um
hello
can you hear me
um hello um yeah thanks for coming to my
talk um
my name is uh
i'm normally based in the netherlands um
well i came here at this conference
without knowing the other conference
happening
in the netherlands hackers conference
happening in the netherlands but that's
funny but um anyway um i'm gonna present
my um my project um which um we started
like during the um right in the middle
of the pandemic um so
um so
i i normally work with their researchers
um from technical universities um mainly
in the field of supply chain and
logistics and um as an artist and
researcher um so um i'm gonna start my
uh presentation
um
so um the um
how it started basically sort of um a
friend of mine who worked for this small
municipality in japan i'm originally
from japan by the way um
um called minami saniku um
made contact with me so um this place is
um basically like known as a
disaster area uh from the
2011 tsunami so it's been like um more
than a decade uh since the um incident
however um the um yeah was still there
um suffering from some financial issues
and stuff like that and he basically um
run this new project out called the
chevron residence saniku so where he
invited um some um more or less more
experimental chefs from um abroad and so
that kind of they stayed in this region
trying to come up with
new recipes
by fusing their expertise and local
cuisine
and so there are the first edition was
successful and they're
running the second one with chefs from
taiwan um well
sadly um you know this got cancelled and
like everything else um
during the pandemic um so he made
contact with me basically asking me so
what should we
do with the budget
so um i actually
was in this place in 2019 summer before
the pandemic started and this was
in this one of the coffee places in the
middle of the mountain and
i was kind of expected to see um some
some sort of physical traces from the
disaster
um
but for some reason i really couldn't
see much of that much of it like um so
the in terms of like you know the
um
you know infrastructure and stuff like
that so it's everything it's been has
been already fixed really well um
so but um but what i could just what i
could see was more more or less i would
say like a financial like traces
um what i mean is that um you know you
see you go to this like a local
community center or like a library in
those places and those
buildings are
made just kind of too well for this kind
of uh
with sort of for this before place with
this kind of population so they have
like about 10 000 people there and then
they have this like
this library building that's made with
this huge wood and some really large
glasses and kind of stuff that's kind of
you can kind of see the cost of it like
without even just
you know thinking much about it and then
sort of this like sort of the financial
traces i mean they've kind of this kind
of reflects the magnitude of the
disaster in this region so basically the
sort of the amount of the number of
lives lost in this region sort of
is
reflected in this kind of way so
basically financially sort of trying to
compensate for the lives that they um
lost
so if you observe this region from above
um it's uh it's c-shaped um roughly and
it's this municipality is located in the
um
northeast of japan and facing the
pacific ocean towards the east and
what's special about this region is that
the
the they have all the
water catchment areas
within the municipality itself so it
means that sort of when um
water circulates from the forest
um to the sea and it goes back to this
forest again so basically sort of they
can sort of manage the entire ecosystem
um within their own region sort of um so
um and also like the other thing that's
and that i learned um
is that because of the what when when
tsunami hits basically sort of it
um it comes and then sort of it
goes back into the sort of
ocean again so that sort of the um
not only that it carries like all the
stuff from this place uh from from the
town and stuff but also all the
pollution in the um
ocean itself so they actually the ocean
got much
much cleaner that the yield rate of of
all the uh
aquaculture got much more improved and
stuff like that so it's some interesting
stuff that i learned about
so around this time like i started to
hear some um um some term like zoom
fatigue and
some some you know like people some
demand for like a new kind of virtual
physical space so um so and then uh one
of the attempts that's like don was the
um this london marathon that was held
virtually um which i participated in uh
personally myself as well and uh so um
basically what they did was to um
they made this app and so if you um you
have to pay for it but you get
registered and you download the app and
sort of on this day of the marathon you
basically have to um
sort of um
were either sort of run the walk um the
26.2 miles within uh
24 hours so um
the reason why i participated is that
you can basically sort of take as much
rest as you want um in the course of the
with the marathon so um so because the
finishing time is like nine hours and
five minutes
so um i would be i would normally like
in a normal marathon i wouldn't
participate because i'll be too ashamed
to be walking in front of people at all
times um so um basically yeah
so what it was technically was the
audio based augmented reality experience
so what it means is that um um so
basically sort of every mile you make
you get like announcements through the
um the app and that says oh oh
you just made a one mile or whatever you
know and then just they basically tell
you uh where you where you would be sort
of running
in london um the if you were physically
there um so of course like you're
running in your own town so in my case i
was running in rotterdam and uh you know
