Category Archives: Mammals and Computers

The Forbidden Question at UnitedXR Europe – Homo Experiens Explorers

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On 9 Dec 2025, Andreea and I gave a “talk” about our journey and lessons learned in creating The Forbidden Question. Rather than a talk, it was a performance about the performance. The talk also includes a speaking lamb from Van Eyck’s famous 1432 Ghent Altarpiece. See the lamb in the video of our talk below. At the end, you will also see a strange character running away with the stolen 12th panel of the Altarpiece.

With this piece, we are proposing a choreographed yet spontaneous play between multiple dreams and dreamers. All the actors on stage come from the audience except one: Paul. An Eastern European architect who moved to Brussels in hopes of one day building the city of the future, he has fallen asleep with his shoes on after a long day of waiting tables. This is the moment our universe is born. As participants are encouraged to chase connection and fulfillment, our cosmology cycles their souls and dreams through several layers of reality. The more assiduous the search, the more wondrous and intense the connections they make, the more oblivious and unrelenting the fleeting and cyclical nature of the game becomes. The “forbidden question” in the title is the question no one will ever find an answer to: Whose dream is this? Are my desires really mine? Am I even able to stop wanting?

The room is set up with nine physical beds (8 for the audience encircling the one bed for Paul). The performance is designed for a full 360° experience (visuals, audio, tracking), and we work with award-winning 3D artist Ozark Henry, award-winning cinematographer and DoP Arthur Moelants, and award-winning maker Thomas Mc Leish.

I would like to give some background on this project, a sort of making-of. The project started as the New New Babylon performance, at that time designed for a speaker on stage wearing a VR headset, and the audience seeing the VR rendering on a big screen behind the speaker. Here is a very, very early version of the tower of the New New Babylon:

Then, we pivoted to a version called “Dream my Dream”

This time, the audience would witness a sleeping performer with a VR headset, and follow the dream through some sort of transparent screen:

Mock-up of the viewing room – created in Space Elevator

After submitting our project to both the Venice Biennale College Cinema and the Cannes Immersive 2025 competition, without being selected, we took the opportunity to critically reevaluate the core premises of the performance.

Then, as part of my end-project for the Howest course XR in Industry, we created a very early version of The Forbidden Question, which began with the story of an Eastern European waiter and the concept of central and surrounding beds. The video below is an early MVP of what we had in mind.

During this period of reassessment, Andreea came across an open call for immersive projects at the Salzburg Mozarteum X-Reality Lab. Salzburg is currently developing a state-of-the-art 360° immersive venue featuring stereoscopic projection, a 60+ channel spatial audio system, and integrated LiDAR and high-definition camera infrastructure. The lab was seeking artistic performances for the venue’s inaugural program, scheduled for March 2026.

High-level sketch of the X-Reality-Lab in Salzburg

For this project, we completely re-wrote the performance into an XR “game of life” unfolding across multiple realities, with both an actor and the audience as performers. From its earliest concept through multiple iterations, the project transformed from a one-person headset performance into an immersive XR experience designed for stereoscopic projection, 3D tracking, and 360° spatial sound. Here is an extract from our submission document. The biggest change was to move the whole New New Babylon narrative from the foreground to the background, and to let the audience experience crossing realities (from dream reality to awake-reality). We made it to the shortlist (out of 150 international candidates), but did not get selected in the end.

Extract from our treatment of the performance for Salzburg

In preparation for our talk at UnitedXR, Andreea and I had many online sessions on the mood and conceptual flow of our presentation (Mural extract below). We wanted to present a coherent journey from New New Babylon to The Forbidden Question to The Third Council.

Mural brainstorm for UnitedXR presentation

An aha moment emerged during these sessions: neither Homo sapiens, ludens, nor faber is capable of evaluating the validity of these new structures of reality. Their meaning cannot be assessed intellectually—they must be experienced.

Hence Homo Experiens. With an “s” to differentiate from the words “Narrative” and “Experience” that have become catch-all words.

