source: martens-visser
The ephemeral magic of light and movement. Jetske Visser and Michiel Martens call their mesmerizing objects they stumbled upon by experimenting with reflecting materials HOLONS. Long strips of oil like transparant foil combined with simple spinning elektromotors become a visual entity reflecting the lights around them as if they where waterdrops. Artspace MU in Eindhoven has given Jetske and Michiel the opportunity to do their magic on the scale of a whole space for the 2015 edition of Glow Next. image credits: Boudewijn Bollmann and MU.

Design studio Martens & Visser is a collaboration between Michiel Martens and Jetske Visser. Central to Martens and Visser’s work are the themes of movement and transformation inspired by nature, thereby sharing the thought of things being dynamic rather than static.

Particular to their way of working, they combine Martens’ craftsmanship and boyhood-like re-imagination of the existing and Visser’s delicate experimental use of material to show the layers of what lies behind what we take for granted. Together, they work through an open process of exploration, focusing on a concept, re-definition and mastering material and skill. The outcome of this process shapes itself along consecutive steps rather than being predetermined.

The studio’s practice can be imagined as three interlocking fields: designing materials and objects, designing and organizing spaces and installations, and designing and sharing ways of thinking.

Studio Martens & Visser’s work strives for a quality that mixes marvel and wonder at a surprising (in)sight and use of material. Not merely to stun the spectator or client, but to share a different view on existing usages of objects and production techniques. Or better yet, giving him or her the opportunity to follow Martens and Visser’s imagination and curiosity and to adopt it as his or her own.

Studio Martens & Visser take commissions, work on self-initiated projects and have worked with numerous Dutch and international companies, academies, design studios and exhibition spaces, ranging from Forbo to MU Artspace and from the Van Abbe Museum to Nanjing University.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: designboom
dutch design week 2016: jetske visser and michiel martens have collaborated to create ‘reflecting holon’ — a moving installation that investigates the refracting and reflecting properties of light and color. best described as a soap bubble you don’t have to blow yourself, the holons are made of razor-thin iridescent strips attached to a rotating axis. this movement creates an illusion of a spherical form that breaks and disperses the surrounding light just like a soap bubble would: revealing all the colors of the rainbow.

‘we surround ourselves with products that are mostly static while in nature everything always moves,’ comments jetske visser and michiel martens on the motivation behind the project. the bubble-like holons are driven by simple electro-motors that sustain them without effort and as they move, the material appears to melt into a liquid whole. once installed, the rotating pieces attract users in such a way that makes them want to touch them, explode them and even blow them away.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: ddwnl
Een samenwerking tussen Jetske Visser en Michiel Martens
Reflecting HOLON is een bewegende installatie die speelt met het breken en reflecteren van licht en kleur. We omringen ons met producten die veelal statisch zijn, terwijl de natuur laat zien dat alles altijd in beweging is. Michiel Martens en Jetske Visser gebruiken dit als inspiratie voor hun werk. Holons spiegelen kleur en vangen licht op waardoor ze lijken te gloeien. Door beweging versmelten de objecten tot vloeibare volumes.