceptually undelineated: think of Duchenne de Boulogne, Lombroso, and Charcot. Emotion Hero is a playful invitation to open up the box of expression analysis to reveal the assumptions that underlie this technology. The game's emotional intelligence is powered by Affectiva (I was also interviewed by them).
author: Ruben van de Ven

ECP Conference
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Fokker Terminal
start date: 2018-11-15
end date: 2018-11-15
work featured: Emotion Hero

Free Panorama - Shenzen MAF
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Pingshan Cultural Center Exhibition Gallery, Shenzen
start date: 2019-04-20
end date: 2019-05
work featured: Emotion Hero

Mood Swings
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: frei_raum / Q21
start date: 2017-03-28
end date: 2017-05-28
work featured: Emotion Hero
sub event: Residency: Q21

frei_raum / Q21
type: Museum
address: MuseumsQuartier /Vienna

Open Codes
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: ZKM
  type: Museum
  address: Karlsrue
start date: 2017-10-20
end date: 2018-08-05
work featured: Emotion Hero

Plan D
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Zagreb
start date: 2017-10
end date: 2018-10
awarded: honorable mention
work featured: Emotion Hero

Ars Electronica
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Ars Electronica
  type: Festival
  address: Linz
start date: 2017-09
end date: 2017-09
organiser: V2_
funded: Creative Industries Fund
work featured: Emotion Hero

Microbites of Creativity
type: ExhibitionEvent
organiser: ACM Creativity & Cognition
location: Museum of Arts & Sciences
  type: Museum
  address: Singapore
start date: 2017-06
end date: 2017-06
work featured: Emotion Hero

Codes & Modes II
type: ExhibitionEvent
organiser: Integrated Media Arts MFA
location: Hunter College
  type: CollegeOrUniversity
  address: New York City
start date: 2017-03-16
end date: 2017-03-18
about: choose-how-you-feel-you-have-seven-options
work featured: Emotion Hero
work featured: We know how you feel

STATE of Emotion
type: ExhibitionEvent
start date: 2016-11-04
end date: 2016-11-05
work featured: Emotion Hero
work featured: We know how you feel

STATE Festival
type: Festival
address: Berlin
sub event: STATE of Emotion
sub event: Panel: Tracking Emotions
  type: Event
  start date: 2018-11-04
  end date: 2018-11-04
  recorded in: video
  about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Residency: Summer Sessions 2016
sub event: Manipulation: Emotion Hero
  type: ExhibitionEvent
  description: I organised this exhibition as part of my Summer Sessions residency at Arquivo237. It was a modest exhibition covering my research on emotion recognition software.
  location: Arquivo237
    type: EventVenue
    address: Lisbon
  start date: 2016-09
  end date: 2016-09
  work featured: Emotion Hero
type: VisualArtsEvent
description: I was part of the Summer Sessions Network for Talent Development in a co-production of Arquivo 237 and V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, with support of the Creative Industries Fund NL.
start date: 2016-09
end date: 2016-10
about: Emotion Hero
attendee: Ruben van de Ven

Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options
type: MediaObject
date created: 2016
duration: 9M9S (∞ loop)
artwork surface: 3 projections
description: What does it mean to feel 47% happy and 21% surprised? Choose how you feel; you have seven options is a video work that revolves around this question as it looks at software that derives emotional parameters from facial expressions. It combines human accounts and algorithmic processing to examine the intersection of highly cognitive procedures and ambiguous experiences. Born from a fascination with the technological achievements, the work interrogates the discursive apparatus the software is embedded in. This work builds on my research into the workings of expression analysis technologies and the assumptions that underlie it, scrutinising the claims that are made by the companies developing the software.
author: Ruben van de Ven

Big Stories Need Human Stakes
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Nieuwe Vide
  type: Museum
  address: Haarlem
start date: 2018-02-02
end date: 2018-03-04
work featured: Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Test_Lab the Graduation Edition
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: V2_
start date: 2016-07-07 20:00
end date: 2016-07-07 23:00
work featured: Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

