See also my micro.blog, which I use for personal thoughts and observations, and as a playground for trying out new creative ideas and side projects.
Voor alle thuisblijvers: mijn interactieve luisterfietstocht mens maakt landschap maakt mens is nu beschikbaar en kan op eigen gelegenheid worden gefietst en of gewandeld.
Voor mij nu eerst vakantie, maar op 10 september ben ik zelf aanwezig bij Museum IJsselstein om een introductie te geven en in gesprek te gaan met deelnemers. Meer informatie op mijn website!
Can ActivityPub save the internet? (David Pierce, The Verge, yesterday)
I’m hopeful, and would answer yes! Owning your own domain name should be the norm:
“But the advice you’ll hear from most people in this space is this: own your own domain. Don’t be john@/mastodon.social or anna@/facebook.com. Have a space that is yours, that belongs to you, a username and identity that can’t disappear just because a company goes out of business or sells to a megalomaniac.”
Momenteel werk ik aan een interactieve geluidswandeling /-fietstocht, als vervolg op de tentoonstelling mens maakt landschap maakt mens in Museum IJsselstein.
En goed nieuws! Onze gelijknamige videoinstallatie zal nog tot eind januari 2023 te zien zijn, nu als onderdeel van de nieuwe tentoonstelling Vensters.
Beide projecten zijn gebaseerd op diverse gesprekken die we met deelnemende kunstenaars en historici hadden over de menselijke omgang met cultuurlandschap in verleden, heden en toekomst. Met bijdragen van Niels Stomps, Wumen Ghua, Esther Polak, Ivar van Bekkum en historicus Arjan van ’t Riet. Binnenkort meer!
On behalf of everyone at my shared workspace 7zes7vijf, I wish you all a merry Christmas and very happy new year!
This week, I paid a visit to the beautiful Klok en Peel museum in Asten, a small museum with an extensive collection and library on the subject of bells. I was there for discussing a small commissioned job, but also for research on my upcoming soundscape project on city bells.
Finally received the custom made picture frame for a great birthday present I got from close friends: an abstract screen printing of a Redbreast Robin! (Part of BLOCBIRDS, an artproject by Studio 212 Fahrenheit.)
📚 According to my Goodreads list I already started reading A Distant Mirror years back, but the bookmark revealed I never got past the foreword. This time, I’m determined to read it all the way to the end, since it will be great research for my upcoming project on city bells.
Stanford materials scientists borrow solar panel tech to create new ultrahigh-res OLED display
Repurposed solar panel research could be the foundation for a new ultrahigh-resolution microdisplay. The OLED display would feature (…) more than 10,000 pixels per inch.
I just finished the first part of the examination assessment of the first group of students from the new Associate Degree Design Digital Media (HKU — Utrecht University of The Arts). I’m very proud of all our students: their hard work has certainly paid off, especially in these difficult times!
Be sure to take a look at the online exhibition at exposure.hku.nl. The students will have a Q&A with visitors on Friday 26 june 2020 from 16:45 — 19:00, you’re cordially invited! More info can be found here.
Or read this interview in Algemeen Dagblad with one of our students!
🎵 I very much love this idea for a collective drone concert in quarantaine. Hope it works out as planned!
”Let’s all gather (in our shelters) and produce a drone (in C) from our balconies and windows that can be heard across the city – unifying us all in isolation and reverberating love and compassion“
So, yesterday was quite a surreal day over here in the Netherlands. It was the first, sunny day of ‘the ‘Covid19’ lockdown, the Dutch way’. Instead of a total lockdown like China, Italy and now Spain and France, the Netherlands are opting for a controlled spreading of the Corona virus throughout the population.
By taking less stringent measures, society will be less disrupted, but a lot of healthy, less vulnerable people (possibly up to 60% of the population) will get sick with mild symptoms of Corona over the next coming months.
— Lees op arnoldhoogerwerf.micro.blog
Just learned about word vectors and some cool tricks you can do with them for creative applications. For example: you can programmatically ‘average’ words like hot and cold to end up with warm! Time to get more into NLP, and a good enough motivation to improve my Python skills…
4000 axe-monies returned to Mexico
Intriguing mixture of folk art, economics and technology from 800 years ago.
They are archaeologically significant (…) because they attest to an exchange of monies and metallurgic technology between the ancient Mexican and Andean peoples.
Days since last Facebook scandal
Just another nudge for those hesitating to quit their big social media dependency. (There is a better way.)
“A present for the European Union”
Talking about educating the people. Finland is one of the few countries in the world that really translates words into deeds.
Finland is making its online AI crash course free to the world
Made a short visit with the family to ‘Self-publish or be damned’ at AG Utrecht. A beautiful ode to DIY publishing in various subcultures in the past and present.
🎵 Music + Activism ❤️ Place: The Netherlands
”The Netherlands positions itself as progressive and open but to People of Colour and other minority groups it is very different. LGBTQIA+ refugees are the most marginalized and the most at risk.”
Had a great start of a new video and sound workshop at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam. We had a brief discussion on the fine art of mass manipulation, and on the uncanny similarities between this fake news fragment from a few days ago and the famous ‘Lambeth Walk’ parody of Nazi propaganda during the Second World War.
