YFCF: The Digital Documentary

New Media, New Genres, New Contents

New media are likely to instigate the development of new genres and new forms of art, exactly as the novel emerged from the invention of the printing press a couple of centuries earlier. Nowadays, due to the development of more refined tools for the simulation of the real world, not only in the digital domain but certainly in the audio-visual world, the distinction between reality and fiction gets blurred. This affects concepts like knowledge, truth, ... to a high extent. The earliest documentaries were recreated in the studio because of the lack of adequate equipment that allowed synchronized sound and vision recordings. Still, the genre of the dramatized documentary is popular on many tv channels. In the digital world, it is easy to misguide people by manipulating information.

The More Information Is Sent Around, The Less The Truth Becomes Controllable. (YFCF, 1994)

The Inventor

One of the Farmers' projects that is still in a conceptual phase, is a digital biography of an inventor. Piet Van Wijmeersch was born in Africa, raised in Europe, and currently lives somewhere in South America. During the last 2 years of his stay in Belgium, he invented different tools that bridge the analog and digital worlds. His inventions have a strange quality. Not only are they aesthetically expressive, they are also what Farmers call: mono-functional. They serve a specific purpose not met with outside Piet's world. These objects are the starting points, to reveal something of the essential creative character of Piet's aspirations in life.

MacHammer

Invention for transferring a Spanish dictionary into a non-compatible upgrade of his text processor. Piet used a turntable, a hammer, a computer mouse, and a lot of scotch tape to avoid doing the required 40,000 mouse clicks by hand. Fine adjustments to the mechanical system were possible during run-time. ( Here's a 1.216 K QuickTime movie).

Traffic Pianos

This piece of music is a reflection on a situation in which traffic became a disturbing element while concentrating. The amount of noise produced by cars, bicycles, and people is reproduced by computer-driven pianosounds. Of course the pianos were only substitutes for the production of anti-sound. ( Here's a 1.216 K QuickTime movie).

Solar Plant

Preparing for an agricultural project in Peru, where there is hardly electricity available, Piet built his own solar power station. It can drive his PowerBook, worldreceiver, and a set of bulbs for reading. After a sunny day it is possible to work for another 8 hours in obscurity. ( Here's a 1.936 K QuickTime movie).

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Young Farmers Claim Future

Herbert Van de Sompel & Guy c. Jules Van Belle