Images of everyday life that broach wonderful themes

In the large movement everyday life gets subtitled. The audience sits in a small movie theater and see the outside world as if it were a film. Random passersby play the tragic lead role. The world stops and the lonely individuals engage in a jointed choreography.

A theatre-concept by Dries Verhoeven for Theater Festival Boulevard 2006. In 2009 the show was recreated with new software on new locations.

Sylvain created the software which included the simultaneous recording an playback of the outside world and choreographing unknowing passerby by manipulating the live-images from the world outside the theater.

De vogels houden u in de gaten

For the Terschelling Oerol-festival Judith Hofland created an audiotour on location about watching and being watched. The visitors were individually guided through the town, woods and dunes of West-Terschelling wearing white headphones.

They got told a story by a little girl about her grandfather, giving directions and assignments along the way. But during the tour one starts to wonder how much is true of the stories told and how real the little girl actually is.

The tour ends in a former communications-building on top of the dune where the visitors are confronted with security footage of themselves shot the village and woods.

Sylvain created the software that collected the footage from the network-cameras in the village and the trees and the interface to select these images and send them to the building up on the dunes. The visitors are then confronted with multiple screens and prints with footage of themselves while walking the tour.

Article from the Leeuwarder courant about Oerol and Spotters

Met de koptelefoon door West-Terschelling

TERSCHELLING – Tientallen Oerolgangers lopen met witte koptelefoons door de straten en steegjes van West-Terschelling. Zij doen mee aan ‘Spotters', een interactieve, avontuurlijke wandeling van de jonge theatermaakster Judith Hofland.

‘Theater' kan je dit niet meer noemen – er is geen acteur, geen podium of decor. In het vlotte, onderhoudende, goed getimede ‘Spotters' krijgen Oerolgangers een grote, witte koptelefoon op het hoofd, en een mp3- speler in de hand, gedrukt. Daarmee gaan ze op pad. Geïsoleerd van hun omgeving lopen de deelnemers door West-Terschelling, onderweg allerlei opdrachten uitvoerend.

,,Ga café Lieman binnen en zeg tegen de barman dat ‘de vogels hem in de gaten houden', draagt de mp3-stem je op. Dat doe je dan, eigenlijk niet precies wetend waarom.

Dat ‘Spotters' geen leeg vermaak is, blijkt op het einde. Het zou zonde zijn om de clou te verklappen, maar die is zeer maatschappijkritisch van aard en zorgt ervoor dat deelnemers nooit meer onbevangen door West-Terschelling zullen lopen.

‘Spotters', dagelijks in West-Terschelling

Article from the Volkskrant about Oerol and Spotters

An item on vk.tv The first part is about Spotters, including an interview with Judith Hofland, our director.

More to follow?

The last weeks a have been working on the Spotters-project by Judith Hofland for the Oerol-festival on the beautiful island of Terschelling.

Spotters is an audio-tour through the village, woods and dunes of Terschelling-West about watching and being watched. I am working on the software connecting the network-camera's confronting the visitors with themselves in video and print.

Besides of being robbed of 50 (of the 400) metres of cable running through the forest and the small obstacles that come with being on a small island all is coming along nicely.

The software is as good as being done, the try-out today went well and everyone is in a good mood. Arnoud is upstairs finishing the sound-edit and i am planning the last changes to the setup tomorrow. The people who were patient enough to hang around for the delayed start (not our fault) of the try-out were enthousiastic and most of them got the underlying story lines and the theme. The were both surprised and intimidated by the confrontation with themselves. And almost no-one got lost this time. The software works (almost) perfectly and the 400 metres of network- and powercables are still holding up strong.

This afternoon i even had the time to go on the 50 minute tour myself. Strangely enough i hadn't heared it in weeks, in which a lot of changes were made to the story. But all for the better i found out. The story has some really nice subtle lines and sound effects. It got me questioning the reality of it all and my trust in the little girl i was hearing. It even gave me some nice insights for my graduation (which happens to be centered around the same theme).

It might be a bit too late, but if you happen to find yourself at the Oerol-festival, go see (or is that hear and experience) Spotters!