Internship Report

index

5 min read

Introduction

This report goes quite deep into technical details of each project, serving as documentation and reflection of my time at Studio Pointer, while at the same time being a knowledge database where I, and Asya and Jakob (from Studio Pointer), can look back at the technical things I did. If in two years time I ask myself “how did I generate that JSON output again?” I can probably find it back in here.

I spend my internship time in a living room, Studio Pointer is a small design and programming studio in The Hague at Asya and Jakob’s home. The front part of their living room contains a big desk and a lots of computers and cables. (see picture below), while the back half contains a couch, a dining table. There’s a kitchen connecting to a hallway.

Together with Roxana and Bálint we made a podcast episode about our experiences at the internship, below is an excerpt where I talk about general vibe of the studio.

I think what I learned the most in my internship is to experiment in making my own tools, and that in making those, and, while being in the right environment (such as Studio Pointer, where they can also geek out about self-programmed tools) interesting ideas automatically come out of that. This way of working is something I didn't have much room for in the general Graphic Design studies, because the overall assignments are shorter and the

That’s also something I noticed in the projects that Studio Pointer does. Most of them are in collaboration with other people (e.g. journalists, visual artists), who might have a more concrete idea on visual style, or a specific use-case. And it’s up to us to make the tools. It was very reassuring to be in an environment where you work together, and can compensate each other in strengths and weaknesses. It’s a very different experience compared to the solo projects I’m doing at ArtEZ.

The following excerpt is a description of my projects and workload.

In the first part of my internship I was mainly concerned with working on the bigger project for the VPRO. It was a unique challenge diving into a large project with lots of code and files that already where connected and structured. And seeing where my additions could be added in to, writing code that’s easy to understand, while also understanding Jakob and Asya’s code.

Afterwards I started diving into making my own tools, I experimented with depth cameras, facial detection, MIDI, OSC, Programming languages to make music, new audio editors for the rotoscope podcast. I dabbled into thinking about my final project. And had lots of talks brainstorming about that.

I didn’t generate much visual output with these tools, but it is something I can utilise later. Jakob and Asya were very encouraging of me making new tools, even though they didn’t need them right now. Because they could potentially be very useful for them in the future.

I also realised that many of the technologies that I worked with are interconnected. The protocol that I’m using to send image data from a depth camera to TouchDesigner. Is the same as the protocol that TidalCycles (a programming language to make music and beats) uses to define which sounds it plays. So potentially I could hook these up together, and generate music based on spacial positioning of objects or people.

The majority of my little tools and scripts work in this way. They serve as a starting point for more artistic and unique connections between different mediums and technologies. And that’s something I can see myself diving into in the years to come.

The last exempt of the podcast is about what my main takeaway is of my internship, and what I can take away from this whole experience.

The image below was my desk on the head of the table. Asya works on the left of me on her macbook and iMac, and Jakob to the right with a Linux computer and an external display, below the desk is a dekstop pc used for rendering and the closed laptop you see all the way on the left is used as a server for synchronizing our code and running a small local Large-Language-Model (like chat gpt but totally offline).

This is Monkey the dog, the 3rd member of Studio Pointer. I can say that during my months at the studio I’ve become much more of a dog person.

Asya and Jakobs place was full of little trinkets, old furniture and cutlery from Jakobs grandma, and drawings, inside jokes, smileys on the pots and dinosaurs in the plants, all of which made me feel quite at home!

projects

Finished Projects that actually have nice looking end results

Experiments

misc:

references in JS

object is a reference if it’s a string or float it’s a copy arrow notation ^ put arrow notation below this the new keyword

Graph View