(Archive) Het Project

Concept

No society consists only of people born on its own territory. There is always influx of people from
outside. During all those waves of immigration, identity and culture were destination country is
constantly subject to change, partly due to the encounter with the migrants.
The status of the newcomers has proved to be as flexible as the nature of the country of destination
culture and identity. For example, what was 'Dutch' was constantly redefined in relation to the identities
of others. In doing so, an attempt was often made to maintain their own Dutch identity unequivocally
demarcated from that of the 'others'. Dutch images of newcomers trace often not with the way they see
themselves. Not infrequently such images arise from inclination to see others as a mirror image, as the
other side of what one thinks oneself to be. Identity is relative and always exists in relation to others
with whom one measures oneself.

Also the character of the Dutch culture was and therefore is by no
means fixed: it was constantly reinvented with the help of the other as a drop-off point. The same
process also took place with migrants: they too rediscovered their own culture and identity with the
Netherlands as a sales point. Culture is a mobile, changeable product of imaging and construction. There
can be boundary and contact refusal on both sides - paradoxically also a form of culture change - but
also of opening, mixing, absorption, transformation. These new mixed forms can also be called Dutch.
The term Dutch culture can then be viewed both conservatively and as a reserve of the (supposed)
indigenous, more progressive as a culture that is constantly changing, partly because it absorbs what
migrants have contributed in terms of art, views, ways of living and styles. That last view of Dutch culture
is ours. At the same time, we are studying this ongoing redefinition of Dutch culture.

THE PROJECT is a material development project with a social design approach and the main goal of this
project is to change the physical characteristics of wood. In this project, the amount of lignin will soon be
measured during a physical and innovative chemical process (a natural polymer) in wood are reduced (in
chemistry this process is called delignification named). As a result of lignin reduction in the chemical
construction of wood, cellulose and hemicellulose behind and because they are colorless, wood will be
transparent. In fact, we try wood transparent using a physical and chemical process. After removing the
main polymer from wood (lignin), it becomes another natural polymer replaced with white paint. This
means that after the chemical process of removing lignin from wooden surfaces (in this case balsa
wood), surfaces will be saturated with white varnish, which gives stability and strength to the material.
In the final phase, material is translated into light objects in abstract forms. For this will mean white LED
light are used to put more emphasis on material transformation.