ducks and a lobster

the end

2006-11-13T22:06:00.000Z

Well, it is my last evening here in Berlin and I’m sitting in a sketchy Internet cafe a couple blocks from our apartments. I absolutely cannot believe that this program is over. Yet I still have a whole month before I go back home, and I think it’s actually going to be weird being in cities and not having to worry about classes and projects and all that stuff. Overall, I’m very happy with how this program went. I had never made new media before, and I actually didn’t really know what new media was, but here I am, nine weeks later, with a term full of experiences abroad. The only physical evidence I have to show for it is a folder of photos, this blog, and a pretty awesome Google Earth map showing my perceptions of some of my favorite places. If somebody had told me at the beginning of September that I will have not only spent hundreds of hours on a project, but enjoyed making it and felt proud of my piece, I think I would have been a bit surprised. I don’t consider myself to be much of an artist or a programmer, but it turns out you don’t really have to be either to make art. You just need an idea and the motivation to carry it out to the best of your ability. And that’s what I did.

This weekend, I got to do a bit of the more tourist-y Berlin stuff because Joe and I wanted to go collect some footage to work into our project later. We went back to the Holocaust Memorial, and then we waited in long lines to go to the top of the Reichstag and the big tower at Alexanderplatz that must have a name, but I don’t know what it is. Both of them had amazing views of the city, and of course, I took a ton of pictures. At right, looking east from the Reichstag. There’s little droplets of water on it because it started to rain, and it was so windy up there that it made me feel like I was snowboarding. Yes, that’s an odd association, but that’s what came to mind at the time. Below is a shot I took from the dome on top of the Reichstag, and I like it because the sun is peeking through the clouds in a really interesting way, and then up in the clouds you can see reflections of the mirrors in the dome behind me.

The tower in Alexanderplatz was slightly less impressive because it felt so dark and enclosed. However, I could see so much of the city from there, and it really made me feel small seeing how much I was surrounded by. I only traversed a tiny part of that during my two weeks here. Up in the tower, they have those big binocular-like machines, so we picked our favorite area of the city and forked out 1 euro to see it in a bit more detail. I think I managed to find our apartment building with it, which was pretty neat. Below is a photo I took through it of wind turbines way out on the horizon. The city seemed to just end out there and blend in with the fog, but there were these turbines cranking away.

This might be my last post for a while because I’m not really sure what my Internet situation will be like for the next month. Tomorrow morning, it’s off to Prague, and then on Friday down to Vienna. Then we’re going to Copenhagen to visit some Carleton friends and apparently I’ve been assigned to cook the Thanksgiving turkey. That should be interesting.

brilliance

2006-11-12T10:13:00.000Z

Okay, so I am really excited about this.

It might not actually be brilliant, because it was late last night when we came up with it, but I think it's a pretty interesting way of setting up our website and presenting the project. We were trying to write a short overview of the project to put on the very front page of the website, as kind of a way to capture the attention of people, and provide information for those who don't want to read all of our more detailed stuff. I was having a hard time explaining to Joe what I envisioned for this text, and halfway through writing it, it hit me: it was an ABSTRACT!!! And with all of my science/social science background, that idea is way exciting, because that implies that it's introducing some sort of research. That got us to thinking, hey, maybe our project is research, and we really think that it is. It's research into the idea of using traditional mapping platforms (ie Google Earth) as an artistic platform, and our writing thus far about the project has even been pretty close to fitting into the frame I would use for a typical psych research paper. So, I think we're going to set up the website under that framework, presenting our project as an artistic form of research. It still needs some tweaking, but it's seeming like it will fit fairly well into that format. The evolution of mapping essay I posted is the "background" of the project. The project itself is the "results" section. The thing we were working on last night is definitely the "abstract," although it is not quite polished yet, and we are going to be writing a "discussion" that brings together our feelings on the project itself and its place in the larger scope of things. The last part of a research paper, and probably my favorite to write because of how simple it is, is the "methods" section. And voila, our art is a form of research! So, here is the most recent section we have completed. For the rest of them (and the polished product), you will just have to wait for the website. I'm not entirely sure when that will be up, because we want it to look good, but a link will definitely end up here when it is ready.

Methods:
During the nine weeks we spent studying in New York, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin, we selected places that stood out as being notable in our experience of each city as a whole. For each of these places, we built a 3-D model in Google SketchUp that portrays the place, either in an architecturally accurate manner, or a more artistic one. We then created a project in the place, using various digital mediums and software. These media projects were intended to capture the place as we experienced it, creating a snapshot as a record for others to view and understand the elements of place that most stood out to us. The models were imported into Google Earth, and we placed links on them that led to the media projects hosted online. By combining these individual places into one single map, our entire journey is chronicled and archived, and our experience of place can be followed by anybody who is interested.

the long-awaited project

2006-11-11T17:03:00.000Z

Well, I've been talking about it all term. This project has consumed so much of my time, although it's been really fun to work on, and it has finally reached the state (and the point of the term) when it is ready to be unveilled. As I mentioned in my last post, this will all eventually be on a website, but for now, here it is...

The links should all download as .kmz files, which can be opened in Google Earth, which is available for free on Mac, PC, and Linux. Make sure the terrain is turned on (in the check boxes at the bottom), or the models might be floating far above a flat earth. As a mini-explanation of their creation, the models were all built (by me!) in Google SketchUp, a very simple free program that I have been learning how to use this term. The projects the models link to were all created by Joe and I, using digital media and various computer programs to edit and put it together. They will all eventually have some sort of accompanying text explaining why we chose to represent them in the way we did, but for now, here are the files, in approximate order of creation:

New York City:

I-House

El Puerto

Bronx Zoo

NYC Subway

Sambuca

London:

The Eagle and Child

Buckingham Palace

Millennium Bridge

Shikara

ISH

Amsterdam:

Leidseplein

Haarlem Windmill

Apple Inn Hotel

Grocery Store

Waag
(including links "circling the Waag" from projects done by whole class)

evolution of mapping

2006-11-10T11:56:00.000Z

Well, things here are winding down. There is so much I want to see in Berlin, but not enough time to do all that and finish up work. Things are finally coming together though, and Joe and I are getting close to having some sort of presentation ready for the project we have been working on all term (and will continue to work on after this trip is over). We are in the process of setting up a website to house the project, and the other night we were writing some content for that page. The little background paragraph we were working on introduced some cool ideas, and the next thing we knew, we had a mini-essay on the history of mapping. It sets the stage for our project, introducing the concepts that really are the foundation of this sort of mapping exploration. So, for anybody who is interested, here it is, in its current form:

