Photo: André Smits

In my work I question whether technological development really achieves progress.

In earlier works I focused on the fast paced life in big modern cities. Themes such as upcoming individualism, people that lose contact with their human nature and the fragmented way of living that appears in a zap culture played an important role. I visited Tokyo, New York, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. These visits made me realize that our society is focused on making things better and faster. Whether the effect of these developments turns out to be positive or negative depends however on the scale in which you look at it. Individuals often do not seem to oversee or care about consequences on a bigger or collective scale.

My theme links to the ideology described in science fiction books from the first 70 years of the 20th century (Heinlein, Asimov, Huxley and Orwell). It intrigues me that these ideologies are now actual topics.

During my visit in Honk Kong I got overwhelmed by the fascinating amount of giant billboards, video screens and neon lights that colored and overruled the environment. People seemed to become invisible amongst this violence of sounds, movement and colors.

This gave me the idea of a second layer of reality taking over and it made my focus shift to the idea of people losing control over their own inventions.