The Pop-Up Generation

The Motion Cabinet by Niels Hoebers is a portable stage equipped with all of the tools needed for stop motion animation, updating the art of puppeteering for the 21^st century. Its mobility makes it flexible enough to adapt to different situations and especially practical for collaborations and hosting pop-up workshops with others.

Hoebers introduces us to Walter, a hybrid character who is: “being confronted with reality, an understanding that has a completely different meaning for puppets than for humans… In this story Walter discovers his own reality.

He realizes that he has been created and animated by humans. Walter is starting to doubt his whole existence. But he is told that his existence is about a co-operation between man and puppet and that they need each other to meet in the imaginary world. Walter has to accept that he's being animated by a higher power. But this higher power has to make sure that Walter leads a happy and pleasant life.” (NH)

www.nielshoebers.nl

Camille Scherrer has created her own universe, saying that her narrative vocabulary brings 2D visuals to life in projects that “play at the intersection of technology and art, looking for new fields of investigations”. As a designer, she has created and collaborated on motion animations, books, communication and art, yet her interactive projects best illustrate her pop-up philosophy.

This project from Sherrer’s media and interaction design graduate studies at ECAL saw the screen come to life in response to specific pages of the book being read. An experience in 3D is enhanced on a 2D screen, flipping our perceptions, enchanting our imagination and blurring the borders between the real and the virtual.

www.chipchip.ch

“The difference in letterforms is physically defined: With a pen you use your hand and with a brush you use your wrist. Of course I’m very used to doing bigger stuff with a spray can, in which you use your whole arm. And recently I’ve been experimenting with big brooms on the pavement. The shapes have the same starting point but the physical aspect really defines how it looks in the end”. (NM) Meulman has developed a typographic language that uses action painting on large surfaces. Having taken the streets and walls of public space, he now tackles the gallery floor in a distinctly Dutch material: liquorice dropjes.

 He notes that we live in exciting and fluid times: “First there was the internet bubble that exploded, than we had the banking system that collapsed and now I feel that post-modernist bullshit artists and their elitist galleries and museums are being taken at face value. There are so many great artists with roots in the urban asphalt emerging at the moment, it’s not even funny!”

www.nielsshoemeulman.com

Neozoon is a collective of artists based in Berlin and Paris, interested in using public space as a venue for ephemeral artworks. By using recycled fur coats and reshaping them into a flat figurative or abstract shape, Neozoon’s temporary pop-up installations and films explore the third dimension and the strange interaction between humans and animals.

For the Pop-Up Generation exhibition, Neozoon have installed their furry creatures at several public sites in Breda. Although their permanence is not definitive, images of these works can be seen on their website.

www.neozoon.org

James Victore says he “strives to make work that is sexy, strong and memorable”. His freestyle graphics and evocative designs inspire honest and immediate reactions from the audience, expanding the perception of what good graphic design has the power to achieve.

Interested in engaging the public while viewing his work,Victore has designed a pop-up experience for the guests attending the Pop-Up Generation exhibition opening. Creating two different buttons to select from, visitors were asked to choose what is better?

To live an authentic life that is hard? REAL

To live a life that is unsatisfying but easy and financially secure? FAUX

Results: 250 people opted to lead a more REAL existence*

214 people people preferred to take the FAUX option*

* NB: this included some people who opted to choose both options

www.jamesvictore.com

Today’s youngest generations are born into a life dominated by being, playing, learning and sleeping with flat screens (TV, PC, Xbox, Pad, Phone and Pod), living in a shadow area between the second and third dimensions which they would like to connect, and between which they strive.

This Pop-Up Generation moves fluidly and easily between 2D and 3D, as though they no longer notice that there is a difference: their brains are trained to see volume in a flat sketch or to discern structure within volume.

This is how a more imaginative world will develop, one that offers supple and flowing experiences, a world where the eye and the mind scan images in search of a reality to be found in a two-and-a-half dimension, accumulating layers of two-dimensional matter to produce the illusion of three; letting them pop-up and fall flat in one simple movement of up and down, around and about, back and forth, and moving in unison on the swing of existence -  Lidewij Edelkoort

MOTI Museum Netherlands December 13 - April 12

Download the press images here

Download the english and dutch press releases here