The Evolution of Maps as a Means of Representing Space

Maps, as a tool used in representing place, have been evolving throughout history according to a pattern reflecting both their purposes and the technologies that constrain them. The evolution of maps to this point can be characterized as a continuing process of more accurately representing physical places and their relationships in a way that precisely mirrors their visual appearance. With the digital age, technology has rapidly pushed visual precision to new levels, to the extent that it is appearing that accuracy, at least as perceived through the sense of sight, is beginning to approach its limits. As the traditional mapping sensibility is exhausted, the desire for accurate portrayal of place will naturally extend to the other senses, which can convey place in ways that the sense of sight has never been able to. Sound, emotions, feelings, and a myriad of other forms of perception will be incorporated into maps of the future through artistic means to better embody the places we encounter. As technology makes it increasingly feasible, the desire for “true” portrayals of space will lead people to art because art has, and always will be, the most appropriate means of expressing how something is in all its complexity.

The history of maps is a narrative that is intimately linked to mankind’s ability to gather and disseminate information. In the past, people relied on word-of-mouth stories of far-off places. As the knowledge base expanded and humans developed needs that required finding specific locations that involved complex directions, it became necessary to record one’s conception of space in a more permanent, visually-depictive manner. This is where mapping emerged as a key element of culture. Originally hand-drawn, and more recently, thanks to modern-day technology, cheaply mass-printed, maps made accessible a representation of the world in a portable form.

In this age of computers, information about place has made the jump to the Internet, and mapping has followed as well. Now, huge archives of maps may be accessed, searched, and manipulated from the convenience of a comfy armchair, at no cost to the user. Through online interfaces, such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and Mapquest, a user need only type in departure and destination points, and a map appears with a colored line tracing the path between the locations. Places are connected in a web more tightly than ever, and mapping seems to have reached a new level of accessibility.

In the ever-expanding Internet full of cutthroat competitors, digital mapmakers needed to find a new direction in which to improve, and accuracy became a focus. In 2005, Google released a new mapping platform, Google Earth. This program goes beyond providing a digital version of paper maps by showing the globe as a fabric of full-color satellite images. Users can see the whole world, zooming in on areas of interest, rotating the terrain, and seeing in surprising detail the homes, cars, people, and trees on streets they have previously known only as names on a map.

Google went a step further in visually representing objects in space with the introduction of SketchUp – 3-D model-making software that allows users to build and import buildings into Google Earth – a step that puts mapmaking, or at least a facet of it, into the hands of the map user. With its photo-accurate, satellite capabilities and its robust communal network, Google Earth has become today’s most digitally advanced, public map. While there still is room for improvement in the area of magnification, the threshold of true, visual representations of physical space now appears to be within reach: a 3-D, perhaps live, Google Earth with a finer zoom.

Even if one were to follow the platform’s precision-progression along its seemingly asymptotic advance to infinity, Google Earth would still never be able to adequately represent real places because it can only do so through one sense: the sense of sight. There would still be room for mapping to grow, even in the face of visually-depictive perfection, because the world we live in is experienced through all the senses, not just sight.

Emotion. Sound. Feeling. All of these will be incorporated into maps of the future as people endeavor to better encapsulate the complexity of place. It seems only natural that art will be the form of expressing place in all its intricacies because the reality of a place is far too complex and subjective for anything but art to be able to adequately describe it. We are keenly aware of the fact that our experiences and perceptions are subjective, that they are unique and personally meaningful expressions of reality. Thus, if people desire to accurately represent their significant places in a map context for other people to experience and view in relationship to the surrounding geography, the Google Earth of tomorrow will be the avenue of creative self-expression by which they can best do so. This is the focus of our project: we are exploring the possibilities of the Google Earth medium as an artistic platform for representing place.

urban screens, left and right

2006-11-06T15:24:00.000Z

Our first two organized talks here in Berlin were on a very similar topic: the new urban screens that are springing up in cities all over the world. And, well, I'm not too sure yet what to think of them, but I have some ideas. Before I get into all of that, I'll give a quick overview of our speakers and their talks that prompted my thinking.

The first speaker was really impressive, probably because he is actually involved in conceptualizing and designing projects for the urban landscape, a few of which have been big urban screens. Jan Elder of realities:united talked us through some of the projects he and his brother have orchestrated, and they are really amazing. Their most famous is probably the BIX skin they put on the Kunsthaus Graz, a large center built in Austria as part of some European fair thing (please excuse my ignorance and lack of time to look this all up, I'm sure it's on the website above). It's made up of all these flourescent tubes, so it's way bigger and way cheaper than any super high-tech LED screen could be. And the best part is that it just plays artistic pieces, instead of being full of commercial advertising. The other really neat piece he described to us doesn't actually exist yet, but it involves really tall metal poles that can sway in the wind, as a result of some amazing design. Seriously, how cool is that?

Our second speaker, Mirjam Struppek, has done an incredible amount of research and documentation of urban screens. She shared with us a bunch of projects, many of them interactive, that have taken place over the past few years. She called to our attention the different uses for urban screens, whether they be commercial, artistic, informative, or some combination. They are becoming a common element of the city landscape, but we need to also look at how city culture is shaping and being shaped by these screens.

As commercial screens and advertisements, the things drive me crazy. They make a place feel so impersonal, and they draw attention away from the architecture and other things I actually want to be seeing. I don't like that advertisements are invading so many parts of daily life, and I feel like there need to be places to get away from them. However, I don't mind billboards as much. It's just something about the LED screen, the color, and the motion that draws my attention, as advertisers want, and presents me with advertising I'd rather avoid. Then there is this gray area of screens that were built not necessarily to sell advertising space, but just to make the building famous by being big and flashy. For example, the SPOTS facade realities:united built on an office building on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin was created because the building wanted to draw attention to itself and sell its unused office space. It has succeeded, because most people who travel through the area now notice this huge display of flashing flourescent lights. So, although it plays patterns and artistic pieces instead of advertising, it is still a form of advertising, as any urban screen will almost inevitably be. Then we come to the screens that are art for art's sake, or interactive projects designed to provide people with information or entertainment. Those might have some merit, and they are interesting ways of capturing the attention of people and making them think about things they never may have before. But, the things just bother me because of how flashy they are. They demand attention, and I don't like being told in such a blatant way what elements around me should be looked at.

