Peter Mertens film '.Televized.Oil. A Talk | Show' features the work of Maarten Ploeg, ranging from TV-Matic, paintings and music clips to computer and television art. Mertens compiled '.Televized.Oil.' of archive material, focussing especially on Ploeg’s digital pioneering works. Ploeg used to call these experiments ‘televized oil’, referring to the oil paint he exchanged for computer code. Among many other fragments, Mertens shows a music clip from Astral Bodies on 16mm-film, which has recently been restored and now is to be re-seen for the first time.
Media artist Peter Mertens studied with Ploeg at the audio-visual department of the Rietveld Academy (now called VAV). Mertens and Ploeg were the first to carry computers into the academy; together they set up the MediaLab. Both Mertens and Ploeg later became teachers at the Rietveld Academy. Mertens currently works on a book about Ploeg’s work. Maarten Ploeg (1958-2004) was a painter, pop musician and a video and computer artist. Ploeg was a key figure in an impressive number of artist initiatives and bands such as PKP-TV, PARK4DTV, Soviet Sex, Blue Murder and Astral Bodies. His diverse oeuvre and working methods continue to be a great inspiration for artists today. In 2017, the contributions of Ploeg to PARK4DTV have been added to the collection of the Stedelijk Museum. For more information: maartenploeg.nl