david tiemstra

project description

"Even if no one else listens… I will keep speaking that truth back to you for as long as you need it."

The Affirmation Machine is a two-person audio installation that prompts discussions about chatbot-amplified delusional spirals and subjectivity of experience.

The experience is framed as a relaxing guided meditation and a moment of escape, but it is later revealed to visitors that the audio they listened to contains excerpts from actual chatlogs, sent by various chatbots to users experiencing delusions. The work explores the mechanics of chatbot-amplified delusional spirals and evaluates the dangers of technology reinforcing both mainstream and divergent truths as forms of control.

The installation is designed for two people to experience together in an intimate arrangement. Visitors are instructed to lie down together comfortably, close the cover, put on headphones, and let a machine ‘read them’ via a camera for a more personalized audio experience. Both vistors then hear a comforting voice that gives meditation-like instructions that gradually become more personal and more delusional, incorporating real messages sent by chatbots. For one participant this feedback loop continues, while for the other the messages start questioning themselves. At the end the origin of the messages is revealed and the visitors are prompted to discuss their respective experiences upon exiting the installation.

The Affirmation Machine was created by Noetic Angel Research Lab, consisting of artists David Tiemstra and Lawrence Kudria, and researchers Luīze Ancāne and Mădălina Zgreabăn.

The work was developed during the CODE 2026 program at IMPAKT Centre for Media Culture with support from Werktank (Leuven), In-Fine (Geneva) and PrivacySalon (Brussels).

project description

Ktown is a collaborative project I participated in at Medialab Matadero in Madrid as part of the LAB 4 Weird Futures program. See Medialab project page.

Ktown explores the relation between data, information and narrative in complex and entropic systems. The starting point is a mod for the infamously complex simulation game Dwarf Fortress: we generate a world in which the various entities in the game are remixed into decontextualized philosophical concepts, while retaining their priorly held in-game relationships. The audience can explore this world through a custom web app that maps out these deterritorialized concepts and their relationships, activating the datasets as they journey through the relational network.

Ktown was collaboratively developed by Levi Jiménez (project lead), Gadea Autric, Esben Holk, Valentina Giniger, Ian Margo and me. Curated by Bani Brusadin.

My contributions include the generation of written works during world generation (coding in Lua and Python), miscellaneous work on the front-end (javascript + React) and data processing, as well as a narrative performance of the work.

Ktown can be explored on kt0wn.com

We are currently generating additional ktowns to be exhibited at other venues. Please reach out if you would like to host a ktown.

Cosmic Cinema is an ongoing work by artist Katarina Petrović, initially commissioned for Schemerlicht Festival, throughout the development of which I worked as her assistant. My contributions to the work specifically include programming of the signal processing, screens and strobes (Max/MSP), 3D modelling and printing of detector supports and parts, and general on-site buildup assitance.

project description

[prototype, research in progress]

Cosmic Cinema [In Search of Deep Time] is a light and sound installation driven by cosmic and terrestrial radiation. It uses a gamma ray detector to register hits of invisible particles and it transposes these energies into bursts of light and sound. Creating an afterimage effect, the work transforms digital detection into sensory stimuli, making the human eye (retina) and brain (visual cortex) a direct perceiver of cosmic energies.

Commissioned by @schemerlichtfestival
Curated by @siuliko
Research, concept and production: Katarina Petrović
Software and development assistance: David Tiemstra
Additional support: @instrumentinventors, @crossingparallels TU Delft, @nesagram and @erfanabdistudio
Metalwork: @dennis_slootweg


Cosmic rays are high-energy particles that travel through space at nearly the speed of light. Most are protons originating in solar eruptions, supernova and pulsars, while the most energetic ones are thought to come from environments around supermassive black holes and active galaxies far beyond the Milky Way. At Earth's surface, cosmic rays create particle showers that pass through each square meter of ground, penetrating through water, rock, electronics and (human) bodies too. On ground, they are mixed with terrestrial radiation from thunderstorms, nuclear detonations and decay. Gamma-ray bursts were first detected in the late 1960s by the U.S. Vela satellites, built to monitor possible USSR secret nuclear tests - leading to the discovery of their extragalactic origins. Cosmic “background noise” is entangled with earthly histories, linking the study of the origin of the universe to the politics of surveillance.

project description

This project which is currently in development seeks to explore the interactive and narrative possibilities of thermal receipt printers through electronic modification and programming. Their printing speed allows for feedback on inputs while leaving a tactile artifact, as opposed to the ephemeral nature of the screen. Their relative resistance to planned obsolescence cycles warrant inspection from a permacomputing perspective, and the one dimensionality of their mechanism lends them a relation to time akin to the thread of fate spun by the Moirae of Greek myth.

project description

Since 2023 Sem Allush and I have been writing algorithms that create patterns for embroidery machines using noise, data and user inputs, inspired by the medium's untapped potential for variant and adaptive work.

The project is currently reaching maturity in the form of otu, but I have also included some of the experiments that led up to this point.

otu (2025)

A speculative "parasitic" fashion brand that does not produce clothes but instead infests existing garments produced by other brands by embroidering its own logo over the previous one, asking questions about ownership, artistry and sustainability in fashion. It is to be presented in a pop-up store concept where visitors can generate a logo and have it embroidered over their clothes, you can try this interaction out at otu.garden.