On Saturday we went on a bus tour of Berlin, or at least the most historically significant parts of it. I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that it was a pretty eye-opening experience to see and hear about what Berlin was like in such recent history. As part of the tour, we stopped by the new Holocaust Memorial, opened in 2005 as a "monument to the murdered Jews of Europe." It is a sprawling area of large gray concrete slabs arranged in a grid. The idea, as it was described to us, is that as you wander the rows, people pass in and out of your vision, but you never really know if and when you will see them again. Pretty powerful stuff. I think the part that hit me hardest was that as I was coming out of it, I came across trees planted where concrete slabs should have been. It was like they were the ones who survived, surrounded on all sides by the graves and monuments of their loved ones. It is really a beautifully designed piece of architecture.

the last leg

2006-11-03T15:05:00.000Z

Well, I'm in Berlin now. And I love this place. Seriously. I just feel so comfortable here. I haven't even seen that much of the city yet, but there's just a feel to it. And I like that everything is so efficient here. Getting out of the airport was the easiest experience of my life, with the baggage carousel right when we stepped into the terminal and no passport control in the 20 meters between there and the front door. Doing laundry today was also lovely, probably because I didn't even have to do it. I took it down to the office at the apartments this morning, gave them 3 euros, and it magically appeared in my apartment, clean and folded, when I got back this afternoon. Basically, I just really like this place. I'm seriously considering taking a term of German back at Carleton so I could come back here eventually and really get a feel for the country.

The only downside is the lack of internet in our housing, and the classroom where I can get free wireless isn't open on the weekend, so this is my last chance to get online before Monday! So, I just wanted to do a quick "hello, I love this place" post before I disappear for a few more days. More to come next week...

when in amsterdam...

2006-10-30T21:36:00.001Z

Do as the Dutch do! Which, contrary to popular opinion, does not include smoking pot or hiring prostitutes (the Dutch claim those are just tourist activities). While on my mis-steps walk (see last post), I had hoped to see the city as the Dutch do, but I fear that most of my subjects were tourists, which makes sense because they were on foot in that part of the city. The logical solution: either get out of that part of the city (or even the whole city) or get off my feet. In the past couple days, I have done both, and I think I've gotten a much better feel for the larger area and culture.

Yesterday, Joe and I decided to spend our afternoon venturing out to Haarlem, a smaller city a very short train ride from Amsterdam. It is beautifully old and quaint, and the center of the city (the Grote Markt) almost feels like a step back in time. In fact, it looks very similar now to how it did in a painting done in 1696. We didn't go into many places, unless you count walking through the old city gate, which is now a bike path through what appears to be a castle standing next to a busy road, but instead spent our time just exploring the area. Architecturally, it looked similar to central Amsterdam, but with fewer canals and many fewer people. It was beautiful, and it looked like such a simple life. The big canal was dotted with old houseboats, and of course there was the stereotypical Dutch windmill. I wish we could have gotten out to see the countryside, but the city proved to be just as peaceful in the right parts. It was almost deserted, and so quiet, and just absolutely beautiful. Amsterdam is almost always bustling in the downtown areas, and it's full of shops and bikes and hustle. In Haarlem, things just felt much more leisurely. The lone bikers moved along at their own pace, and people seemed to just scatter when dusk fell. Interestingly enough, it is the source of the name of Harlem in New York, although having been in both places, they couldn't be much more different. Maybe they were back when the Dutch founded New Amsterdam in Manhattan. History is interesting. But anyway, I think my trip to Haarlem made me appreciate the Netherlands as a whole (even though I didn't get that far out into the rest of the country), and not just Amsterdam.

Then, this morning we decided to try to find a good Dutch breakfast to start our day. After wandering the streets for a while, we concluded that the Dutch must not really eat breakfast, because the only open places we could find served overpriced English breakfast. We decided to try to find a cafe some friends had mentioned that was famous for its Dutch apple pie. When we arrived at Winkel, not only was it open for breakfast, but it had a line out the door. To our great delight, they did serve apple pie, and in fact, it was all they served at that time of day, besides coffee and orange juice. Two bites in, we realized that all the other cafes in the city weren't open yet because they would have no chance to compete with Winkel. We're going back for lunch tomorrow. Eating all this good food has been inspiring me to learn how to cook these sorts of things, and now I am determined to make a good Dutch apple pie.

After our Dutch breakfast (okay, so I don't really know if it was a Dutch breakfast, but it was the breakfast place with the most Dutch people of all the ones we saw), we met up with many of the other Roadtrippers for a yellow bike tour of Amsterdam. No, these are not Carleton yellow bikes that might fall apart at any moment and don't have brakes or handlebars, but rather bikes that can be rented for tours of the city. The tour itself wasn't particularly useful, considering we've been exploring the city for nearly two weeks now, but riding on a bike was just great! Amsterdam on a bike is so much better than any other way you could think to see it. It's almost like the city was built for bikes. Cars and trams are too enclosed, and walking is too slow. On a bike, you can glide up and down the old streets with ease, quickly getting lost in the maze of canals. On that tour, I suddenly understood why so many people in this city ride bikes. I really wish I had been riding a bike during my whole stay here. But, alas, there is only one day left, and it is going to be a busy one. Berlin, here I come!

i feel like a stalker

2006-10-28T18:27:00.000+01:00

The introduction: This past week, we were given the assignment of carrying out a “Mis-Steps” walking project. The basic idea is to take a walk through the city, guided by some concept and structure other than a normal walk would be, and in doing so, experience the city in a new way.

The concept: During my stay in Amsterdam, I’ve walked up a street in central Amsterdam called Warmoesstraat a few times. It’s a skinny street, packed full of sketchy hotels, ethnic restaurants, “adult” video and novelty stores, and coffee shops (which, for those who aren’t familiar with Amsterdam, aren’t where you would go for a morning cup of coffee, but rather for an afternoon joint). Each time I’ve walked it, I’ve noticed how many different types of people were walking through and wondered where they were going. For our walk, Joe and I decided to follow some people who were passing through the area, and in doing so, not only find out where they were going, but experience the city as other Amsterdammers and tourists do.