V2_
type: Place
address: Rotterdam

Fuzzy Logic - Graduation Show
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Piet Zwart Institute
start date: 2016-06-17
end date: 2016-06-26
about: MA - Media Design and Communication
work featured: Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Piet Zwart Institute
type: CollegeOrUniversity
address: Rotterdam
educational credential awarded: MA - Media Design and Communication

EYE Without A Face
type: MediaObject
date created: 2016
duration: 11:32 (∞ loop)
description: Whether the video frames are ordered by time or by emotion will not make a difference to a computer. For it, both orderings are just as logical. However, for the human spectator the reordered display of frames becomes a disruptive process. The human is positioned as a required agent for meaning making in an algorithmic procedure. In collaboration with Cristina Cochior I went manually through the Eye's public collection, and catalogued faces by surrendering them to an emotion detection algorithm. Cutting from one face to another,its uncritical selection produced a new portrait of emotional gradients moving in-between anger and happiness.
author: Cristina Cochior
video: video
author: Ruben van de Ven

Cristina Cochior
type: Person

video
type: VideoObject
encoding format: video/mp4
video frame size: 1920x1080

Video Vortex
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Mill Hall / Kochi-Muzeris biennial
  type: Place
  address: Kochi (India)
start date: 2017-04-23
end date: 2017-04-26
work featured: EYE Without A Face

Grand Instant Fiction
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Umakart Gallery
  type: EventVenue
  address: Brno
start date: 2016-12
end date: 2016-12
work featured: EYE Without A Face

Boundaries of the Archive
type: ExhibitionEvent
description: The Piet Zwart Institute at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam as part of its ResearchLab series. The exhibition focussed on the boundaries of the archive. Studying the structures and cultural impacts of our media technologies, it concentrated on the intricate and usually hidden aspects of EYE's extensive archive
location: EYE Film Museum
  type: Museum
  address: Amsterdam
start date: 2016-04-12
end date: 2014-04-24
work featured: EYE Without A Face

Article - Emotion Hero
type: ScholarlyArticle
page start: 422
page end: 423
is part of: C&C '17 Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition
is part of: Microbites of Creativity
description: What does it mean to feel 62% joy, and 15% surprised? Over the past years the digitization of emotions is booming business: multimillion dollar investments are made in technologies of which is claimed that they give companies an objective view in their consumers' feelings. The video-game-artwork Emotion Hero challenges the user to investigate this claim and question the premise of the technology. Emotion Hero is a two-part artwork. On the one hand is a video-game that is freely downloadable for everybody with an Android device. Inspired by Guitar Hero, the user scores points by following given cues. It provides detailed feedback on the mechanics of the face. The second part is a projection that shows a grid with aggregated scores of the game, that updates live. In its design, the grid refers to 19th century positivist practices.
publisher: ACM New York, NY, USA
date published: 2017-01-27
author: Ruben van de Ven

Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options
type: Report
description: What does it mean to feel 82% surprised or 93% joy? As part of their Longform series, the Institute of Network Cultures published my research into software that derives emotional scores from facial expressions.
date published: 2017-01-27
publisher: Institute of Network Cultures
author: Ruben van de Ven

