Nou&Herkauw

Terra Nova at Cinekid 2019

Last October 2019 was an exciting month for Nou&Herkauw. Our new workshop and building game Terra Nova took place from 18 to 25 October at the Cinekid Festival in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Alkmaar. It was the very first time that we conducted the workshop and for a part on the three different locations simultaneously. What makes Terra Nova so special is that the three physical locations are connected to each other in the digital fantasy universe of Terra Nova. It was a huge technical, logistical, but also substantive challenge and it was incredibly exciting to see how the different locations discovered each other during the workshop. All and all it resulted in successful first Terra Nova session and a good starting point for the further development of the project. Terra Nova could not have been made without the support and confidence of the Creative Industries Fund NL, the production support and advice from the Cinekid Festival.

Mutant Me @ De NachtFabriek

We are a happy that Mutant Me is part of De NachtFabriek cultural night in Veenendaal. Feel free to create crazy distorted photo compositions with you and your friends. When ready, we print it out for you to hang on your fridge door. See you on Saturday!

News! MyMetropolis and Mutant Me VR

Online we have not been very busy last year, keeping our website updated. But offline we keep on developing new works and hosting our installations and workshops. In this post we would like to update you with the most recent developments from the Nou&Herkauw Studio.

New versions of MyMetropolis
MyMetropolis is a combination of a workshop and a open world building-game that starts in the real physical world with the crafting of an object like a house or car. After that the model will be scanned by a 3D scanner and appears in the game. From that moment the creation of your own fantasy world can begin with placing, modifying and arranging your virtual scale models. MyMetropolis is in a continuous state of development. The cool thing about the game is that the concept is so open that it gives a lot of space for a kinds of experiments, variations and modifications.
During Cinekid Festival in 2017 in Amsterdam we worked with river clay as building material and added a 3D paint tool to paint the 3D scanned clay models before they were added to the game. This resulted in organic and colourful models that contributed to an even more colourful fantasy world.

MyMetropolis Waterworld, October 2018
Nou&Herkauw was asked to develop a workshop in the Culturele Ambassade Groningen, a floating temporary paviljoen in the canals of the city of Leeuwarden as part of the Leeuwarden Cultural Capital 2018. Because the themes were water and hydrogen we created a special version of MyMetropolis named Waterworld. This time the players had their own islands where they could create their fantasy world. But we added a challenge, by building bridges to the other islands the players could connect each others worlds. To make it more challenging we added a boat somewhere on an extra island. As soon as you find the boat you can use it to travel to even more remote islands. The boat was powered by a real life hydrogen battery that is charged by solar sells.

We have recently started playing around with post-processing and color correction effects to enhance the experience of the game. The screenshots give a good impression of the new look and feel. This is still under development.

Mutant Me VR, October 2018
During Cinekid Festival in Amsterdam we presented a new installation inspired on our very popular installation Mutant Me. A full body 3D scanner that scans the participant and adds the 3D avatar version of you to a virtual white cube. With a simple sculpting tool you mutate yourself and others even more to abstract sculptures that are weightlessly floating through the white space. The installation is still in an experimental state and we are working hard to make the experience even better. To be continued!

MutantMe in Shanghai

From the beginning of June, MutantMe has been on the Shanghai MediaLab Artmooi for 3 months. Shanghai’s first Media Lab ever was founded by close cooperation between the Cinekid Festival and the Shanghai Ruihe Esthetic Education Investment Co. A Chinese organisation that strives to make high-quality media art accessible to Chinese children. We are honored to be part of the program!