Photo by Anke-Madelaine JaeckelEach week we chat about the tools of the trade with one outstanding creative to find out exactly how they do what they do. The questions are always the same, the answers, not so much. This week: Johannes P OsterhoffThe Creators Project: Who are you and what do you do?
Johannes P Osterhoff: My name is Johannes P Osterhoff and I make Interface Art. This means I am interested in Human-Computer-Interaction from an artistic perspective. I also teach at art academies and I currently work as a research associate in the field of visual information retrieval. I live in Berlin.What hardware do you use?
This depends a lot on the project. For Home, Sweet Home—the real-life reconstruction of the home folder icon of Apple OS X—I used plenty of wood, real wallpaper to fake the Photoshop wallpaper texture, a drawer knob to fake the knob on the pixel frame and panel door, sanded perspex for the window, white cloth for the curtains, color and glaze. For Tell 2.0, the iPhone game during which players try to shoot iPhones off each others’ heads, I ordered iPhone 4 dummies from Hong Kong. For the mounting, I used skater helmets, some wood, glue and screws. I buy different balls depending on the event where I show it.Sometimes I award contracts to companies to produce my artworks. For the reconstructions of the User Account Control icons of Windows, for example, a company water-cut the aluminum shields, another printed the imagery on them. The prints made from interface elements, Aqua and Aero, were printed on perspex and Dibond. For the ad-busting Freedom from Porn at Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin, I used an inkjet printer and simple sticky tape.What software do you use?
This also depends on the project. For my current one-year performance Google, I use a common Wordpress setup, with some extra PHP scripts, a modified dictionary plugin and a browser extension to track my searches with Google. And, in a way, I am using its ranking algorithms to list my searches in the search results, which is also part of the performance. For the aforementioned Freedom From Porn, I used Google Image Search to find some nice porn pics. For the Aqua series, I used Photoshop and a lot of Command + Shift + F3 for the images, and for Aero, only the built-in screenshot tool from Vista.Defence at ABC GalleryIf money were no object, how would you change your current setup?
I guess, I would hardly change the setup. Most of my projects are effortless by means of material or production time, anyway… Okay, maybe I would rebuild the home folder icon in the size of a real house. Yeah, I guess I would do that :)Just in case a warm-hearted patron of the interface arts is reading this: if money really were no object, I would spend more time doing art in general. I doubt that I would give up my other jobs as a researcher or lecturer for some years, but who knows…What fantasy piece of technology would you like to see invented?
I would like to have a Black & Decker Hydrator as it was shown in Back to the Future, Part II. Since this film takes place in 2015, it is about time :)Is there any piece of technology that inspired you to take the path you did?
I think the most inspiring was the re-design of the interface and its buttons that took place when Windows was updated to the 95 version. It was the first time I remember that I had a look at the interface and was not looking through it to the information depicted. I had been using Windows 3.1 for some years, on my first computer. You have to know that the buttons of Windows 3.1 achieved the impression of being slightly rounded by a single white pixel in its corners. In Windows 95 these pixels suddenly got black and thus the slightly rounded appearance was lost. (Since Windows 95, the gray buttons have sharp corners—and these still persist in the alternative, reduced themes of XP, Vista and Windows 7.) Later, as a student, the web, with its possibility to send user-generated data with the submit button element, felt like a great opportunity. Supported by the optimism of the early web, I built a larger than life submit button for the first exhibition I was participating in.Now, some years later, I am not so much concerned with buttons any more, even though I will never get rid of this fetish… But I am still trying to look at interfaces themselves and not only at the information they show. Since common interfaces are made to reduce complexity and the amount and the variations of user interfaces in every-day life and pop culture is growing steadily, these simplifications are an inspiring context for me, and my works can deal with the other side of the interface, the issues that come with this trivialization. And sometimes to ask for the appearance or an equivalent in real space, like with the Submit Button, is a good start.What’s your favorite relic piece of technology from your childhood?
CorelDraw 3.0! I used it to make a Star Trek fanzine with a friend.
Johannes P Osterhoff: My name is Johannes P Osterhoff and I make Interface Art. This means I am interested in Human-Computer-Interaction from an artistic perspective. I also teach at art academies and I currently work as a research associate in the field of visual information retrieval. I live in Berlin.
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This depends a lot on the project. For Home, Sweet Home—the real-life reconstruction of the home folder icon of Apple OS X—I used plenty of wood, real wallpaper to fake the Photoshop wallpaper texture, a drawer knob to fake the knob on the pixel frame and panel door, sanded perspex for the window, white cloth for the curtains, color and glaze. For Tell 2.0, the iPhone game during which players try to shoot iPhones off each others’ heads, I ordered iPhone 4 dummies from Hong Kong. For the mounting, I used skater helmets, some wood, glue and screws. I buy different balls depending on the event where I show it.Sometimes I award contracts to companies to produce my artworks. For the reconstructions of the User Account Control icons of Windows, for example, a company water-cut the aluminum shields, another printed the imagery on them. The prints made from interface elements, Aqua and Aero, were printed on perspex and Dibond. For the ad-busting Freedom from Porn at Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin, I used an inkjet printer and simple sticky tape.What software do you use?
This also depends on the project. For my current one-year performance Google, I use a common Wordpress setup, with some extra PHP scripts, a modified dictionary plugin and a browser extension to track my searches with Google. And, in a way, I am using its ranking algorithms to list my searches in the search results, which is also part of the performance. For the aforementioned Freedom From Porn, I used Google Image Search to find some nice porn pics. For the Aqua series, I used Photoshop and a lot of Command + Shift + F3 for the images, and for Aero, only the built-in screenshot tool from Vista.
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I guess, I would hardly change the setup. Most of my projects are effortless by means of material or production time, anyway… Okay, maybe I would rebuild the home folder icon in the size of a real house. Yeah, I guess I would do that :)Just in case a warm-hearted patron of the interface arts is reading this: if money really were no object, I would spend more time doing art in general. I doubt that I would give up my other jobs as a researcher or lecturer for some years, but who knows…What fantasy piece of technology would you like to see invented?
I would like to have a Black & Decker Hydrator as it was shown in Back to the Future, Part II. Since this film takes place in 2015, it is about time :)Is there any piece of technology that inspired you to take the path you did?
I think the most inspiring was the re-design of the interface and its buttons that took place when Windows was updated to the 95 version. It was the first time I remember that I had a look at the interface and was not looking through it to the information depicted. I had been using Windows 3.1 for some years, on my first computer. You have to know that the buttons of Windows 3.1 achieved the impression of being slightly rounded by a single white pixel in its corners. In Windows 95 these pixels suddenly got black and thus the slightly rounded appearance was lost. (Since Windows 95, the gray buttons have sharp corners—and these still persist in the alternative, reduced themes of XP, Vista and Windows 7.) Later, as a student, the web, with its possibility to send user-generated data with the submit button element, felt like a great opportunity. Supported by the optimism of the early web, I built a larger than life submit button for the first exhibition I was participating in.Now, some years later, I am not so much concerned with buttons any more, even though I will never get rid of this fetish… But I am still trying to look at interfaces themselves and not only at the information they show. Since common interfaces are made to reduce complexity and the amount and the variations of user interfaces in every-day life and pop culture is growing steadily, these simplifications are an inspiring context for me, and my works can deal with the other side of the interface, the issues that come with this trivialization. And sometimes to ask for the appearance or an equivalent in real space, like with the Submit Button, is a good start.What’s your favorite relic piece of technology from your childhood?
CorelDraw 3.0! I used it to make a Star Trek fanzine with a friend.