putting the j in jjosh

I went to this promo conference thing back in 2002 and went to a seminar on the power of the internet. At this time we were still delivering approval tapes on VHS (wha?), no one posted anything for review online, we still got physical DAT’s from sound studios (instead of posting aiff’s) — it was the dark ages. Anyway, in this seminar, there were 3 guys speaking, and the first two were so boring, going on and on about how our jobs in TV were going to be transformed, and we better be worried and stay on top of technology and so on (true, but boring). Snooze-fest.

The third guy spent his time just telling us what websites he thought were cool. This was kind of revelatory for me. It was so interesting to see what weird stuff was out there, and to have this attitude of surfing the net’s hidden corners, looking for the stuff that keeps the world weird. I don’t remember all the things he showed, but I remember this one that was so dark, odd and good, full of small animations that seemed like they were out of a dream.

Six years later, and they show up on metafilter. Sweet. Dutch cartoonist/animator Hans Hoogerbrugge. Really, you’ve got to click here and go to the website to get the full experience, ‘cuz the clicking and discovering is half the fun, but here’s a small mov of me clicking around on it just to give you an idea of what it is. The sounds, the visuals, the feeling of the thing — so dream-like.

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His main website is pretty cool too, full of weird artworks and this great museum installation that animates the outside of a museum wall and has the character say whatever people text to it. Pretty great.