Haarem Live

Haarlem Live spreads music across cafés, churches and squares throughout the city. I turned its programme into a landscape you can walk through, listen to and turn into routes for social.

A dark three-dimensional field seen at a low angle, scattered with small orange squares, carrying circular act markers that hold a video still and the hour they play, coloured venue signs, and a cream slip in the lower left with the record that is sounding — Half a minute of walking it. The ground rises where the rooms crowd together, the roads draw themselves as the traveler crosses them, and the whole world changes ink between legs.

The route films

An evening somebody picks is three or four places and the hours they go on, which is exactly what the map walks when those places are pressed. So the reels are recordings of the map itself: one vertical film per evening, the route along the bottom, each act's own record under its stretch.

day: 15 August
stops: 18:00 Heights Meditation, Klokhuisplein18:15 Cocobolo, Grote Markt22:00 Gallowstreet, Grote Markt

One evening, as the film received it.

Changing which evening gets a film means changing that list of rooms and times. A festival holds a great many evenings worth showing, and none of them need a video editor.

A vertical frame of the map with a cream strip along the bottom reading 18:00 Heights Meditation at Klokhuisplein, with 18:15 Cocobolo and 22:00 Gallowstreet listed underneath — One evening of the 2026 programme, half a minute long. The strip along the bottom is the route; the sound under each stretch is that act's own record.

Why a map

A festival programme is published as a list. It answers who is on at nine. It does not say which sets have anything to do with each other, and that is the question that decides where somebody actually goes. Genre tags do not answer it either: being filed under the same word as another band is no reason to cross a town.

The roads

Acts with something to do with each other are joined by roads. Some come straight out of the programme, which knows one thing about any two acts: that they played the same room on the same night. The rest are researched. A pass reads what each act's own sources say about it and looks for the same name in two answers, a drummer in both bands, a producer on both records, a school both halves went to. Every candidate is checked before it is allowed to become a road.

The reason is on screen the moment you arrive, because a connection nobody can see the reason for is indistinguishable from a recommendation.

Walking the map

Rooms are placed from their real addresses, compressed the way a printed tourist map compresses a city so that every marker has room to be seen and pressed. Where rooms crowd together the ground rises, so the busy stretch of town is visibly the busy stretch before anything has been read.

A dark map of Haarlem seen at an angle, with named venue signs in yellow, orange and cream standing on a field of small squares, circular act markers carrying video stills and the hour they play, and a cream slip in the lower left holding the record currently sounding — The whole bill in one view. Venue signs where the venues are, act markers wearing a still from their own video and the hour they go on, and the record that is sounding on a slip in the corner.

Arriving at a room lights its entire bill at once. Standing on an act plays its record in the slip at the corner of the screen, with the day and time of the set, the room, and the places the act's own music can be found. The trail behind the traveler stays on the ground, so a walk through the programme leaves a record of itself.

Standing at the Grote Markt: the venue's sign sits at the traveler's feet and a dozen circular act markers around it are ringed in bright yellow, with a dotted trail leading back the way the traveler came — Landing on a room lights every act it holds across the whole festival. Standing on one of them plays the record and says when and where they are on, and where the rest of their music lives.

Standing on an act: the same map with a cream slip in the lower left holding the name Lucas Santana Quintet, a playing video, the date and time of their set, and links to Bandcamp, Spotify and SoundCloud — Landing on a room lights every act it holds across the whole festival. Standing on one of them plays the record and says when and where they are on, and where the rest of their music lives.

On a phone

On a phone the map opens at a door: a dial wearing the festival's own mark, with every room and act on the bill fanned out around it. Going through it is the touch that lets the first record play. Past the door it is the same world in one column, with a slip at the bottom holding whatever is sounding.

A phone screen showing a cream dial marked with the festival's H, with venue and act names in yellow, pink, cyan and orange fanning out around it over the darkened map — The door the map opens at on a phone, and a road stating its reason on arrival. The card names both ends and both of them are somewhere to walk.

A phone screen showing the map with a pink card reading that Lorenzo Mignacca is the conductor and arranger of both New Harlem Big Band and New Harlem Juniors, above a cream slip holding the playing video and the set's time and room — The door the map opens at on a phone, and a road stating its reason on arrival. The card names both ends and both of them are somewhere to walk.

Nu en straks

Standing in a room says what that café has on this week. For what is on at this minute, the map keeps one card for the night itself, behind a corner button reading nu en straks, now and soon. It lists what is playing now with how long is left, and the rest of tonight in order. Every row can be pressed, and pressing one walks the traveler to that act on the ground.

When the map has sat untouched for a while the festival's mark comes up enormous behind the world, in a different pair of inks each time. It exists for the screen in the corner of a bar, where half its audience is watching it rather than using it.

A cream panel headed 'Nu en straks' listing sets by time, each with the act and the room: 16:00 DJ AXMA at Sounds, 16:15 No More Social Safety Hub at Haarlems Eigen, and on down the evening — The night as a clock, every row a set that can be pressed. And the festival's mark, which the map raises enormous when nobody has driven it for a while; a single press takes it away.

The festival's H mark, drawn enormous in orange with a blue offset plate, standing behind the map and over the town — The night as a clock, every row a set that can be pressed. And the festival's mark, which the map raises enormous when nobody has driven it for a while; a single press takes it away.

Where this goes

I make versions of this for festivals, venues and events: interactive programmes, visual identities and social material built from the same world. The Haarlem inks, type and mark are one treatment. Each edition gets its own, so the map reads as the event's rather than as a copy of this one.

If you programme a night, a month or a festival and want to see your own bill standing up, email me at jason@storybynumbers.com.