PolakVanBekkum is a Dutch artist duo consisting of

Esther Polak Esther Polak (born 1962) is a Dutch visual artist. She is active in the new media field and was one of the first artists to experiment with GPS. Since 2010, Polak has worked full-time with Ivar van Bekkum as an artist duo PolakVanBekkum. She lives ...

and Ivar van Bekkum. Their media and installation works are based on research of movement in time and space. PolakVanBekkum was started by Esther Polak (Amsterdam, 1962). She studied painting at the

Royal Academy of Art The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

in The Hague, and mixed media at the Rijksakademie of Fine Arts in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

. Ivar van Bekkum joined in 2008. Van Bekkum (Rotterdam, 1965) studied at the Academy of Journalism in Kampen. Initially the work of PolakVanBekkum was seen as part of

locative media Locative media or location-based media (LBM) is a virtual medium of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers. Location-b ...

, when

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

was still a recent technology. The AmsterdamREALTIME (2002) project was one of the first art projects using GPS as an artistic tool. In 2003 Polak worked on the Milkproject, a GPS media project tracing the production process of milk with artist Ieva Auzina. Since 2021 Milkproject is part of the collection of the

ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe The ZKM , Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (until March 2016: ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology), a cultural institution, was founded in 1989 and, since 1997, is located in a former munitions factory in Karlsruhe, Germany. The ZKM (Germa ...

. PolakVanBekkum made several films on the

Google Earth Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...

and

Street View This is a list of online mapping services that provide 360-degree panoramas around the world, grouped by region. Worldwide * Google Street View is the most comprehensive street view service in the world. It provides street view for more than 85 ...

platform. The Ride, premiered at the

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Description IDFA is an independent, international meeting place for audiences ...

in 2019.

Awards

* 2005 Golden Nica for Interactive Art at Ars Electronia, Linz, Austria. * 2016 The Expanded Media Preis For Network Culture at Stuttgarter Filmwinters - Festival for Expanded Media with The Mailman’s Bag. * 2017

Golden Calf According to the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran, the golden calf () was a cult image made by the Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai (bible), Mount Sinai. In Hebrew, the incident is known as "the sin of the calf" (). It is first mentio ...

Nomination for A Collision of Sorts.

External links

official website

References

New media artists {{Netherlands-artist-stub