Unconventional Self – Werner Van der Zwan & Charl Linssen

Werner van der Zwan is a Dutch artist and filmmaker living and working in Rotterdam.
His artistic practice consists of creating experiences in which the basic relationship between subject and object or nature and technology are questioned. Werner’s goal is to give the other, non-human, non-living things a last breath expressing the object’s distinct character, bridging the inner worlds of things and humans. He does this by morphing things into actors, shaping them into personalities with windshield washer motors.

More: ververwant.nl/

Charl Linssen is a postgraduate student in computational neuroscience.
He is particularly interested in computer simulation of dynamical processes, which unfold over time. The brain is such a dynamical system, and is moreover involved in a continuous feedback with its environment, mediated by the body through perception and action. In his spare time, Charl uses electronics and robotics to build objects that exhibit a similar kind of responsiveness to their environment. These objects have a quality of “animatedness”, or being endowed with a spirit, in the sense that they are not just objects like any other, but come to life once the circuit is powered on.