Frank Hartman

Born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 1971
Currently residing and working in Utrecht, the Netherlands

As a technically educated creative who cannot resist persuing any special interests, I have regularly found myself immersed in wildly varying subjects.

It’s only recently that I am starting to see these reoccuring themes in my work:

• the areas where the digital and physical realms meet,
• the concept of anthropomorphism: the human urge to assign a ‘soul’ to inanimate objects,
• and the propogation of culture and ideas; communities as mesh-networks,

I have been programmming computers since I was about 12 years old, mainly fascinated by the RANDOM function. How can a computer pick a random number? Why do I feel like the computer likes me when it picks the right number?

For me, that ties in with the interesting juxtaposition between the digital and physical realms in the concept of being ‘alive’: Why do we squash a mosquito without a second thought eventhough we precieve it to be a living creature, while at the same time we are very emotionally invested in our videogame character that we know is just made up of ones and zeros?