Presentation @ Act Natural 04
type: Event
start date: 2019-06-08
end date: 2019-06-08
organizer: Jeisson Drenth
location: Doornroosje, Rotterdam
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ BARTALK #12: Coded Gestures
type: Event
start date: 2018-10-26
end date: 2018-10-26
organizer: Yun Ingrid Lee
organizer: Rae Parnell
location: Doornroosje, Rotterdam
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Media Lab UFRJ
type: Event
start date: 2018-05-25
end date: 2018-05-25
organizer: Media Lab UFRJ & Dutch Consulate
location: Rio de Janeiro
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Instituto Europeo di Design
type: Event
start date: 2018-05-22
end date: 2018-05-22
organizer: Instituto Europeo di Design & Dutch Consulate
location: São Paulo
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Nuffic Neso
type: Event
start date: 2018-05-21
end date: 2018-05-21
organizer: Nuffic Neso & Dutch Consulate
location: São Paulo
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Festival PATH
type: Event
start date: 2018-05-19
end date: 2018-05-19
organizer: Dutch Consulate
location: São Paulo
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ The Hmm
type: Event
start date: 2018-03-28
end date: 2018-03-28
organizer: The Hmm
location: Baut, Amsterdam
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Industrial Design
type: EducationEvent
start date: 2018-03-06
end date: 2018-03-06
organizer: Felienne Hermans, TU Delft
location: TU Delft
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Worlding the Brain II
type: Event
start date: 2017-11-02
end date: 2017-11-04
organizer: ASCA Research Group Neuroaesthetics and Neurocultures, University of Amsterdam
location: CREA, Amsterdam
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Creative Coding Utrecht
type: Event
start date: 2017
organizer: Creative Coding Utrecht
location: Stadstuin, Utrecht
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Workshop: Artistic Point of Interference
type: EducationEvent
start date: 2017-03-13
end date: 2017-03-14
organizer: St. Joost Academy
location: Breda
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Cqrrelations publication launch
type: Event
start date: 2016-06-11
end date: 2016-06-11
organizer: Constant VZW.
location: FoAM, Brussels
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Digital<Dis>orders
type: Event
start date: 2016-11-17
end date: 2016-11-19
organizer: Goethe University
location: Frankfurt am Main
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Winter school
type: Event
alternate name: What happens to the data in 'Big Data'?
start date: 2016-02
end date: 016-02
organizer: Workgroup: algorithmic governmentality
location: University of Namur
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Art Meets Radical Openness
type: Event
start date: 2018-05-25
end date: 2018-05-28
location: Linz
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

Presentation @ Digital Emotions Workgroup
type: Event
start date: 2016
end date: 2016
organizer: Amsterdam School for Cultral Analysis
location: University of Amsterdam
about: Longform - Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options

We know how you feel
type: MediaObject
date created: 2015
description: A two-part artwork and my first work on software that derives emotional parameters from facial expressions. The first part displays the Mind Reading Emotions Library, an interactive collection of videos, audio fragments and scenes depicting 412 distinct emotions —ranging from `angry' to `unsure'— grouped in 24 categories. The second part of the project is a tablet with a modified demo app by Affectiva, a major player in the field of emotion analysis software. This app acts as an interactive mirror which displays the various parameters that the Affectiva software derives from someone's facial expression, while a voice over reads a text extracted from the Dutch classic Beyond Sleep by W.F. Hermans (1966), concerning the impact of the mirror, photography and video on the human self-image.
image: ImageObject
  caption: We know how you feel
image: ImageObject
  caption: Mind Reading Emotions Library
author: Ruben van de Ven

An Encyclopedia of Media Objects
type: ExhibitionEvent
start date: 2015-06-26
end date: 2015-06-27
description: What is an encyclopedia? What are media? What is an object? Students of the Piet Zwart Institute Media Design Masters programme invite you to look at these issues. Twelve installations and one choreography present a taxonomy of disappearing, human and non-human, introvert and collected media objects. This exhibition was developed in a 'Thematic Seminar' run in the summer trimester 2015 taught by Florian Cramer. Artists: Lucas Battich [IT], Manetta Berends [NL], Julie Boschat Thorez [FR], Cihad Caner [TR], Joana Chicau [PT], Cristina Cochior [RO], Solange Frankort [NL], Arantxa Gonlag [NL], Anne Lamb [US], Benjamin Li [NL], Yuzhen Tang [CN], Ruben van de Ven [NL] & Thomas Walskaar [NO]
location: V2_
work featured: We know how you feel

