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Jan van IJken is a filmmaker and photographer in Leiden, the Netherlands, working on the interface of art and science. In his latest works, he reveals secrets in nature like the murmurations of starlings, the genesis of life and the unseen world of microscopic plankton. He is interested in microscopy, nature, biology, evolution, and embryology.
In earlier years he published three photobooks on social-documentary subjects like Divinity in Eastern Europe and the relationship of man and animal.
He developed a keen eye for light and composition and specializes on autonomous long-term projects. His work has been published and awarded internationally.

Jan van Ijken

Becoming is a short film about the miraculous genesis of animal life. In great microscopic detail, we see the ‘making of’ a salamander in its transparent egg from fertilization to hatching.

Becoming

Delta

By linking several disciplines around digital communication, ECAL&#8217;s Bachelor Media &amp; Interaction Design is aimed at students with a solid visual culture who are keen to learn more about advanced technologies. Forward-looking, pragmatic and experimental, this programme is delivered as part of the Visual Communication Department, which also offers cross-disciplinary courses and projects that enable students to acquire multidisciplinary skills.

ECAL/University of art and design, Lausanne - Bachelor Media & Interaction Design

Students in the Bachelor Media &amp; Interaction Design programme at the ECAL/Ecole cantonale d&#8217;art de Lausanne are inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the ECAL Virtual Reality Lab, a space where they can view a series of Virtual Reality projects that question the representation and place of the viewer in a selection of 360° sequences. Focusing on a short format on a single broadcast medium, this range of projects presents the research and results of courses during which the students concentrated on the link that can exist between moving images, visual effects, sound, rhythm and immersion. Using computer-generated 3D imagery, these projects subtly revisit the form of the linear sequence and the video clip in innovative ways, giving them different possible readings thanks to the interactivity of the medium.

ECAL Virtual Reality Lab

Grand Manège

ECAL

Xandra van der Eijk is a Dutch artist, researcher and educator. Her practice is situated in the field of ecological art and ecocriticism, with a specific interest in the influence of the technosphere on evolutionary processes and methods of attunement, particularly to matter and their situated and networked lives.
The artistic practice is research-driven and finds its voice in developing and exhibiting artwork, writing, curating, and developing education. For the past 4.5 years, Xandra has pioneered ecological art in the field of education, by founding and developing a new master’s program “Ecology Futures” at the Master Institute of Visual Cultures of Avans University of Applied Sciences, that puts the exploration and invention of artistic-scientific methods at the forefront of practicing ecocritical theory in the field, aiming to find new ways of (co)generating practice-led knowledge in the process. Ecology Futures is the first MA program on ecological art in the Netherlands, as well as the first MA art program in the Netherlands to center, facilitate and teach biotechnological methodologies. The latter was developed from their position as a researcher in the affiliated Biobased Art&amp;Design Research group (CARADT) and in the newly installed Material Incubator Lab &amp; Project Space.
Over the years Xandra has been involved with numerous institutions and initiatives, often leading to longstanding collaborations and multiple roles, such as with MU Hybrid Art House and the Bio Art &amp; Design Award, Embassy of the North Sea, FIBER, and ZKM/Driving the Human and is co-leading the discussion group &#8220;Planetary Ecologies&#8221; as an associated researcher at Critical Media Lab (FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, CH). Their work is exhibited worldwide, most recently at the Biennale of Sydney, ZKM Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and MUDAC Lausanne.

Xandra van der Eijk

The many artificial substrates in the North Sea are biodiversity hotspots ; cold water coral reefs that surely play an immense role in the bigger ecosystem of the European continental shelf — however, they are barely researched nor protected. The many patches of reef are temporal, ephemeral, and alien, and demonstrate an unexpected emergence of life in an environment under immense anthropogenic pressure.
With thousands of ship- and plane wrecks covering the North Sea floor, and a growing amount of structures such as fossil fuel rigs and windmills serving as substrates, new underwater communities are continuously forming. Each artificial reef can exist due to its particular geographical location, and so forms an ecosystem unique in its composition and identity. The reefs themselves can be considered time capsules, showing how the process of anthropogenic colonization of the sea enters into the natural archive, as they are overgrown shipwrecks, abandoned wells, and drilling platforms entangled with ghosts of past and present activities in the form of old ammunition, fishing gear and lost cargo.
With Ghost Reef, Van der Eijk speculates the fantasy of a North Sea filled with patchy reefs in the spectators&#8217; imagination. Animated video collages with 3D models based on the scarce footage taken by divers are juxtaposed with field recording soundscapes taken at two locations : an oyster bank near the Brouwersdam in Zeeland located in the south of the Netherlands, and the wreck of the Ara, a steamship that was sunk by a mine in 1942, located north of Schiermonnikoog in the northern part of Dutch waters.
Embassy of the North Sea
Ghost Reef is the result of a research period with the Embassy of the North Sea, as part of the case study on underwater noise. It builds further on the BioArt &amp; Design Award project Seasynthesis, a sound installation about noise pollution in the North Sea. Both projects were realized with help of Wageningen Marine Research and NIOZ. The Embassy of the North Sea was founded on the basis of the principle that The North Sea (and life in) it owns itself. Here the things, plants, animals and people in and around the North Sea are given a voice.
3D modeling : 
Sacha van den Haak
Sound design : 
Sébastien Robert
Project partners : 
WMR, NIOZ, Dutch Maritime Productions 
&amp; Stichting Duik de Noordzee Schoon
Commissioners : 
Ghost Reef was commissioned by Embassy of the North Sea, MU Hybrid Art House and Re-Nature Festival