• Willem Kempers
  • London, UK

Willem Kempers is a freelance computational designer and creative technologist fluent in a variety of programming languages, electronics and design fields. His work in the applied arts is concentrated around audiovisual, interaction and installation design. He is particularly interested in designing screens for content, rather than content for screens.

Willem is an active part of the United Visual Artists (UVA) collective. Through his work with UVA he has collaborated with artists including choreographer Benjamin Millepied, fashion designer Christopher Bailey for the Autumn / Winter 2018 fashion runway show at Burberry as well as worked on projects commissioned by institutions internationally, including The Store X The Vinyl Factory (London, UK), MONA (Hobart, Australia) and Disseny Hub (Barcelona, Spain).

Besides UVA he has worked with a multitude of other artists & studios including Vincent de Belleval, Artists & Engineers, Ben Kreukniet, Nonotak and Jason Bruges Studio.

He is a visiting lecturer at the IED and DP departments at the Royal College of Art in London.

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VdB - Issey Miyake Homme Plissé SS25

Paris, FR, 2024

For SS25, the team at Homme Plissé Issey Miyake created Up, Up, and Away, a collection inspired by the wind. The garments are designed to look light and airy and inspired by parachutes and kites — taking shape once caught by the wind.

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UVA - Silent Symphony

Hobart, AU, 2023

Inspired by Ancient Greek philosophers’ belief that the universe produced an inaudible kind of music, ‘Silent Symphony’ traces resonant frequencies and synchronicities occurring at the cosmic scale and explores how they relate to our sense of harmony.

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Nonotak & VdB - Sora

Gashouder Westergas, Amsterdam, NL, 2023

SORA means sky in Japanese, which is the main inspiration for this piece. Sky is the most powerful light screen, connecting us visually to outer space. It’s hard to perceive all the complexity of it but the longer we look at it, the more we are able to perceive and realise details from it, especially at night. In a minimal and geometrical setup of moving light modules, SORA tempts to reflect the complexity that sky has to offer.

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UVA - Present Shock

Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, TR, 2022

Present Shock confronts the viewer with a barrage of statistical clocks representing real-time information about the world—from life-changing global events to the banal trivia of everyday existence—highlighting how the speed and volume of data in the Information Age present new challenges to our limited cognitive apparatus.

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JBS - The Centre

Museum of the Future, Dubai, UAE, 2021

Created for the Museum of the Future in Dubai, The Centre is an inhabitable media artwork that uses water, light, vibration and sound to reawaken the senses. An antidote to an ever more digitally saturated reality, the installation offers an immediate, visceral experience inspired by historic ritual. For millennia, humans have sought unique ways to physically heal and spiritually recentre. Wide-ranging socio-cultural practices from Victorian spa therapies to Tibetan gong baths use water and vibration for restorative purposes.

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UVA - Harmonics

London, UK, 2020

Harmonics challenges our perception of light and sound unfolding at great speed, an illusion of time blending. As the two kinetic sculptures speed up, rotating beams of light blend to form volumes of colour, while multiple discrete sounds become a major chord. Unable to process extremely fast information, our brain reads sequential sensory inputs as a single event in time. A disconnected reality perceived as a continuum, a harmonious whole.

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UVA - Our Time

180 Strand, London, UK, 2019

Commissioned by The Store X The Vinyl Factory, this site-specific iteration of Our Time is one of three works in the Other Spaces show.

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UVA - Bach Studies

Antwerp, BE, 2019

As a second-time collaboration with French choreographer Benjamin Millepied, this work continues UVA’s explorations on the dialogue between dance, architecture and music, creating a dynamic set that articulates the stage like a body.

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UVA - Spectrum

London, UK, 2018

Our collaboration with Christopher Bailey and Burberry presented Our Time in London, UVA’s large-scale installation investigating our subjective experience of the passing of time.

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UVA - Message from the Unseen World

London, UK, 2016

Message from the Unseen World is a permanent work inspired by the ideas and legacy of Alan Turing. It was commissioned by Future City for British Land’s Paddington Central along the gateway to the new development close to Bishop’s Bridge Road.

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Early Work

IDA Arnhem, NL, 2016

Willem has a Bachelors degree in Interaction Design from ArtEZ University of the Arts (NL, 2016) where he won the Arnhemse Nieuwe Award for his graduation work. During his studies he made several pieces that have been exhibited, awarded and presented at various talks.

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