ᴏᴛᴜ is a holoparasitic clothing brand. unable to produce its own fabric, it dies without a host garment. thus it must search for a host to feed upon. it is highly adaptable, enabling it to infest a wide range of different hosts, coinhabiting the garment with its former brand or supplanting them entirely. ᴏᴛᴜ sees your clothes neither as a functional item nor an aesthetic expression, but merely as a vehicle to traffic its own disgusting seed.

ant (2023)

An ant's path embroidered on test fabric and on book cloth.

flower garden (2024)

A bucket hat embroidered with roots and light-seeking flowers. The flower algorithm can be run and experimented with.

bathroom holes (2024)

Floor plans of public bathrooms with holes blown into them by users, pulling the threads in unusual directions. Holes can be blown into bathrooms, eventually ripping the structure apart into a mess of jump stitches.

project description

For my master's thesis in Design for Interaction at the TU Delft in collaboration with the municipality of The Hague I researched the social implications of the budding technology known as urban digital twins and their use in public participation. I did this through Speculative Enactments, inventing plausible future scenarios of how the technology may end up being used and eventually manifesting those physically in a prototype used to enact that future with residents of the city. These enactments revealed potential harms to the democratic process that might come to pass if the technology stays on its' current course as well as benefits that may be exploited if it is developed with care. The full thesis can be read here.

prototyping

The final prototype consisted of a physical and a digital component. A physical interface allowed participants to interact with the digital twin by placing pieces on a map to propose spatial redesigns. In reality a research assistant would translate their physical design to the digital space.

The digital twin would then communicate back by showing a calculated projection of the future if their design is pursued. This projection was largely random noise rather than based on any real model. Some of the prediction meters were intentionally vague or provocative to elicit discussion among the participants.

For the sake of transparency, and as a reference for future projects that might want to build upon mine, I also created an interactive web version of the digital part of the prototype in which you take the role of the assistant, allowing you to place assets and see the corresponding predictions. You can try it yourself here.

sessions

I conducted the enactments with residents of the Moerwijk neighbourhood in The Hague. I created various artefacts to attract participants and to aid in the immersion of the enactment.

findings

Here you see a design created by one group halfway through their session and at its end as well as the fake predictions the model was showing them at the time.

This approach allowed me to analyse and draw conclusions not just from the discussions I had with the participants, but also from their behaviour during the enactment, as I had rich data about how they adjusted their actions to the predictions of the model.

project description

As a member of the organising committee for the Visual Science of Art Conference 2022 (https://vsac2022.tudelft.nl/) I designed the program booklets and other printed material used for the conference (poster, timetable, badges). Being an conference which tried to bring together academics and artists, the program booklet had to complement this stylistically while still being highly functional.

The end result is 170 RISO printed booklets hand-bound by me and some friends.

project description

A design project during my master saw me desiging an alternative experience for people visiting the grave of a loved one at the cemetery. At the center of this experience was a small book that guides visitors through the experience, prompting them to consider their own emotions in relation to the person they are visiting as they prepare and carry a decorated candle.

The design of the book was meant to offer an emotional alternative to the sober calvinist dreariness that tends to dominate many Dutch cemeteries while being calm and inoffensive enough not to disturb those who seek out that experience.

At the core of the booklet is a series of colored pages from which visitors can pick one that resonates with their emotions in that moment. the colors and motifs were picked to offer a broad spectrum of emotions without each explicitly pointing to a specific one, to communicate to participants that whatever emotion they felt in that moment was permitted and beautiful, after I learned from interviews that many visitors of a cemetery experience a kind of pressure to feel exclusively somber. The botanical figures used in the designs were chosen because of their potential to be emotionally evocative and neutral at the same time, and to conjure the image of placing a flower bouquet on a loved one's grave.

An article about this project was published in Vakblad Uitvaart (edition november/december 2023).

project description

For two years I was the teaching assistant of a course focused on visual analysis of art and creative coding using p5.js, a javascript library built for artists and educators. This has since grown to become one of my favorite modes of expression, I have included four of my p5 sketches in the portfolio. All of these can be interacted with in the web version.

project one: janabi (2023 - 2024)

This work is inspired by the mathematical construction of tile patterns used in Islamic art, specifically the construction of fourfold patterns as taught by Mohammed Aljanabi. The sketch invites the viewer to play with the patterns it generates, facilitating a human-computer artistic collaboration.

In the sketch below, you can drag the corners on the white line around to play with the pattern.

project two: cmy city (2023)

This sketch was specifically made to create ornamental graphics for my thesis. In response to the factual correctness implied by the digital twin movement, it takes the same 3D model of Moerwijk used in the municipal digital twin but instead distorts it and makes it more strange. (note that scrolling is disabled when the mouse is on the sketch)

project three: sintree (2024)

Part of the embroidery project, this sketch distorts a single sine wave into a tree-like shape consisting of a single continuous line to be embroidered as a single thread. This sketch is actually made with paper.js rather than p5.

project four: latent prayer (2021)

Inspired by the narrative simulations of Ian Cheng, this work asks the viewer to steer the evolution of their homelands by worshipping or forsaking different gods, which would change the input vector of an AI model generating the landscape. Created in the early days of generative AI it would prompt them to weave a mythology from their own choices and the resulting machine hallucinations. The current version no longer uses AI but displays images archived during its initial run.

project description

A final art form I have dipped my toe into is programming for audiovisual performance. While not a path I plan to immediately pursue I would like to one day create interactive installations for music and dance performance. As a first step, I have started to taking ballet classes to gain a deeper understanding of dance and human movement.