Somewhere in the dark recesses of my unconscious is a place where for all eternity I sit with Han Hoogerbrugge, sipping tea beneath a sky of time-lapse clouds, trying to ignore the subtle but relentless humming sound in the background, as he mindlessly, mechanically mimes something over and over. And I’ve never even met the guy.
Hoogerbrugge does something I’ve always wanted to do; he takes a familiar medium (usually Flash animation) and utilizing simple images, unusual atmospheric sounds, and a bizarre vision of worlds that may be, creates mesmerizing multimedia pieces that become an art form unto themselves. And then creates virtual galleries of the work. The collection Nails has about a hundred of them.
Much of this work evoked an eerie mood when it was new, back around 2002. But it has a strange way of seeming even more eerie today, without feeling especially dated.
If you’ve never seen his work before, I recommend starting with his early interactive animation work like Modern Living or Nails. These animations are featured in the images above. But he’s done other interesting interactive work as well, specifically, things like The Hotel, a surreal series that takes place in the anonymous space of an extraordinary and strange hotel.
And he has a few books out, but we don’t currently recommend visiting the related domain ProStress.com