Fragments of reality
type: MediaObject
date created: 2015-01-01
description: In western society, images are generally perceived as objective traces of events. As evidence that things happened as how they are captured in the frame. As Susan Sontag elaborates, this counts for photographic images in particular. They are seen, not as subjective statements about the world, but rather as pieces of it —as fragments of a reality. Photographic images are often seen as unbiased; they carry in them the "burden of truth". We use them to give meaning, to asses and to judge. It exactly is in this passivity of the image, that its aggression lurks. Fragments of Reality is a newspaper that assembles descriptions of five images of one event: a press conference with Jeroen Dijsselbloem and Yanis Varoufakis. Each interviewee was shown one of the images, in an attempt to highlight how we read events trough photographs. It considers an event not as a single factual moment, but as the cumulative of subjective experiences, inherently proposing that an image is always lacking in its representation of that which it presents.
image: ImageObject
  caption: Fragments of reality
image: ImageObject
  caption: Fragments of reality
image: ImageObject
  caption: Fragments of reality
author: Ruben van de Ven

High Desert International Film Festival
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: High Desert International Film Festival
  type: Festival
  address: Pahrump, Nevada
start date: 2014-05
end date: 2014-05
work featured: Waterdagen
  type: Movie
  date created: 2013
  description: Adam is security guard at a nursing home with comatose patients. During his night shifts he has unsettling visions of someone drowning. He seeks his comfort in the company of his pregnant girlfriend. Days of Water is a story on guilt and shame; and on a longing for hope. I wrote and directed this film for my graduation as film director for fiction at the Utrecht School of the Arts. It was accompanied by my MA research on spectatorial emotion and the influence emotions on the spectator's sympathy for the protagonist.
  author: Ruben van de Ven

Crossing Border
type: ExhibitionEvent
location: Leidse Schouwburg
  type: PerformingArtsTheater
  address: Leiden
start date: 2012-11-14
end date: 2012-11-17
work featured: Co-Poet
  type: MediaObject
  date created: 2012
  description: For the visitors of the Crossing Border festival in The Hague we desgined an installation to collaboratively contribute to a poem. Based on the input of the user, a sentence is added to the poem, originating from digitalised texts of artists participating in the festival. The text was combined with an audiovisual presentation that changed depending on the user's input.
  author: Ruben van de Ven

Rangi Ya Samawati
type: MediaObject
date created: 2012
description: The Colour of Blue. A diptych about two Tanzanians: a miner and a lobster fisher. How do they live, work and survive; and how do they see their own future? Each of the two men is in his own way depending on nature, everyday gambling for a good catch. This documentary was shot complementary to our work at the Kilimanjaro Film Institute in Arusha. Documentary, 14′42″. The full film is available on Youtube.
video: video
author: Ruben van de Ven

video
type: VideoObject
encoding format: video/mp4
video frame size: 1280x1024

Virtual Afterlife
type: MediaObject
date created: 2010
description: A short HKU project on the future of social media, when it was still an upcomming phenomenon. It is made in two weeks for a series of shorts with a given start and ending image. We asked ourselves: what happens if our online identity lives on after we die? Do we still live on if a part of our online identity does? How can this virtual identity be shaped? 2′10″
author: Ruben van de Ven

videoobject
type: VideoObject
encoding format: video/mp4
video frame size: 1280x1024

Pillow Talk
type: MediaObject
date created: 2019
description: The voice is surely an uncanny phenomenon. In the digital age it leaves us constantly in doubt, if a person or a non-person is speaking. In this immersive performance, doubt and conviction change roles in the blink of an eye. Spread out on a hilly landscape, audience engages in a conversation with something that is there and not there at the same time. An artificial voice functions as a mediator, a partner and a mirror to one's own. While conversations are constructed word-by-word, impressions are shared, naps are taken, and time is passed, Pillow Talk is an invitation to suspend eye-to-eye relations and to reposition yourself in direct relation to the non-human. I developed the interface for the participants, as well as a custom story flow editor for the director/writer Begüm Erciyas.
about: Residency: PACT Zollverein
  type: VisualArtsEvent
  start date: 2019
about: Residency: Buda
  type: VisualArtsEvent
  start date: 2019
contributor: Ruben van de Ven

