Art Rotterdam | 3x3: Marcel Wesdorp & Reinier van Houdt

3×3

Experimentation is an essential part of every art practice. Even more than the final result, experiments, beta versions and tryouts provide an inside look at how an artist thinks and works. V2_’s 3×3 series spotlights artistic experimentation. We are offering three artists the space, time and resources to develop three experiments, which the public can witness live. Since no one knows where an experiment will lead, a unique experience is guaranteed.

I Wish I Couldn’t Lie | Presocratic Landscapes

Three film environments by Marcel Wesdorp & Reinier van Houdt

I Wish I Couldn’t Lie – Presocratic Landscapes presents three film environments in which virtual landscapes unfold through image and sound. Visual artist Marcel Wesdorp constructs these landscapes from digital coordinates and pixel structures rather than photographs of existing places. At first glance they resemble mountain terrains, yet they contain no organic life. Plants, animals and humans are absent. What remains is a fully virtual landscape that only suggests a natural environment.

In Wesdorp’s slow films the virtual camera becomes the observing eye, guiding the viewer through these environments at a meditative pace. As the landscape gradually unfolds, attention shifts from recognising objects to experiencing the act of looking itself. The landscapes exist somewhere between perception and imagination.

The sound environment by composer Reinier van Houdt accompanies the films as a guide through time. For the 2025 film The End and the Beginning of Time, Van Houdt created a composition based on data relating to human presence and absence collected from different locations around the world. Each presence is translated into a musical pitch, forming slowly shifting “choirs” of tones that move across one another in circular patterns.

Marcel Wesdorp & Reinier van Houdt

Marcel Wesdorp (1965) is a Rotterdam-based visual artist who creates digitally generat