Philip Vermeulen

You Are Here is the result of extensive studies on colour and material, aiming to visualise the "dot" that appears in one's vision, at moments of engaging with Chasing The Dot. Premiering at Vermeulen's first large scale solo show, at Rijksmuseum Twenthe, the work holds a central position within the exhibition, inviting viewers to engage with its changing hues and dynamic presence. Focused on the fluidity of color transitions, You Are Here slowly pulsates light, shifting through a spectrum of colours while playing with perception and spatial presence in a pitch dark room.

Fanfanfan is a series of "hyper sculptures", 3D shapes rotating at very high speed. White light is projected on them, which interfere with the rotating materials. An astonishing colour spectrum emerges, accompanied by all kinds of fascinating stroboscopic phenomena.

More Moiré² is a kinetic panoramic installation that creates an immersive landscape of moiré patterns. A curtain of layered mesh material encircles the visitor. Two motors slowly rotate the sheets of mesh, and as the grid patterns interfere with each other, the viewer is drawn into the continuous movement of moiré patterns. Gradually, a still white void transforms into a shifting abstract landscape around the viewer. The installation explores the dissonance between the experience of incorporeal digitality and material corporeality. It compels our senses to reset and amplifies our awareness of our bodily existence. More Moiré² was jointly commissioned by Sonic Acts and W139 and supported by The Netherlands Film Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL, Re-Imagine Europe, and The University of Twente.

TLLLLLLLT is an instrument formed by TL armatures (fluorescent lights), a technology quickly becoming obsolete as it is replaced by LEDs. The soft percussive sound of these lights flickering as you turn them on is familiar to anyone past a certain generation. This installation plays with this acoustic property in a randomized composition, savouring the blinking “TLLLLLLLT” sounds of a mass of fluorescent lights.

A stick moves up and down which makes a canvas of gigantic dimensions flutter, like some sort of mating dance. It starts seductively slow. It floats, it waves. Gradually transforming into aggressive flapping, it almost rips itself apart. It flaunts, it gasps. The fabric creates stroboscopic, hypnotic patterns as the square structure pulls and releases the canvas from each corner. Chaotic fluttering contrasts good-tempered waving, while the material is constantly testing its movement capacity in a rhythmic choreography.

'Slue is elusive and beautiful, but sometimes frightening and scary because of the setting and the sound. It is a thin line between fascination and the fear that the rope will snap.' – Ingeborg van Lieshout, bright.nl Meaning word ‘Slue’: to turn or slide violently or uncontrollably. Slue is the pumped up sister of 10 Meters of Sound, where multiple elastic cables are stretched across a large space suspended above a row of lights, rotating at alternately accelerating and decelerating tempos, painting the air with “whooshing” sounds and streaks of coloured light over time. Slue is a study of chaotic patterns that arise in the interaction between whipping elastic, the frequencies of light and its effect on the perception of the viewer in combination with the architectural / landscape surroundings. The installation was made in collaboration with Mischa Daams and premiered at Into The Great Wide Open festival on Vlieland, where it stretched amongst trees in the woods.

‘[…] Four cords, each about 10 meters long, spin around and make patterns that are strongly reminiscent of waveforms. Certainly, if the pace is screwed up and patterns follow each other at a rapid pace, they are almost too much to comprehend. Accompanied by whip-like sounds, it is an impressive spectacle that enforces admiration, but which scares you as well, you might end up among those cords.’ – Maarten Buser in Metropolis M. 10 Meters Of Sound is an audio-visual kinetic composition for high-speed rotating elastic cables and the interference of their wave patterns. Two elastic cables attached to motors are stretched 10 meters across a room and rotate at different frequencies in a composition of waves and flickering moiré patterns, all the while making ‘whooshing’ sounds through the air. Moiré patterns appear when two similar patterns overlap each other and create a third pattern. 10 Meters Of Sound grew out of the Fan series of auto-destructive mobiles. The installation is now in the permanent collection of Rijksmuseum Twenthe.

‘Boem BOem a percussion instrument of monumental proportions that with its inhuman power makes your body tremble with fear.’ – Matteo Marangoni, Neural Magazine. The name Boem BOem came from the sound poem “Boem Paukeslag” by Paul van Ostaijen. This installation is a visceral acoustic instrument constructed from two heavy duty accelerated baseball machines that fire balls 15 meters through the air with relentless rhythms at a speed of 150 km/h, propelling them to strike two wooden resonating boxes. The force of this hit ricochets the balls back another 15 meters through the air to land inside resonating catchers, which feed the balls back into the system. Boem BOem shoots these streams of balls in different compositions, from funky rhythms composed by Vermeulen to less-defined algorithmic compositions by the machine itself. These violent yet playful compositions are fired audibly and visibly, each hit reflects and resonates the space around the bodies of the audience. This work was created as part of the Summer Sessions network with V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, with the generous support of the Creative Industries Fund NL. The Physical Rhythm Machine / Boem BOem won the ArtScience department award at the Royal Art Academy (KABK) and was even nominated for the ‘PiketKunstprijzen’ painting prize in 2017. Since then, Boem BOem has been shown in various contexts, from white cubes to media festivals like Ars Electronica and clubs including Berlin’s Berghain.

‘Boem BOem a percussion instrument of monumental proportions that with its inhuman power makes your body tremble with fear.’ – Matteo Marangoni, Neural Magazine.

More Moiré is a sensorial powerful audio-visual installation. In a meter-sized oval capsule, visitors enter a panoramic Ganzfeld, with no horizon or anchor, causing them to lose their sense of depth and experience intense disorientation as they undergo perceptual deprivation. Within this immersive, composed landscape of light, sound, and shifting moiré patterns, visitors’ senses are put to a test, and emotional responses are provoked. In an overwhelmingly cinematic experience, Philip Vermeulen explores the fundamentals of human perception in an investigation of the dissonance occurring in simultaneous experiences of incorporeal digitality and material corporeality. More Moiré forces a reset of the senses while fueling awareness of one’s material existence. It is like entering a microcosmos, where it is entirely possible to merge with the surroundings while the outside world slowly dissolves around one. More Moiré was jointly commissioned by Sonic Acts and W139 and supported by The Netherlands Film Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL, Re-Imagine Europe, and The University of Twente.