So we like to call ourselves “Experiens Explorers” and “Designed Conspiracy” would better describe what we have in mind. See also https://petervanstudios.com/2025/12/21/the-orphic-experience-we-are-all-argonauts-again/

The Forbidden Question team
Picture from the crime scene at UnitedXR on 9 Dec 2025

Kent Bye, who runs the Voices of VR Podcast, was in the room, and he invited us for an interview right after (quite an honor, if you ask me). As soon as the interview is published, the link will be added to this post.

Post interview picture. From left to right: Kent Bye, Andreea, Petervan. Picture by Joost.

Use the barcode above to follow the discoveries of Douglas Spar (aka The Holy Lamb). Doug is the one investigating The Third Council. And “The Forbidden Question” is now positioned as a training protocol for crossing realities and the main priority of our team right now.

We are now complementing the team with technology partners to build a pop-up 360 infrastructure for artistic performances. We are contacting immersive spaces to be on their program. We also consider a subsidy for a technology prototype for this immersive performance.

May the lamb be with you in 2026!

With deep gratitude to Andreea, TJ, Arthur, Joost, and Ozark for staying motivated during this whole process. And thanks to UnitedXR for having us.

The Weak Image Speaks

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The camera—
that profoundly liberal invention—
whispers:

I’m ready for anything.
Give me chemicals, give me a little light,
give me time and no shaking,
and I will be done.

A pocket-sized Enlightenment,
believing every world is reachable,
every surface printable,
every body open to possibility.

And now generative machines produce punctum—
yes, Barthes’ punctum—
the involuntary meaning that slips through
the cracks of intention.
Not planned by the author,
nor by the algorithm,
but arriving later,
after you’ve slept on it,
after the dopamine subsides.
Fast food for intellectual minds,
rewarding at first bite,
quickly stale.
You return in the morning and mutter:
It was not that great after all.

Style appears.
Style overload.
Those who lack craft run toward it—
high, abstract, fast—
while you work the old way,
learning the hand,
the long path,
refusing to choose sides.

Spend time with it—
real duration—
and you’ll see how expensive time has become.
Only unproductive duration is free.
Yet we abandoned that when we entered the cinema,
trading mobility for the promise of instant return.
No one waits for tomorrow in a theater.
In a museum, though—
time’s ticking clock can’t be heard.
There we look forward to looking back.

And somewhere in this,
the black box—
practical, yes,
but also a symptom
of our incapacity to coexist.
The dark room becomes a social problem,
a refusal of interference,
a denial of shared space.

Everything becomes a question of time,
of how little we have left,
of how duration is mined
like ore.

Growing old treated as disease,
dementia as enemy,
while software dreams
of pure disembodiment—
young, innocent, clean.

And yet—
beneath all this—
you remind us:
we are bifocal,
split,
never individuals.
We are believers,
especially visually.

The camera says:
I’m ready for anything.

But the eye says:
I am not a camera.

And the brain says:
I choose no side.

And the forest says:
Take your time.

And the weak image
whispers from the periphery:
Here is the non-event—
stay long enough, and you may hear it breathe.

+++

The text above is an artistic experiment inspired by the insights David Claerbout shared in his presentation Reclaiming Our Agency and in BIRDSONG, the publication accompanying the premiere of The Woodcarver and the Forest at the Castle of Gaasbeek in August 2025.

I first edited the full transcript from the presentation, and then OCR scanned text ‘The Time Spent” from the BIRDSONG book. Then I made a personal selection of the sentences that resonated with me. Then I gave that to ChatGPT and asked it to condense all this into a 1000-word poem, then 500 words, then 100 words. Then again, I made a personal selection of the best GPT snippets. And further edited them to my personal (un)taste.

Strange Letter #2 – Mammals and Computers

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This week, another strange letter arrived in my mailbox—again with no sender name or return address. It seems to be from an investigator, a living being whose species I can’t be sure of, calling himself Douglas Spar and signing his notes with the pseudonym “The Holy Lamb.” This one reports from Paris.

There is also a strange video released on a YouTube Channel named “It’s Happening”. Worthwhile following?

3C – Peeling Layers – Episode #1

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For the past few months, I’ve been co-working on a new, still embryonic project—co-written and co-directed with Andreea Ion Cojocaru, enriched by the expertise of my cousin Joost, a PhD art historian, and further shaped through the collaboration of several contributing artists.

