In the eighties I dreamt about becoming a guitar player in a band. It never really worked out…

In the nineties I dived into the new medium “the Internet”. I was already working with computers for many years by then, but now I was able to share my knowledge, skills, ideas and creativity with people around the world! And so I did, we did amazing projects, all taking place completely inside cyberspace. I tried to make a connection from the virtual space back into the real space, which led to some interesting projects. However, at the same time… I had the feeling nobody really understood what I was doing…

In the zeroes suddenly the Internet exploded. Finally everybody started to realize that there was a whole new world out there. Social media made its first appearance. I won an important prize as a net artist. Finally! Now it was really gonna happen for me. Nothing happened… I had enough of working online and became a recycling artist, creating wallets from empty milk cartons, ashtrays from empty beer cans and ketchup lights from empty ketchup bottles. I made clocks from empty pizza boxes and notebooks from empty cornflakes packages. And I was selling them, on Christmas markets and online. And the strangest thing of all… my videos of how to make a recycling wallet yourself became a big hit online…

At the end of the zeroes I moved back to the Netherlands, where recycling art wasn’t really a big thing. People were amused about what I was making, but the Dutch didn’t really want to spend their money on my recycling products. The general idea in the Netherlands was “I can do that myself”. So instead of creating, I started teaching them how they could make these products themselves. As the kids whom I was teaching grew older, their interests changed and I started teaching them how to make websites. And then the kids discovered they would rather learn how to work on the computer than learn how to create recycled wallets.

In the meantime more and more tools were developed to teach young kids programming. I dived into it and started teaching kids how to be creative online. How to create your own stories, animations, games and art works in a digital world. My art throughout the following years consisted of teaching kids, challenging them how to use their computers in more creative ways than just watching videos and playing games. I must have introduced more than a thousand kids into creative coding.

And then, in 2019, I suddenly found myself at a concert which was kind of like a flash back. I was thrown back 25 years in time and all of a sudden I realised that in my younger days, I dreamt of becoming a guitar player in a band. I suddenly realised that I had never made that dream come true. I have made many of my other dreams come true, but this one still didn’t really happen. So in July 2019 I picked up my guitar again. And I was amazed about the online world of guitar tutorials that was suddenly available to me. Any skill, any technique, any song, any piece of music theory… you can find it all online, with really amazing videos explaining you all the details, all the chord progressions, solos, everything you need to know about amp settings, effects, about finding out which guitar is right for you, until thousands of videos to practise all the songs you like.

I am still not that amazing guitar player that I was dreaming of in the eighties, but it surely has inspired me to keep on dreaming! It is still possible to realise my dreams! This time however, I will be an online guitar player. That will fit me much better than playing in those small clubs late at night. I will play for my cats, perform in my living room and create videos with my improvements. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do!