Online: CARDBOARDERS is a blog about artists, engineers, architects and people with a fetish for cardboard. Offline: Cardboarders organizes community events that use cardboard as a material. These projects are filled with a brimming spirit of innocence and fun. They try to stimulate playfulness, inventiveness and other experimental and creative behavior.
The Tyran and Mayor of Cardboardia came to Amsterdam! I (Mathijs) was very eager to meet them and talk about Cardboardia and the possibilities for cardboarders to go there. There are so many similarities with what we are trying to do. Cardboardia also uses the seemingly worthless cardboard as a material for their projects. In the process they stimulate playfulness, games and other experimental and creative behavior. Some of their projects are really big! Cardboardia is a country without land that … Continue reading
I (Mathijs) was asked to do a workshop at the (international) school for Art and Design in Zwolle. I decided to make it an intense two days of cardboard costume-making. Then I would have one day left to play with the students and their costumes in the green screen studio (a really good one they have on the schoolgrounds). On that last day we also found a singer who made the music for what is to become a music video… … Continue reading
There’s some eccentric cardboard world builders out there. Some are obsessed with building and extending their virtual environments in real life. Remember the game SimCity? Imagine it too be real and I think you’ll come closes to what possesses these artists This is the round up of the best ones on the net: if you know other examples or make them yourself: please let us know and we’ll post them here! The one on the left here is made by Michel Gondry … Continue reading
A while ago we made this cardboard forest. We made it for the children visiting the CODA museum (in Apeldoorn). It was too low for adults to walk through so they had to crawl along the ground with the children In the back of the woods was someone reading scary stories. The forest was made by Mathijs Stegink, Jeroen Diepenmaat and Tanja Koning. We wanted to make a visualization of the phrase “not see the wood for the trees” and … Continue reading
We couldn’t wait to get our hands on a few of the techniques some cardboarders out there work with. Especially using the lasercutter and Pepakura were causing some excitement in our little workshop in Amsterdam. A few weeks ago I (Mathijs) was asked to make something sculptural for an exhibition in Hellendoorn (a small village in the east of the Netherlands). A perfect opportunity for us to head of to the FabLab and get busy with their laser cutter! There … Continue reading
The shapes of unfolded corrugated boxes are very fascinating. They show efficient and careful industrial design. Printing is suddenly transformed to a fragmented collage. Not that strange that kids are often happier with the box than the toy itself! There’s some artists that use the graphical quality of these foldouts. They break down the box to it’s original flat shape and use that shape as an inspiration for their art. The picture on the left shows the knife that’s used … Continue reading
Just before I wrote this I heard from the El Camaro Crew. Which is a dutch cardboxing group! Look at all that aggression! Check this video! They also asked me how we play the cardboarding game… Well… there’s been a lot of questions on the rules of our Cardboarders battles lately… There were some rules but just because we destroyed our suits so fast that it was a bit of a shame. Most of the boxfighters out there just do … Continue reading
Off course we made some robot suits ourselves… check em out! LTV made a movie about it which should be online really soon! By the way: Sam Peeters is in the sattelite suit, Koos Schaart is in one dragon and I’m in the other…
LTV (lowlands television, made by captainvideo) made some really neat movies of our cardbots! First movie is the second robot run we did (which ofcourse ends in a showdown in front of the Lowlands Television Big Screen…) edit by Guus Verschuur van Work Hard Play Hard…
What we like about festivals is not to just sit around and consume. We want to join in! A big festival like Lowlands is like a village, you can eat, drink, dance and consume whatever you like. But once in a while you get ideas on festivals, and you want to produce them immediately. This is what we provided at the Lowlands Festival: Rapid Proto Typing for the masses (or as we say in dutch: creatief met kurk, nou ja … Continue reading
The Cardboard Robot Run at the Lowlands Festival was just plain fun. It was the biggest cardboard event we ever hosted and it turned out fine! In the picture on the left you see famous dutch sesamestreet (sesam straat) actor Rik Hoogendoorn running the gauntlet!
Yes! Cardboarders will host the workshops under the big Zorklands top at the Lowlands festival! Friday we’ll start easy with building some cardboard masks, saterday we’ll try setting up a robotbattle and make a lot of cardboard wings. Like cardboarders on facebook and we’ll keep you updated!
Well, that was fun, we organised the first official Amsterdam Cardboard Robot Capture The Flag Event. The flag of course being the baby-bot. Inspired by earlier Robot Battles we wanted to create something like that in Amsterdam.