The plan: Joe and I selected a starting location, the corner of Warmoesstraat and Brugsteeg, right in the heart of the coffee shop district. In the middle of this intersection is a metal panel in the street (pictured at left). To randomly select our subjects to follow, each time we arrived at the intersection, we followed the third person whose foot touched any part of the panel. We followed that person until they stopped at a place for more than one minute, at which point we considered that their destination, took a photo cube there, logged the route, and returned to our starting point to find a new subject. We also, very covertly and stalkerishly, took a picture of the subject we were following sometime during the walk. As we followed, we tried to experience the city as the subject was, going at the same pace, looking at the same things, and, I guess you could say, walking it in their shoes.

The execution: We ended up having a really awesome walk through central Amsterdam, just by following people. Our eight subjects were a variety of demographics, and it was interesting to make inferences about them (where they were from, what they were doing, their relationships with the people they were with, etc.) as we were tracking them. At right is a map of the routes we took, each in a different color. Here are the photos of the subjects, labeled with their corresponding color. It would take far too long to give a full description of my experience on each of the mini-walks, but there are some highlights that exemplify the experience. While following our first subject (orange) and his cronies, we think we were noticed, and realized that we needed to be much more covert in our tracking. Rather than focusing on the person, we tried more to blend in and look at our surroundings for the duration of the project, which made for a more interesting experience. Our second subject (light blue) and his buddies essentially went in a circle to get to their destination, which was kind of silly, but they might not have been in much of a state to navigate, considering their destination was a coffee shop. Our third subject (green) was with an interesting group of punk kids ranging in age from about 15 to 20, and his “destination point” was when he waited for his friends who had gone to use the public urinals. I saw more of those ugly gray urinals on this walk than I had in all my other experiences in Amsterdam combined, and they are really odd, in a kind of disturbing way. Our fourth subject (red) was in a group of really lost older folks who stopped to look at their map for a few minutes at their “destination point” and ended up turning around and going right back where they came from, and then eventually walking back out again. It was really interesting to follow them and stand looking lost while they looked at their map. Our fifth subject (purple) was a man on a mission, walking incredibly fast while talking on his phone. We suspect he may have been late for an appointment, but we’re not really sure because we lost him when he sped around a corner. Our sixth subject (dark blue) just putzed around the area, window shopping a bit, eventually for a whole minute, which meant, by our rules, that we had to stop following him. Our seventh subject (pink) had a rolling suitcase with him that he had to keep picking up to carry on the uneven cobblestone sidewalks. He eventually stopped to look at his map, and a nice bum helped him out. He gave the bum some change before heading on his way. Our last subject (yellow) appeared to be the type I would never expect to see walking through that part of town. Imagine my surprise when she turned into an alley a block from the starting point, unlocked a door, and went in. I have no idea why an older lady would want to live there, or have anything to do there, but I guess looks can be deceptive.

The conclusions: We set out on this walk with a bit of a “psych experiment” mindset (which can be expected, considering we are both psych majors), trying to determine the reasons people of different demographics have for walking through the intersection we selected. It turns out that a fair amount of them were just walking through the area on their way to somewhere else, and people such as our fourth subject, who you wouldn’t expect to have any interest in the area, had probably not intended to pass through there. I was really surprised that by randomly picking people to follow, we ended up traveling in pretty much every possible direction, which means that our intersection is kind of a hub for foot traffic. The walk itself was enjoyable, and we ended up experiencing areas that we may have otherwise not have found our way to, which I guess was the point of this whole thing. Mission accomplished!

new media at its best

2006-10-25T17:34:00.000+01:00

The past couple days, we have visited two of Amsterdam’s leading new media groups: the Netherlands Media Art Institute and the Waag Society. Each group welcomed us graciously, excited to hear about our work and share theirs.

The Netherlands Media Art Institute collects, preserves, displays, and distributes media art. They are also involved in some artistic projects, most notably Elephants Dream, a study in the capabilities of the open-source animation software Blender. During our visit, we were treated to a screening of a hand-picked series of single-channel video art pieces, the first set of which established the most common techniques and goals of the genre, and then a second set of more recent pieces. All of them are available for viewing by the public in their mediatheque (in photo at left), where they have both physical copies and electronic ones available at viewing stations. This is the third place we have visited that is involved in the preservation of media, but the first that has committed to storing it all electronically. Both the Anthology Film Archives and the ARChive of Contemporary Music in New York adamantly collected the best copies they could in the piece’s original form, whether it be film or records, and then focused their work around preserving these. The Netherlands Media Art Institute, on the other hand, is storing all of their collection electronically in uncompressed form, using terabytes of space on hard drives that need to be replaced every three years.

I, like the organizations in New York, am skeptical about the viability of storing important pieces electronically because of the speed at which technology is changing and the danger of malfunction of equipment. But, at the same time, there is no guarantee that the old forms will be practical to view far into the future, both because of changing equipment and technology and decay of the physical film or video. It seems that neither way is a guarantee, and both are very costly, but some intervention is necessary because it would be a shame to not work to somehow preserve these art pieces.

The Waag Society was a real treat to visit because they are not typically open to the public. They are located in the oldest non-religious building in Amsterdam, the 600-year-old former city gate, and actually the site of Rembrandt’s famous Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Now the building stands alone in the middle of Nieuwmarkt Square, in central Amsterdam, and offers a beautiful view of the rooftops from its upstairs windows (photo at right). When we arrived, Floor van Spaendonck and Sam Nemeth gave us a presentation on the group and their purpose. They are funded by the state, and their goal is not to create art for art’s sake, but rather make things that are useful for society. One of their more recent projects is Amsterdam Realtime, where people were given the chance to carry a GPS unit during the day in order to compile a map of the city through the routes a collection of individuals take. The group is also behind an educational game for school groups that uses mobile phones as an interface between the actual city and medieval times. They are even at work on the global scale, trying to implement Creative Commons in India.

After telling us about everything they have been working on, they invited us to make our own projects in response. We had an hour to make a piece around the theme “Circling the Waag”. For mine, I chose to take the theme quite literally, focusing on the architecture of their building and the connections it has with the surrounding area. The building has a central spire, surrounded by six smaller towers topped in spires. For each of these spires, I lined it up in front of the central spire and walked away from it as far as I could while keeping it in view. I then took a photo of the building and from the same location, a photo of something in my vicinity. So, I ended up with six pairs of photos (two pairs are shown at left) taken from the farthest points where unobstructed views of the lined up spires occur. Through this mini-project, I had the chance to explore the surrounding area a bit, taking notice of the differences in architecture and environment between the Waag and the areas around it. I found a wide variety of shops, residences, and people, but they were all connected by their views of the Waag spires.

ballet... and other cultured things

2006-10-24T20:53:00.000+01:00

Well, after almost a week in Amsterdam, we had our first official event related to new media yesterday. That may sound surprising, considering this is a media studies program focusing specifically on new media, but we’ve been studying so much more than that. I’ve begun to think of this seminar as a cross between many subject areas, new media being just one of them. As many off campus programs are, this one is also largely centered around the places in which we are studying, rather than just the things we are studying, and it really needs to be that way to even begin to grasp the relevance of the art we are seeing and making. The physical location and culture shaped around it play a crucial role in development of art at any point in time, new media included.