“Musical innovation happens from the bottom up and the outside in.” ‘Music: A Subversive History,’ by Ted Gioia
We’re getting there…
”So why not log off social media, get yourself an RSS reader and wise up?”
Happy 25th year, blogging. You’ve grown up, but social media is still having a brawl
”I wanted to put it all together under one roof so people could see how these things are inevitably connected and how it all shares one crystal clarity: that growth must come to an end.”
Vaclav Smil on his book Growth, in a great interview with The Guardian
How sleep makes the brain forget things
“Research does indeed show that, in order to remember what is important, we need to forget what isn’t important.”
Intriguing video by BBC Ideas: What Would Michel Foucault Think of Social Media, Fake News & Our Post Truth World? via: openculture.com
Great news for Utrecht’s creative industry.
Utrecht wil investeren in innovatieve locatie voor film- en beeldcultuur ‘De Machinerie’
Another piece of our own puzzle. Rare 3.8‑million-year-old skull recasts origins of iconic ‘Lucy’ fossil
Operation Night Watch begins today. Not your average restoration:
”Imaging techniques, including macro-XRF and RIS, will help determine its current condition, and macro X‑ray fluorescence scans will analyze the chemical make-up of the paint literally millimeter by millimeter.”
”For the 2019 film, it would take between 60 and 160 hours just to render a single frame.”
Toy Story 4’ Closeups Show How Much Pixar Has Perfected Its Craft In 24 Years
”After decades of rightwing dominance, a transatlantic movement of leftwing economists is building a practical alternative to neoliberalism.”
The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism
Some true gems to be found here! WARP take over NTS radio with 100 hours of Eno, FlyLo, Autechre…
Teaching a Neural Network How to Drive a Car
”One of the reasons I find neural network training so fascinating is that you can observe […] the basic method by which all life on Earth evolved the ability to do things like move, see, swim, digest food […] and use tools.”
Following Schrödinger’s cat to its death and giving it a reprieve
“Quantum mechanics encourages journalists to overuse words like “mysterious” and “spooky.” Given that we can model quantum systems to an accuracy that would make a god cry, where is the mystery?”
Very curious about this book.
The Penetrating Gaze of One of America’s Most Brilliant Art Critics
Jumbo the privacy app just got a lot better. Love the smart privacy settings for Google and Twitter. Totally recommended!
”Facebook has time and time again exhibited a complete disregard for our democracy, freedom of expression and privacy. Therefore, Bits of Freedom called on the House of Representatives to take action.”
Facebook lies to Dutch Parliament about election manipulation
I enjoyed reading this essay: Bring back science and philosophy as natural philosophy
Keep alive rational thinking about fundamental problems as specialisation becomes rampant
Final two weeks of my sound installation at Eye Filmmuseum! (The parallel exhibition A Tale of Hidden Histories also very recommended)
Excited to see Fatoumata Diawara listed as one of the guest curators for Le Guess Who 2019. Revealing the guest curators for Le Guess Who? 2019
Growing up in the Wassoulou region, she experienced stifling traditions and the oppression of women. In her music, Diawara addresses fierce political topics, fighting for the rights of women and children in her homeland.
Hundreds of Protesters Wielded Bananas After a Polish Museum Censored Feminist Artworks
The banana in Natalia LL’s film has — in effect — become the symbol of the protest movement against the silencing of Poland’s most well-known and respected feminist artists.
J.J. Cale — Stay Around (2019). The long awaited posthumously released album of the under-the-radar-giant is here. It’s good.
l’Homme fidèle (2018) ★★★☆☆. By/with Louis Garrel, and with a convincing Lilly-Rose Depp. Everyone just needs to watch a good French romantic movie from time to time. And you can’t go wrong with this one.
Beautiful behind-the-scenes photography (and much more) from the just-launched Charlie Chaplin Archive!
I made a commissioned sound installation for the Shell Shock programme in Eye Filmmuseum! You’re welcome to experience it until 22 May 2019. It’s free, since the installation is at the entrance of Eye, but I highly encourage you to also visit one of the great talks, films and other events as part of Shell Shock, or the parallel exhibition A Tale of Hidden Histories.
More info can be found on the project page.
Beautiful film props from the surreal cinema of Jan Švankmajer, on display in EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam. This one is from one of my favourites: Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
”The purpose of a scientific approach to art is not to take the mystery out of the art. It’s to give you new insight into why you think it’s so wonderful and mysterious.”
Gustav Klimt in the Brain Lab — What is neuroscience doing to art?
This week I started a new Moving Image course at the HKU Brede Basisopleiding (University of the Arts Utrecht). Here you can see the students creating a Light Modulator. It’s so nice to see young students getting enthusiastic by an art excercise developed almost 80 years ago at Moholy-Nagy’s New Bauhaus.
The article is in Dutch, but a picture is worth a thousand words… If no action is taken, this will be the Netherlands in 2300… (Image by phys. geographer Kim Cohen, Utrecht University)
De zeespiegelstijging is een groter probleem dan we denken. En Nederland heeft geen plan B