sort of kind of you as you see these
sort of scenes uh from the your own town
then you kind of hear this um
overlay a sound overlay of you know this
sort of the other city so it's kind of a
overlapped overlap there
um
this reminds me of uh
this uh science science fiction novel um
by
chyna muirville
who is
the um
he's his british person um
so basically this novel the called city
and city
where
two city-states
coexist and at the same time in the same
geographical area
um so this is basically where this is
where the novo is based in um
and so you know these protagonists like
they're sitting on the same bench in
in this sort of geographically same area
but they belong to different
states
so um city states is like more like
singapore or like hong kong and those
places so it's a city and the state at
the same time
and so you know they so you know how
they do that is that sort of by
basically education so um you all you
know when you're growing up you're told
kind of what to see and what not to see
um from the um you know so basically you
can only see
some stuff from um your own region and
not from the other country and so um
that's how they sort of divide
so if you look at the um on the map like
where i was located and where i got
approached so um i i was approached by
minami saniku this is like the small
municipality in japan and then i was
where i was uh was in rotterdam and the
closest
coastal city is called the hague
um
and so basically we came up with this
idea of
somehow cutting off this
in-between area which includes the
entire american
continent
and
to to
to mush it together so that um it can
kind of form um
a region a new kind of uh a virtual
region where yours um where two
municipalities are separated
by the common channel
so like remarkably um the each
municipality um happened to have nearly
um exactly the same land area some sonic
had this you know 160 3.4 uh square
kilometers and then the the hey cam well
i had to actually sort of adjust a
little bit to kind of make it really um
needed the same um but yeah so basically
um
then this you can make a sort of into um
where you go um what we call it i mean
that sonic you had special art
experiment zone so
we basically kind of built it on top of
the um special economic zone so it's
kind of a mock of this um
essay essay sees that
so run this time i also learned quite a
strange
concept
from this friend of mine
it's called online lodging
so um
so you can just first read it um
what if um what the experience was like
a virtual stay online trip is definitely
worth experiences this person called
kurikurikun and stayed and in 2020 um
23rd of may
all things i loved about staying at
fujiyama bnb master the friendly host
the conversations with others in the
common living space the local kyoto info
you can now experience all from your
home anywhere in the world
with a sense of adventure but not that
much hope that it would be that
enjoyable i enjoyed one of the fujima b
b's virtual states but it turned out to
be a lot of fun online means it's
actually easy to strike up a
conversation with others and with screen
sharing you can share photos and your
online presence really easy enabling
comment connections to be made quickly
can't wait to actually stay there again
but i'm hoping that messer continues
with the virtual stage a great way to
experience kyoto in your living room
um so um this person could
even like
rates and value and rooms and service
everything and basically five stars so
um so um what they did actually um
was that the um
zoom conference
that sort of simulated um
the
common living space of like a hostel so
you imagine like if you're either
staying in a hostel and in kyoto and you
may be
well in the evening or so um maybe
sitting in this like a common living
space or something then you might get to
talk to um some of your fellow travelers
and sort of you know basically you know
like where did you go and oh how was
that and stuff like that you have this
kind of conversations and
so basically sort of they simulated this
conversational part only
online um
to kind of simulate this experience
they also i heard that they also showed
your bed and stuff like that through
this camera
webcam um but you know like it's just
like well okay so this is the bed i
would where or would we sleep in but you
know that's about it
so if you think about the um what the
essence of travel
this person
this photographer person called michio
hoshino
he was based in alaska for a very long
time he studied in alaska and he
also refused he wrote a lot many essays
as well and in this one of these his
essays he says that
in order for a person to travel and make
the landscape of a new land there are
they need to have someone else intervene
no matter how many countries we visit or
many times how many times we
circumnavigate the globe we will never
be able to feel the vastness of the
world on its own however when we meet
someone and fall in love with that
person the landscape becomes broader and
deeper for the first time
so um
[Music]
well what do you what he means is that
well in my interpretation um so
basically sort of when you visit
somewhere um you need to know somebody
uh from this place so that like you um
see this uh city that you visit for the
first time through this person through
the as a sort of lens and
so you kind of never become a tourist
really so um that's basically how i
understand
and he also says that um something
interesting about like uh
going to a barber shop so and this is my
own theory but if you want to smell the
local people when you're traveling go to
a barber shop i can't really explain why
but when i sit in the bible's chair with
the townspeople getting my hair cut and
shaved i somehow feel feel like i'm
local
the renowned travel writer person called
pico aya who spends most of his time
