PROJECT DOOS!

 

PROJECT DOOS!
various artists
november 1997
brinkman
(layout and presentation)
eric fimmers
herman houbrechts
karl broeckaert
daan stuyven
wouter van belle
claudia soccio
the artists

camille courbois
piet goddaer
peter houben
jos kleys
bart maris
mauro pawlowski
an pierlé
daan stuyven
rudy trouvé
frank vander linden
carol van dijk
roeland van niel
joost visser

Yet the umpteenth project Rudy got involved in was the multimedia cd-rom Project Doos! (Literally: Project Box!)(1997)
It certainly came as a surprise to me, as I didn’t know of the existence of this cd until a friend of mine found it somewhere in a bargain bin. Mac users will be pleased to hear this cd works perfectly on their systems, but Windows 98/2000/NT users will have to download a more recent version of Quarkimmedia than the one on the disc.

It’s a cd-rom which features some of the Netherlands’ and Belgium’s best music makers, from bands as Evil superstars, Bettie serveert, De mens, Nemo, Ozark henry, and many more of course.
The cd booklet tries to explain the whole concept:

The young and musical scene in the lowlands are praised for their diversity. Our youth make music in 1130 bands, make movies, write cookery books, and restore wall-carpets. To put it short, they have many talents, and let us believe they obtain minds in which the wildest scenario’s become true. The Crossing Boarders festival in Den Haag, which specializes in artists who have something interesting to tell, had an open space. In this festive context, a small commission promised to place those different worlds on a map. Not by psychological tests, but by a full box. Project Doos! invited 13 musicians from Belgium and the Netherlands to show us the back sides of their minds by nine fine thinking and action assignments. Artists united for science. To let nothing go lost, the results have been digitally immortalized on this CD-ROM. Not a high-tech click-box with tons of special effects- No, a simple and amusing diarama, with the completeness of a catalogue and the charm of a sketchbook.

(sorry for the undoubtedly crap translation)

So basically, the whole cd-rom is sort of a would-be fun way of demonstrating the huge diversity and unique local music scene in Belgium and The Netherlands. It's unfair to say it fails miserabely, because in all, it's a nice and occasionally amusing attempt. There are some obvious shortcomings to the result however; poor design and image compression techniques, a lack of other artists (only 13 musicians simply cannot form a view on the entire 'landscape'), and there's simply a feeling it could have been so much more interesting. The cd-rom has over 500 megabytes of unused space, which could easely have been used for films, or at the very least better image quality.
The photos and artwork are presented to you in poorly compressed GIF-format, and while the design of the menu’s and overall coordination in the cd-rom might be a bit original, but it’s definitely not very functional.
It’s still an interesting item, though. Each artist had to fill in a questionnaire, keep a one-day diary, make some pictures and 2d and 3d artwork, and make an exclusive song for the cd-rom. Predictably, some parts are interesting, some less so.
Rudy’s song sounds a lot like a Lionell Horowitz song to me-which is pretty sweet of course. I’ve been able to isolate the artwork from the Quarkimmedia file, so if you like, you can view the drawings and sculpture Rudy did for this project in the art gallery, elsewhere on this site.
The rest of the cd can be a great laugh too. Some of the artists have contributed some very amusing things to keep yourself busy for at the very least an hour or so. Especially check out Mauro’s contribution, which can at times be hilarious.
Also included on this cd-rom are some mindless bonus games; little 'schnabbels' that’ll keep you entertained for a couple of minutes, but which you’ll never bother with again later on.

This whole thing is a cool idea, but the result easily could’ve been made more interesting. Still...
If you’re interested in buying this unusual release, don’t bother to try to order it, as it is apparently unavailable at the moment. The cd is sold out in the meantime (it's a limited edition printing), but although Brinkman doesn’t exist any more, I bet someone still has a pile of these cds lying around... Better start digging in those second hand stores then.

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