That being said, our first few days in Amsterdam really were a crash course in the history and culture of this country. I learned, for example, that Holland is actually just a small part of The Netherlands (although definitely the most densely populated), and that people from other areas are typically quite offended when people think they’re from Holland. We were also told to keep in mind that the Dutch are not trying to be rude, but just tend to be task-oriented, straightforward people. Also, translation into English can often come off as being much more rude than intended. Honestly, I’m just impressed that so many people here speak English.

Many of these cultural notes came from Jacob Vossestein, author of Dealing with the Dutch. He gave us a very insightful presentation on his perceptions of the Dutch, as a sociologist. At left, my notes on his example of culture being like an onion. It’s everybody’s favorite metaphor, including Shrek. However, this presentation on culture ended up turning into a discussion, or a voicing of viewpoints, not necessarily in response to each other, on perceptions between the Dutch and Americans and the validity of stereotyping. It was interesting, although too heated and political to be particularly productive. One of Jacob’s most notable ideas was that the rest of the world should have some sort of a vote (although less than Americans of course) in US elections because of the vast influence of US policy on the rest of the world. I’ve heard it before, but never so seriously.

Our other cultural/historical exploits included a lecture by art historian Marietta de Bruine on the Golden Age of Dutch painting. It was very reminiscent of my high school art history class (not necessarily in the level or anything, but in the content), and it was nice to revisit looking at art from a critical perspective, trying to infer meaning. Now I really want to go to some museums here, especially because we have museum passes!

My favorite event from the first few days in Amsterdam was definitely going to see Carmen, performed by het nationale ballet. I’m not very familiar with the story, or with ballet, but I know enough to know that it was absolutely beautiful. I hadn’t been to a ballet since I was about 8 years old and saw my next door neighbor perform, but it’s just amazing how a story can be told just through dance and music. And, it was at the beautiful Muziektheater in the heart of Amsterdam. Such a good introduction to the city.

So, now that we have been introduced to the Dutch, we are digging into new media, both visiting places that are at the heart of it in Amsterdam, and working like crazy on our projects. Super busy, but super good as well.

i'm still here, i promise

2006-10-22T21:50:00.000+01:00

So, I know I've been really bad with keeping this thing updated. There is seriously just not enough time here to get everything done. I have been working like crazy on this big project that I've been saying for weeks will be unveiled soon, and this time, I really think that it will. Joe and I are almost done with the New York and London pieces, and we're hoping to get those up on the web for any and all to see by the time we leave Amsterdam.

Did I mention yet that I'm in Amsterdam? Because I am. I don't feel like I've really gotten a good feel for the city yet, but I love pretty much everything I've seen. We're staying in this place called the Apple Inn, and it's this big old house that they converted into a hotel. The staircases are deathly steep, and every time I walk up or down with a computer I'm clutching the railing, but it's an adventure! It's on this old street with all these other old houses, and, well, the whole city just feels very old. There's canals all over the place (although this photo was taken in some big reflecting pool, hence the reflection in it), and more bikes than cars. As a pedestrian in this city, I feel so inferior. What would be sidewalks in most cities are actually bike lanes, and the actual sidewalks are uneven and have poles all over the place and bikes parked in them and all that fun stuff. It's a very pretty city to walk, as long as you stay in the right areas. We kind of accidentally wandered into the red light district tonight and it was, well, not pretty, to say the least. More than anything, I just found it to be very sad, both for the prostitutes and for the people who feel like they need to go there.

I really love being in a place where they speak a different language. It feels like there's so much more going on around me that I'm not aware of, and I feel like so much of an outsider. I bet Berlin will be even better for that, although I will be going back to my German roots (I'm more German than anything else, although I'm pretty sure it's less than half). Going to the grocery store and figuring out what I'm buying is such a puzzle. I pretty much live on cheese and meat and avocado, and I have determined that "kipfilet" is either chicken or turkey, and any kind of cheese they sell is good (or at least I haven't found a bad one yet), so I seem to be managing. They have lots of good juice here too.

I've found I'm much happier in Amsterdam than I was in London. We live in a beautiful place that overlooks a lovely green garden that just might start turning pretty colors while we're here. It rains almost every night but rarely during the day, and when I go outside it smells like Christmas. Food is cheap and good. I'm getting things done on my project, and it has much more direction and urgency than before.

There's so much more I could talk about, but not enough time, and I don't like making long posts, so it will all have to wait for another day. By the way, I know there's people reading this thing because I have a hit counter, but I'm really curious who you all are. If you please, leave a comment saying hello... and maybe let me know what you think of my blog. I'd appreciate it.

everything that London isn't

2006-10-17T17:11:00.000+01:00

I think my favorite day so far in England has been the one I didn't spend in London. On Sunday, a group of us took a bus through some of those classic rolling green hills to Oxford to spend the day wandering around. We sat in a cemetery eating tiny desserts that had been beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a little white ribbon like a birthday present. I saw more clock towers and gargoyles than I could ever imagine existed. And by the time we left, I was wishing we had spent the two weeks there instead of London, although I guess that Oxford isn't really the biggest hotspot for new media and other forms of art.

Maybe it's just that I haven't gotten around enough in London, but other than the area around the river, it really isn't that pretty. The architecture is not terribly impressive, although I do think it's cool that there are curved buildings built on curved streets. And then of course, there are the famous places and cathedrals and stuff, but just taking a random walk through London, not much strikes me as being beautiful. Oxford is just the opposite. Everything is old and covered in moss and beautiful relief sculptures and the houses are so cute and British. It's quaint and majestic at the same time. And I know my description is not doing the place justice at all, which is why I'm posting some of my photos from the day.