Begüm Erciyas
type: Person
author: Pillow Talk

Kunstenfestivaldesarts
type: TheaterEvent
location: KVS, Brussels
start date: 2019-05-15
end date: 2019-05-20
work featured: Pillow Talk

Festival Politics of Algorithms
type: TheaterEvent
location: Münchner Kammerspiele
start date: 2019-06-14
end date: 2019-06-16
work featured: Pillow Talk

New Empathies Program Series
type: TheaterEvent
location: Radialsystem, Berlin
start date: 2019-08-29
end date: 2019-08-31
work featured: Pillow Talk

New Settings/Fondation d'Enterprise Hermés
type: TheaterEvent
location: Theatre Nanterre-Amandiers, Paris
start date: 2019-11-13
end date: 2019-11-16
work featured: Pillow Talk

NEXT Festival
type: TheaterEvent
location: Kortrijk
start date: 2019-11-29
end date: 2019-11-31
work featured: Pillow Talk

Winzavod Art Center
type: TheaterEvent
location: Moscow
start date: 2020-02-14
end date: 2020-02-28
work featured: Pillow Talk

STUK
type: TheaterEvent
location: Leuven
start date: 2020-03-19
end date: 2020-03-20
work featured: Pillow Talk

The Specta­cular Times
type: MediaObject
date created: 2013-12-04
author: Ward Goes
description: Originally initiated as a graduation project (cum laude) by Ward Goes, The Spectacular Times is an ongoing visual inquiry into the presentation of news. It investigates how news, rather than being subjective, is representational of its social, cultural, (geo)political and ideological contexts. The project sets out to lay bare these representations in currently circulating news. By layering and contrasting different news elements The Spectacular Times re-contextualises news and makes explicit the intangible notions that lie beyond an increasingly universal guise of news reporting. Not in an effort to tell apart true from false, left from right, or right from wrong, but in order to accentuate a variety of articulations of news. This web based project uses user defined variables to animate news headers, texts and images, which are directly sourced from different news websites world wide. By adjusting these parameters (among which region, scope and speed) the spectator actively perceives how news content is de- and reformed through its aesthetics.
image: ImageObject
  caption: The Spectacular Times
image: ImageObject
  caption: The Spectacular Times
contributor: Ruben van de Ven

Ward Goes
type: Person

Residency: Q21
type: VisualArtsEvent
start date: 2017-01
end date: 2017-02
location: frei_raum / Q21
attendee: Ruben van de Ven

Cqrrelations Worksession
type: Event
start date: 2015-01-18
end date: 2015-01-23
organizer: Constant
attendee: Ruben van de Ven

Constant
type: Organization

MA - Media Design and Communication
type: EducationalOccupationalCredential
credential category: Master of Arts
temporal coverage: 2014-2016
about: Choose How You Feel; You Have Seven Options
has credential: Ruben van de Ven

MA - Creative Design for Digital Cultures
type: EducationalOccupationalCredential
credential category: Master of Arts
temporal coverage: 2012-2013
has credential: Ruben van de Ven

The Open University
type: CollegeOrUniversity
address locality: London
educational credential awarded: MA - Creative Design for Digital Cultures

BA - Audio-visual Media
type: EducationalOccupationalCredential
credential category: Bachelor of Arts
temporal coverage: 2009-2013
has credential: Ruben van de Ven

Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht
address locality: Utrecht
educational credential awarded: BA - Audio-visual Media

Propaedeutic - Mechanical Engineering
type: EducationalOccupationalCredential
credential category: Propaedeutic degree
temporal coverage: 2007-2009
has credential: Ruben van de Ven

Twente University
address locality: Enschede
educational credential awarded: Propaedeutic - Mechanical Engineering