BKKC (Brabants ART and Knowledge Centre) invited me to take part in a commissioned project called Uitgeschreven ruimte (Written out space). Seven artists were linked to seven writers/poets, in order to create textual artworks for different public spaces. Public textual artworks usually lack creativity in form and shape. BKKC asked: what happens if these two worlds get connected? Something other than a plain text on a wall must come out, right?

The BKKC’s staircase was given to me as location to create an artwork. I was immediately inspired by the vertical movement of the people using the stairs. With that in mind, I came up with a concept that eventually lead to a new self-invented optical illusion. The illusion allows an image to change based on the altering perspective of a person walking up or down in relation to the object. We pushed through in the technical design and eventually discovered it was possible to imply a maximum of four image changes in one single object.

After this was achieved, Belgian poet Peter Verhelst, for his part, wrote a four-line poem : Vergeet, Vergeet niet, Vergeet niet te vergeten, V rg t n (Forget, Do not forget, Do not forget to forget, F rg tt n. The object (upper right image) holds these four lines of text but you can see only one at a time. The first line (1) disappears and blends into the second line (2) when you start walking down from point A to B (see image below). Then the second line disappears and blends into the third line (3). Finally the third line disappears and blends into the last line (4).
ICW: Mark van Cromvoirt and Peter Ver­helst