We ate dinner at The Eagle and Child pub, which is where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien hung out on a weekly basis with their other scholarly friends (they were known as the Inklings) and drank beer and discussed philosophical issues. And read and discussed thier writings in progress. There is just so much smart stuff that has gone on and is still going on in that town. We walked through a couple of the 39 colleges scattered throughout the city (unfortunately it's tough to get into the one where much of Harry Potter was filmed) and were amazed by the bright green perfectly manicured lawns and huge buildings. Who wants to go back to Mudd and Olin and the LDC after that? Seriously. Then again, Oxford is also quite the tourist town. I got the feeling that everybody there was either affiliated with a school or not from there. It would make for an odd living dynamic, although I'm sure I would fit right in as both a student and a tourist.

Alas, we leave London tomorrow for Amsterdam. I'm happy to be going... off to somewhere new where we hopefully won't be quite as busy and will have more pleasant living arrangements. There's some crazy Dutch or German or something kids staying here who are loud and obnoxious and just really rude. I guess we're staying at a cute little hotel in Amsterdam that's on a park, and I'm excited for that. My next post will most likely be from there... yay!

what do you mean we aren't press?

2006-10-15T23:12:00.000+01:00

This past weekend in London's Regent's Park, just a short walk away from where we're staying, one of the biggest art fairs in the world took place. The Frieze Art Fair featured works from galleries all over the world, and buyers came from all over the world to make connections and purchases. With a ticket price of 18 pounds (that's about $35) just to walk in the door to the massive tent and wander the aisles, not just anybody attended. I felt so out of place and uncomfortable, it's not even funny. High class and their art just isn't for me.

So, why did I even go? Well, our class was putting together an audio documentary on the Frieze Fair to be broadcast on Resonance FM here in London. The piece I was working on was a Vox Pop, which is basically a short 3 minute piece that contains a few questions asked by the interviewers (us!), each one followed by a series of different responses we got. Our goal was to talk with 25 people of varying backgrounds, asking each of them the following four questions: What is your name and where are you from? What is your occupation? Briefly, how would you define art? What, if anything, have you seen today at the Frieze that you categorically dislike or might not consider to be art? Our original plan was to attend the fair on press day and blitz together our 1 hour show to be broadcast the next day, but it turns out that a bunch of college students aren't considered official press. Not even sweet talking from VIP John Schott (whose documentary from 1973 was being shown at the fair) could get us in that afternoon with the celebrities and press. Bummer. So, we had to attend on opening day, with all the lowly folks, who turned out to not be lowly at all.

I consider myself to be fairly cultured. I can enjoy a good museum, typically can recognize something famous when I see it, and figured I'd fit right in at Frieze. However, I didn't really anticipate the caliber of the other attendees. After an afternoon of wandering around trying to find people to interview, I can reasonably group them into two categories that I think describe the population of attendees fairly well. First were those who wouldn't talk with us, typically because they were too busy examining the art and didn't seem to care about a radio program being put together by some scrubby-looking college students. Then, there were the people who did talk with us. Our first two questions about demographics ended up being very telling: over half of the people we spoke with were not from the UK (and therefore had traveled very far to come to the Frieze), and many of our interviewees were very involved in the art world, either as artists, gallery owners, curators, or students (mostly at graduate levels). So, as an undergrad Psychology student who had taken all of one college art (actually media studies) class before coming on this program, I was thoroughly impressed by all the smart answers we got. People explained their feelings on art and the Frieze with such precision and thought and variety, and this was all in a completely on-the-spot interview. Way intimidating. All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't have to answer those questions and have my stuff edited in with all theirs.

The piece was cut together that evening and soon after incorporated into our 1 hour class show that will be broadcast sometime in the near future. I don't know the exact details, but check the main Roadtrip blog for more info as it comes.

As far as the art goes, there was some pretty awesome stuff there. I also saw quite a bit that I, well, didn't want to see, to say the least. Walking around in the Frieze was kind of like when I first got to London and kept accidentally glancing at the ads in the phone booths and doing a double take when I realized what they were for. But seriously, who would want some of that stuff hanging there on the wall in their posh little apartments? It's embarrassing. And one of those things I just don't understand and probably never will.

look ma, i'm on tv!

2006-10-10T20:02:00.000+01:00

So in the classic old Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, little Mike Teevee exclaims something along those lines to his mother when he excitedly transports (and shrinks) himself on what appeared to be a television screen. The past couple days have been exactly this: meeting Willy Wonka and then ending up on TV. But not quite.

Yesterday morning, we were treated to a "circuit bending" workshop led by Ben Goldstone, a savvy and somewhat crazed English man whose passion is making sound in unconventional ways. He is pictured at left with his prized Furby (before Caitlin skinned it), showing us how he can make these seemingly benign toys lose their minds. Between the mad scientist look, British accent, and his enthusiasm for his work, there were times when I swore I was watching Willy Wonka reincarnated. Our workshop was focused around taking those annoying little kids toys that make sounds when you press buttons, unveiling the circuit boards, and then connecting them in unintented ways to make new sounds, eventually played throug amplifiers we built. I fought withh glued plastic for a few minutes to open my talking telephone before prodding the circuit boards contained inside to make some slightly less annoying (and more cool!) sounds. Overall, a very neat workshop, although I would have benefitted from some more specific instruction after being handed a car stereo speaker, board with a bunch of wires, some cords, and a photocopied sheet of paper full of symbols that might well have been hieroglypics to use to build an amplifier. I was even more lost when it came time to build an oscillator, so I just went back to making noises with my toy phone.

Today, after heading over to the Tate Modern to meet with Stuart Comer, the curator of film (and a Carleton grad... these people are all over the place!), we trekked out to Newham to visit the borough's CCTV control centre. We met with two of the directors, who took us on a tour of their surprisingly small facilities where they monitor all of their surveillance cameras scattered throughout the borough. I was surprised that during our entire tour, one of the employees was focused in on a lady sitting on a bench who was drinking and had concealed something in one of her bags. However, the whole time we were there, all she was doing was eating fried chicken. Way to keep the public safe, guys. There could have been something more significant happening on one of the other 500 cameras, but we will never know (unless they end up needing to look something up in one of their recordings, which they store for 31 days). Regardless of the comfort that comes from knowing I'm probably just on one of the many tiny screens that's not actually being watched by anybody, it still freaks me out a little bit to see how the cameras can be controlled to swivel and zoom in to very close shots of me if somebody wanted to. To complete the slight freak out, we walked into one of the last rooms of the tour, and BAM! there we are, standing at a bus stop an hour before. The camera panned in and out, and none of us had any consciousness that we were being watched. If you look really closely at the picture on the right, maybe you can see me... towards the middle of the group, wearing pink. So yes, it's not a close-up at all, but just the fact that it could be is enough to creep me out a bit.