Until now, I have only shared this project with a few people. Many of them suggested that I start documenting “the making of” our project, so this blog post will serve as the first episode.

Our project takes the form of an experimental alternate reality experience that explores the nature of flesh, human suffering, and the role of technology. At its core lies a question both ancient and urgent: Who are the new gods that might deliver us from suffering?

The project ultimately strives toward the organization of a Third Council on this topic, which we call simply: 3C

Our approach weaves together mysterious, multi-layered storytelling and conspiracies across several digital and non-digital platforms. Different strands and overlapping narratives unfold in various locations—one of them being Ghent.

This Ghent storyline begins with the renowned Mystic Lamb Altarpiece by the brothers Van Eyck. Commissioned by the Vijd family, the altarpiece was unveiled on 6 May 1432, coinciding with the baptism of Philip the Good’s son. Countless volumes have been written about this extraordinary work. An accessible introduction can be found on The Ghent Altarpiece site. For deeper study, Closer to Van Eyck offers breathtaking HD detail and analysis, and of course, there is always the comprehensive overview on Wikipedia.

The Mystic Lamb Altarpiece – Picture by the author

After a meticulous and highly professional restoration, conservators peeled away later layers of paint to reveal the original brilliance of the Van Eyck brothers. Today, the restored masterpiece can be admired behind bulletproof glass in Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent.

At a certain stage of our project, we began to wonder: was there ever an actual altar placed in front of the painting? I turned to my cousin, the art historian, and he replied:

“There has already much research been done on the original disposition of the Ghent Altarpiece  e.g. by Dr. Elisabeth Dhanens and even considering the combination of that polyptich with sculpture, but non of the hypotheses has completely convinced the specialists. The oldest existing images of the chapel are too young to obtain a precise idea of the original situation. As in such chapels it was the rule that a yearly mass for the souls of the deceased and portrayed patrons was said by a chaplan, normally (a altar focs chapel being smaller than a main altar in the main church building) would have been foreseen. But we do not have an idea how it looked like.”

I wanted to buy the book by Dr. Elisabeth Dhanens, but like many art publications, it was prohibitively expensive, so I went instead to the Arts Library at the University of Ghent and borrowed a copy there.

In our project, the peeling away of layers from the Mystic Lamb becomes a metaphor for a deeper, more abstract process: the peeling away of layers of reality itself.

The Altarpiece also carries a built-in narrative advantage—its own entanglement in conspiracy. On 11 April 1934, one of its twelve panels, The Righteous Judges, was stolen and has never been recovered. This theft has inspired countless books, theories, and websites. Among them, the Righteous Judges site offers both a clear overview and an excellent timeline of the events.

On June 3, 2025, I undertook a short trip to Ghent, exploring the neighborhood in search of clues about the lost panel. Along the way, I recorded a compact photo-video documentary to capture my findings.

Here is one of the pictures: a café next to the cathedral called “De Rechters/The Judges”

Our project is multi-dimensional and undeniably ambitious. We’ve prepared a solid funding pitch, but if we wait for financial backing before taking any action, nothing may ever materialize. So instead, we’ve decided to start sharing small glimpses of the project—a slow drip-feed—and watch to see what resonates and what gets picked up.

But is there an audience for this? We hope, but don’t know. Perhaps only an audience of one. Kevin Kelly recently wrote an insightful piece on that very idea.

“From now on, the default destiny for most art will be for an audience of one, and it will abide in the memory of those who generate it. While some of this co-generated work might find its larger audience and some very tiny fraction of it might even become a popular hit, its chief value will be in the direct, naked pleasure of co-making of it.”

That’s very much our mindset—our “eye-set” too: as long as we enjoy creating, we’ll keep going.

On the more playful side, Ghent offers several signposted bicycle tours inspired by the Mystic Lamb Altarpiece and the story of the stolen panel. One of them is intriguingly titled “VermoedelEyck daar / Probably ThEyck” I plan to try it out soon and capture some photos and videos to share later.

Strange Letter – Mammals and Computers

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Earlier this week, a letter appeared in my mailbox. No address, no sender’s name—only an envelope that felt older than the paper it was made from…

And then, out of nowhere, a link appeared—a video, carrying almost the exact same words…