between japan and the u.s um he says
something about um kyoto as well um so
basically um he says that the um the
other thing i'd recommend is just to go
to mcdonald's outlet even in kyoto
you'll find
viewing burgers on the menu in september
and the owner of the traditional harvest
moon you encounter chicken tattoo
burgers and bacon potato pies and iced
tea made of our gray
and among customers who are usually
drilling and re-dressed and beautifully
mannered you see that even mcdonald's
become somewhere as
japanese as a traditional inn
so all these things um
points towards two things
um
to really travel somewhere um you need
to know um
somebody
from the place
and also like some like we're going
going having a haircut and there's like
a little bony body acts will help
experience enhancing this experience
um so we did this open call um for some
creators and artists to make uh
online lodging experiences um so this
project was funded by the um the embassy
of the netherlands um
so like this is like your the cards that
i made um i was the coordinator um i
called myself coordinator and then
approaching people um basically with
this card and so with this logo um from
the the embassy i look like some sort of
uh
diplomat person from this newly set up
territory so that was like that was also
kind of one of my aims
to make it look make myself look a bit
more official
so um i
uh well i looked uh i went to many
graduation shows um in the not within
the netherlands and i met two
interesting young artists um one of them
was idea derek's
she's originally from aruba which is
a part of the kingdom of the netherlands
it's actually located in south america
next to venezuela um it's a very small
country um
what she made was this um um
you know like those the uh photo
stand-ins uh which you find um in uh in
a sort of tourist spot so basically um
there's a photo some normally like a
photograph or some illustration then
there's like um
whole
cutouts and you can sort of fit your
face into that and get you get a
photograph taken so um what she was
doing was that kind of inverted version
of that so basically there's like a
green screen and then with a hole in it
and then you put your face in and then
you get a photograph taken then you
actually then walk to this
space next to it then um then you find
this like artificial beach and then sort
of you look around oh okay i arrived at
this beach um and you just
find that find that find out that
actually um your face is embedded right
in the middle of the sun so it's like a
um in a tourist
place normally okay you're expecting to
see um something more exotic and you
know
foreign
for yourself but you actually find the
most one of the most familiar things um
that is your face your own face
so the other artist i um found very
interesting is that
this person called the peter cly
he um
he lived by the side
on the coast of the and the hague and
this uh coastal city in the netherlands
and he um
since he lived there so he was actually
accumulating a lot of video footages um
on the coast and he basically sort of
made sort of video
collage
let me take a show
so what it mainly did was kind of
matching um the speed of the clouds and
the speed of the waves and so this well
in terms of the medium itself so it's i
would say it's quite traditional sort of
the um the
you know basically video and the
projection base but however the somehow
this combination of
this this piece
those clouds and waves
match together made some sort of a quite
surreal experience
oh sorry
so um
how we approach this um
this um residence program so um
i thought that he
it would be good to actually to um
right on top of like what he already
created so uh for his graduation show so
he
we suggested to make
take some footage from this region
called minami saniku so
we found this person who
has some filming experience on the phone
and
we did this virtual
film direction
so
we took advantage of the high
iphone penetration rate in japan so
everyone has an iphone in japan even if
they're based in a very remote village
or something like that so
in when we filmed in last year um was it
last year or the year before um
there was like the newest device was
iphone 12 mini and we
well he had that as well and the iphone
12 mini and uh and so what we did was
basically sort of
we already we asked the artist to look
through the
area on google street view and
trying to find some interesting spots so
basically on this day of the filming we
um drove to this actual place and sort
of we put up put the zoom up and sort of
we did this like um a bit of showing and
so we decided to sort of angle and
everything and you know did the final
filming and checking
so this is one of the footages um that's
uh produced like it's a place called a
cape kamivarisaki
um
this is uh the other footage that's been
produced um
the it's called the arashima island so
it's like a very small island that you
can which you can walk to from the main
island
we also did this uh virtual sketch what
we call um so um there's the quite a
famous uh pasture pressured pigs farm in
this region so we um asked the same
person to take a photograph of some of
the pigs instead of the the others on
this idea
she paints stuff so you know she
actually sort of made some paintings um
based on those pics
um she also went to um the one of the
most famous tourist spots in the the
netherlands called the southeast hans
and he she did she put this uh 360
videos um
films
um
so um so this this was like my idea but
um
i wanted to um something this thing um
um called the kovid18 antigen test kit
was um introduced into our lives um this
you know box that you can kind of order
online and then it comes with cotton
swabs and you know qr codes and
those things just you know slowly got
introduced to our lives and um