After another brilliant meal at Shikara (65 Great Titchfield St... anybody in London needs to eat at this place), I returned to ISH to dig in on project work. There is always so much to do and so little time.

more london fun

2006-10-07T16:22:00.000+01:00

So yesterday I finally got a taste of London rain. And wind. And cheap umbrellas. We walked down to the Tate Modern, and it was nice by the time we got there, but we also looked like wet dogs from the downpour that had caught us. And I had damp feet the rest of the day because my shoes contained small puddles. The museum was nice, although it would have been way cooler if their main exhibit had been open. I guess it opens on the 10th, so I just might have to go back. They were setting it up, and it appears to consist of a lot of very tall spiral slides. And if I get to slide down these spiral slides, I think I'd be willing to walk down there in a blizzard for that. My favorite piece (other than the awesome slides) was one that is very appropriate to be posting in this blog: Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone. I don't quite understand it, but it is really cool to slap a lobster on a telephone. Of course in a very artistic way. As you can see.

I did get a picture of the actual London Bridge yesterday, along with the ominous storm clouds on their way out. The area down by the river is still my favorite place in London.

london bridge

2006-10-05T00:48:00.000+01:00

Well, no map yet, but I think I'm a bit closer to getting my bearings when it comes to navigating London. We walked down to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, which was a solid two miles across town, and it was nice to get out and see many of the sights. There were a couple places that I recognized from yesterday's bus tour, and I'm sure there would have been more if I had been slightly more awake yesterday. The only problem with walking is that it took slightly more time than anticipated, so we had to save dinner until afterwards. We had lovely seats right on the railing of the balcony on the side of the stage, and after getting past a bit of vertigo, enjoyed The Comedy of Errors. I did learn my lesson though: no matter how boring or difficult to follow the opening monologues are, listen carefully to them. The rest of the play would have been a bit easier to follow if I had.

Now for my big question. I couldn't ask it right away, or jumping eyes may have seen it before absorbing the title of this post. When you see the words "london bridge," do you immediately think "is falling down, falling down, falling down"? Because I certainly do. And I saw London Bridge today! It is not falling down, which is probably a good thing. I didn't get a picture of it, but I did take one looking the other direction because it was just too pretty to pass up. The area around the Thames is absolutely beautiful. Especially on such a nice night (we've had very good luck with the weather here so far) when you can see all the surrounding area with such clarity. I love the idea of building a city around a river and having it be such a bustling area. I mean, it's not the busiest part of London at all, but there are a lot of people and shops along it. I wish more cities had rivers so prominently featured. Yes, a lot of the big ones, especially those that are older, were built near rivers, but often the centers of the cities, as far as I can tell from my experience, aren't terribly close to the water. I wish they were. End of random thoughts for the day. Cheers! (gotta love those Brits!)

across the pond

2006-10-04T15:36:00.000+01:00

So, I'm finally in London and not deliriously tired, so I figured it's time for a catch-up post before things here get rolling too fast. The last week or so in New York was very museum-y with lots of project work time put in as well. The project is... well... coming along. Kind of slowly. But hopefully we can get the loose ends tied up on everything pretty quickly and get the New York phase of it up and running.

I don't even know where to start on all the stuff we did that last week in New York. I apologize in advance for how jumpy this post is going to be. But here goes...

Last Tuesday we checked out some galleries in Chelsea. They are seriously all over the place. It amazes me that there are enough people interested in buying art to keep them in business. My favorite piece (and I feel horrible for not knowing who the artist was) kind of reminded me of a combination of my first kindergarten show and tell projects because each week there was a different color for the theme. That doesn't sound like much of a compliment for this art, but it was really cool... just so much different stuff put together in a really interesting way. That afternoon we met with Alexis Bhagat and he took us to see/hear a couple sound art installations. The first one was pretty cool... a piece by Max Neuhaus consisting of a pure tone coming up from one of the subway grates in the middle of Times Square. I guess it's been going on for quite a few years and has some urban legends surrounding its source. The second, a place called Dream House, was cool in theory but a bit painful in reality. It was this room bathed in purple light that was really from red and blue spotlights pointed at two of the walls, and it contained a really loud sound, or I guess combination of sounds. And then there was also this really potent incense burning. It was interesting for the first few minutes, but then it just got really overwhelming for my senses. I guess it was a good experience, but I can say now that I'm not a huge fan of sound art.

Wednesday consisted of a trip to the Museum of the Moving Image, where we had a great guided tour of their exhibits on the history and process of filmmaking, television, and video games. It was really neat, especially after taking Intro to Media Studies last winter. Too bad that class couldn't make a field trip out to New York to see it then. Afterwards, we headed over to check out MOMA for a few hours. There were so many things there that I was familiar with, which made it very cool. There was an installation by Nam June Paik, Untitled, that consisted of a self-playing piano and video cameras and all these monitors playing the videos being taken and other crazy things. It was cool to finally see something by one of the artists I had read so much about over the summer. Wandering through the galleries upstairs, I kept stumbling across so many famous pieces that I had learned about in AP Art History back in my sophomore year of high school, which was also really neat. I guess they have to be displayed somewhere, and the MOMA is a large, famous museum, but it was still crazy to walk into a room and see van Gogh's Starry Starry Night or a room full of Picasso or Seurat.

Our last museum-ish experience was our visit to the ARChive for Contemporary Music, a collection of over a million records, two copies of each one they can obtain. Their goal is to archive music from the 1950's to the present and then make it available to the public. A very noble cause, and it seems like they have a lot of support from people in the music industry. I just wonder how much of this stuff is ever going to get used. I mean, they have some extraordinarly obscure records, and right now they're expanding into some crazy foreign music as well. I'm kind of skeptical about the value of preserving things just for the sake of preserving them... although I suppose it's kind of hypocritical to say that what the MOMA is doing is great, but not the ARChive. But I mean, it gets to the point where people are putting so much effort into saving everything, and it's like we're stuck in the past or something. I don't know.

My last couple days were spent wrapping up loose ends and helping some friends film stuff for their project. We talked to a bum in Central Park who was trying to give us acting tips because he had tried to be an actor (his only credits were his high school plays). He also told us that the key to acting was the walk, and that he could imitate anybody's walk, but he wanted us to pay him to demonstrate, which we didn't want to do. It was funny though. It's amazing how much people notice a few cameras in a public place.

