Niek de Greef: Fotograaf, Schrijver & Techie

Mud Pump Wrangle mixtape

Bericht gepubliceerd op:15/12/2024

I enjoyed creating a new mixtape on Friday and Saturday of this weekend. Searching for the songs was great fun, sifting through the selection to find the songs that belongs to this Mud Pump Wrangle mixtape.

A couple of songs founded the theme for this tape: Tom Waits’ Make It Rain (Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law vibe), Left Lane Cruiser (goodness, what a band), and Grinderman’s Electric Alice. I was looking for a scratchy guitar, probably with a very American, rural feel, a bar-band vibe, and fun to play. Instruments may be slightly out of tune, distorted, scratchy, drum sounds improvised, wobbly, and the singer hissing and humming in the microphone. And goodness, Black Diamond Heavies – Oh, Sinnerman, what a song with that keyboard solo let through a fuzz-box!

You can listen to the Mud Pump Wrangle playlist on Spotify.

I drew, scanned, cut, and glued the black-and-white cassette cover using the templates from de Bandjesfabriek.

werkblad tijdens het maken van een mixtape

Side I
Tom Waits – Make It Rain – Remastered
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Sure ‘Nuff ‘n’ Yes, I Do
Left Lane Cruiser – Big Momma
De Kift – Kijker
T Bone Burnett – Palestine Texas
Grinderman – Electric Alice
Black Diamond Heavies – Oh, Sinnerman
The White Stripes – One More Cup of Coffee
Side II
Mr. Airplane Man – Sun Sinking Low
Soledad Brothers – Going Back To Memphis
Billy Childish, Dan Melchior – Bottom of the Sea
C.W. Stoneking – The Thing I Done
The Wanton Bishops – Howl
James Leg – Drinking Too Much
The Dirtbombs – Livin’ for the City
King Automatic – Le Redresseur De Torts
Don Cavalli – I’M Going To A River
The Abigails – The One That Let Me Go

Color photographer turned Black-and-White (for this project)

Bericht gepubliceerd op:08/12/2024

I am massively enjoying making these prints of my black-and-white Polder project. I also like printing in the darkroom but never got to do it.

Before the black-and-white project, I have always photographed in color for no other reason than to limit my options. For more than ten years, I shot with little direction. Consequently, my work is all over the place. I have always liked this, and still do. I do not like to put any boundaries on my work a priori, but at the same time, I wanted to create a more consistent piece of work.

Looking for a more intentional, focused project, I began to analyze the pictures from the past decade and stumbled on my polder landscape pictures. I like a couple of them, but I found for a larger work, the dominating green color became problematic. So, I tried to convert a couple to black-and-white, and I liked the result. So I crawled through my archive and surfaced about 200 acceptable images, which I further edited down to some 40 pictures.

When converting to black and white, you find that some pictures do not work in black and white. B&W needs more rest. Where color may divide a picture into spaces, after converting it into black and white, the result may be a headache of grey tones and forms.

Color pictures, I think, have a closer relation to reality, opening a broader palette to distort that reality and create an interesting image. On the other hand, Black and white pictures can have a more poetic, sometimes dreamy effect. Black and white pictures, I think, need more space and benefit more from careful design-like composition (though I am not a fan of the word composition in photography). That is probably also why snapshot-type pictures work best in color.

Anyway, I searched for some nice papers (a rabbit hole in itself), and a friend advised me to use Canson Baryta Photographique II or RAG Photograpique Matte. Never mind the name. The first is a fine art luster-type paper, and the second is a high-grade matte paper. I started with the Baryta and liked it so much I have not even tried the RAG/Matte. By the way, I am printing on an Epson p600, a good entry-level pro photo printer with good ink.

Here are some results. Needless to say, taking (iPhone) pictures of photo prints does not serve them as it should.

fotos van niek de greef uitgespreid op een donkerblauwe achtergrond

How Fablabs Revolutionize Personal Manufacturing

Bericht gepubliceerd op:07/12/2024

Based on “How to make (almost) everything” by Neil Gershenfeld (MIT).

I came across the article “How to make (almost) everything” via waag.org, written by MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld. Gershenfeld is the originator of the Fablab concept.

From Personal Computing to Personal Manufacturing
Gershenfeld draws a parallel with the computer industry. First, there were large, expensive mainframes for organizations. The rise of the personal computer brought computing power to individuals. A similar shift is now occurring with manufacturing.

New technologies enable additive manufacturing, such as 3D printing. Here, material is added layer by layer, rather than subtracted as in milling. These machines have become more affordable. Fablabs, global networks of makerspaces, make them accessible as a shared platform.

From Mass Production to Production for One
This changes a fundamental principle. Previously, mass production was necessary to keep costs low. Now, production for a market of one is possible. Individuals can make products they would otherwise buy, customize them to their own needs, or have them produced locally. This shift from consumer to maker is something I’ve also explored in my hands-on project to repair a classic Sony Walkman.”

Community, Open Source, and Challenges
Gershenfeld also discusses the next phase: digital assemblers at the nano-scale. Furthermore, he points to potential dangers, such as the fabrication of weapons and issues with intellectual property.

His approach to the latter is open source. In Fablabs, as in software, open source has become the norm. Communities, supported by digital communication, can thus respond to local demand. Gershenfeld emphasizes the innovation potential: communities that question existing assumptions drive innovation.

Conclusion
The development of Fablabs turns an existing logic on its head. It makes advanced manufacturing accessible and enables communities to innovate locally. The question of how to deal with the risks of the technology remains complex, as with much technological progress.

Inside a Fablab at Waag in Amsterdam showing various 3D printers and tools for personal manufacturing — Fablab at Waag, Amsterdam

The article (paywalled).

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2012-09-27/how-make-almost-anything

The article (non-paywalled)

http://www.cba.mit.edu/docs/papers/12.09.FA.pdf

Melkmuil mixtape

Bericht gepubliceerd op:06/12/2024

Creating this first mixtape after getting a (cheap second-hand) Pioneer cassette deck was tremendous fun.

I reused an old cassette I found in my mother’s cassette deck. I tried to fix the cassette deck but had to part with it in the end—replacing the electromotors became too much of a hassle. I found another place that sold old cassettes for 50 cents. I bought a handful and will use these for other mixtapes.

The first mixtape theme I hit upon was Dutch bands, probably most 90s bands, although De Kift and The Ex have been around much longer and are actually still active. I called it Melkmuil. You can find the Melkmuil playlist on Spotify.

Creating the cover – collating – was another part of the fun. Cassette cover templates were easy to find, for example, at de Bandjesfabriek.