so we basically sort of what i wanted to
do is to somehow um
you know if there's a lot like kind of
hole
in our reality that's been made then why
not like
trying to sort of um play with that
rather
so i did also the idea of the connecting
somehow to this uh google this to a
google cardboard which is which was
discontinued in
march
uh last year and so um
well discontinued meaning means that
there's a lot more um the um designs
available um so like you're kind of a
you know like a try i'm basically trying
to find um
um
this sort of design that actually fits
nearly
that's nearly identical to
a um
test kit basically
so um this is the
resulting
package
that's
placed right next to this um
the kobe 19 engine test kit um
what it is is actually was the and the
so it was like actually google cardboard
basically so you know basically it
nearly looks identical and then you
buy this thing instead of a well
normally like in the call with trouble
protocol you buy this travel kit and you
get this thing delivered to your house
and you get tested and you have to have
there's a negative result then you go on
to the travel but in our
package
you buy this thing and it gets posted to
you
and then you open it and you assemble
the hazard and you go directly into the
turbo so that's how you basically you
know
skip this like this process
so this is the um the demo of
the
one of the apps
yeah you start from the sauna because
there's a
quite a big
sauna boom in japan right now so just
like you
only want to ride on top of that
so it's like a sort of the um it's
basically um the some of the image
which is from the netherlands and japan
combined in
um
in in one scene so that's basically
what it was
you can navigate through this
bottoms
oh
[Music]
normally there's this main main mainland
you can see from this view but you see
this actually the netherlands from
um
this island so yes
[Music]
it's like two statues combined in one
thing sorry one the one on the right is
a statue from japan and the other one
is actually the study from the
netherlands
so combining one
scene
then you hit this um last spot
which is the uh the cape camille setting
he said where we did this virtual film
direction
so where you see actually is the the
it's not the actual um the sun from
japan where actually the sunrise um from
the netherlands that appeared
in between
this
okay
[Music]
so um this is the other app that we made
um so um
we um we wanted to uh also like um
made an extension of the the the
artist's work that
that's produced for the graduation show
so um
so
we basically sort of virtualize the
photo standing experience
and
we bring to this
360 degrees video
so if you first open the app
and then you
fit your face in um like you did with no
with normally with the um
photo sounding but it's like a green
screen
that's exactly what the artist did for
the graduation show
and then go into the scene and
this is soundses cars the one of the
most famous tourist spots in the
netherlands
and you see this the
pigs walking around
and if you look closely and you find
your face embedded right in the middle
of the
of the pig
um so the um so this is how well how i
designed the headset so it was a
already found this existing the pattern
um
and this was like from a canadian
university i think um so it basically
sort of took me more
um time to find the light supplier and
the right design uh for this
experience um than
actually sort of for designing um
so this is a team that
we worked with so um we're like spread
it like all over the world so um two
developers were in athens in greece and
the um
and the other
greek guy was based in sweden um
and
and a friend of mine who's doing phd in
japan he's dutch guy um he was in japan
so we worked together
like this
um so yeah and this is the uh basically
all the
people that supported um my project and
um uh there are the founders um the
embassy and the municipality and then
some
the
uh
yeah the
thunder called the eu japan fest um
yeah thanks thanks very much uh for the
talk
if you have any questions come over here
to this microphone to ask them please
i actually have the package here
actually
is the software available on
android um
can you say again
uh are the apps available on android oh
yeah both ios and android
are they they're in the play store
yeah oh awesome thank you
um so yeah um can you maybe put the
light up maybe
yeah thank you yeah so this is the
actual um the the
turbo package
so um well hopefully it looks identical
to the um
kobe 19 antigen test kit so where in
fact it's a
foldable headset
and you assemble um
like this
oops
yeah and then it becomes a headset
then um you basically there's a qr code
here
which you can scan and then serve you
basically
yeah you then
put your phone into it and then
and
yeah start dropping
is any other questions
thanks
uh thanks for the talk uh would you
consider extending this project to any
other pair of cities i know that this
pair was particularly you know
important for your situation but i could
see this being really cool for other
places too
yeah like actually i got like asked by
many people like if you if i'm
interested to actually make into like a
more um
um
we said like a kind of series let me get
into a series series or something but
for me personally i'm
not super interested to actually sort of
you know like
it
it just happened to be in this way for
me like you know like a sort of um and
that's why like how it's interesting
sort of you know because it's like based
on um contingency and stuff um yeah if i
once decided to make it into a series
then what's um i don't find this medium
interesting anymore i don't find i don't
know just like the older app development
process
everything
i just i i
would lose my interest in working on
that so i guess
yeah thanks
thank you yeah thanks
right
you