The trip over here was looooong... my first voyage overseas. I officially hate flying overnight. They served us dinner... and then 3 hours later served us breakfast. Cruel and unusual punishment, if you ask me. After breakfast I did see a very cool sunrise though. I didn't actually see the sun come up, but it was starting to get light on the horizon, and for some reason, the light spread itself out into the whole spectrum, with this really deep red right on the horizon, and then all the way through to indigo at the top that blended into the midnight blue of the sky. Way cool. I took a picture, but it turned out really dark and didn't quite capture the amazingness. You can see the colors though, which is the part that was most surprising for me.

London is interesting so far. Very different. We're living in a place called the International Students House, although I haven't really seen any other students yet. The rooms are TINY (probably about 11 x 12 feet, with 3 bunk beds and 6 girls with tons of stuff) and there aren't any outlets anywhere. I'm currently in the pub (the cybercafe didn't have outlets... how weird is that?) and there's a creepy lady here smoking and reading a newspaper half-out loud in kind of a hissing voice. Everybody smokes here and it's really quite gross. I swear I'm going to get lung cancer. And I feel really lost all the time because I don't have a map yet and the streets aren't in a grid. I think we're going to walk over to the theater tonight, so maybe I'll be able to get my bearings a bit better. And buy a map. It sounds like I hate this place, but I really don't. It's just different.

nextfest

2006-10-02T04:03:00.000+01:00

Okay, so it has been a really long time since I last updated this thing. Almost a whole week, in fact. A ton has gone on, but on the eve of my departure for London, I don't really have time to go into too much detail on everything. So, for now, I'll just go over the big activity of the weekend. Hopefully once I get to London and (keeping fingers crossed) get an internet connection that isn't as pathetically slow, I'll be able to update this thing with pictures and such much more easily. Although I have a feeling that London will be even busier than NYC, which will be... well... insane. But I'm ready!

Saturday was spent at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, the beautiful site of the Wired NextFest. It was a showcase of some of the coolest new tech gadgets, big and small, that people have been working on recently, kind of like a peek at what the future may be like. It seriously looked like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie, with big lit orbs and crazy robots and more technology than I could ever try to understand. Overall, it was very cool to see what people have been coming up with. However, I have two complaints: First, it felt a lot like a marketing ploy, with GM showcasing their new cleaner energy cars and the new BlackBerry Pearl available to test at about 5 kiosks scattered throughout the center. Then, kind of along the same lines, I felt like so much of it was just pushing the infusion of technology into so many areas that it's really not needed in. I mean, seriously, who needs a pair of shirts that can "send" hugs to each other via vibrations and heat? Or bright metallic female robots that can be lead in a waltz? I can do that, and I'm a real girl.

There was one thing I saw that stood out to me as being particularly useful and practical: the VeinViewer by Luminetx. This awesome piece of equipment instantly displays the veins in the area in an image projected directly onto the skin. As somebody with impossibly small veins, getting blood drawn is always a tricky procedure, often with a few unsuccessful attempts carried out before actually getting something. The VeinViewer uses some pretty awesome technology, taking advantage of the fact that hemoglobin (the protein contained in red blood cells that binds oxygen) absorbs near-infrared light. So, when this near-IR light is directed at the area, a camera picks up the image of the light reflected back from areas not containing hemoglobin within the first 8mm or so of the tissue (and you wouldn't want them digging for blood much further in than that). It then processes this image and projects it back onto the skin in visible light, with the areas containing hemoglobin (and blood!) darkened. Way cool. Seriously. So, after watching a few people check out their veins under this machine, I decided to give it a try, and quickly discovered why getting blood drawn is such a big ordeal for me. Most people had these big black webs of veins running all down their forearms, but I just had this one darker area on the inside of my elbow with not much on the rest of my arm. I didn't have a chance to snap a picture of it, but believe me, it was pretty pathetic. So, at just $25,000 each (okay, so that's quite a bit, but not in comparison to most hospital equipment), they seem to be a very practical addition to doctors offices. I'd be so excited if one of these things was used on me next time I have my blood drawn.

I feel like this is getting a bit long, but there is just one more thing I must share. At NextFest, I picked up a free sample of the new Coca-Cola BlaK in a little glass bottle (a very important detail, as you will see in about 20 seconds, depending on how fast you read). It is basically a super caffeinated beverage for those addicted to both Coke and coffee who are too lazy to drink them separately. The stuff was horrible, but I might not be the person to ask, considering I don't like Coke and am not a huge coffee fan either. So, anyway, as Joe and I were eating lunch, he was tapping his half full bottle on the cement block we were sitting on. We were surprised to notice some fizz seeping out from under the label near the bottom of the bottle, but didn't really think much of it. A few taps later, and **BAM**, disgusting coffee/coke mixture everywhere. What happened, you might ask? Well, the entire bottom of the bottle flew off. In the photo, you see the remainder of it and a small piece of glass hanging out in the caffeinated mess. The bottom, as it ended up a solid 10 feet away, wouldn't fit into the photo very easily. We were joking that it's too bad it didn't take out one of my eyes or something, or I could have sued. But I'd much rather have my eyes. End of story. End of post.

My next update will come from London. My first overseas trip! Unless you count walking over the Mexican border into Tijuana for an afternoon...

uh oh... loose in nyc:

2006-09-26T03:46:00.000+01:00

...................... Lions .......................................... and Tigers ..................

.................. and Bears ....................................... OH MY! ......................
(Bronx Zoo, anyone?)

games

2006-09-24T19:26:00.000+01:00

So yesterday there was this big block party/demonstration on the street between I-House and the subway. It was an anti-gentrification thing... I guess being close to Columbia is taking its toll on the neighborhood. But anyway, they had the police come out to block off the street and keep an eye on things, and there were just a lot of people out talking up the posters and such, selling things, and just hanging out. The thing that surprised me most was how so many kids seeped out of the woodwork and congregated in the street, playing a bunch of different games all jumbled up through each other, and just having a blast. I had never really seen kids out in that area before, which, now that I think about it is kind of surprising because they don't have their own outside play space in their backyard like I did when I was growing up. But even after the police left and opened the streets back up to traffic later in the evening, a few of the kids stayed out, playing some sort of game of catch in the street, parting to the sides each time a car passed.

Between my walks past the block party, I went down to Eyebeam for the second night of Come Out and Play. They had a panel discussion with five scholars/video game theorists/urban game designers/game researchers/lots of other impressive titles. One of the panelists, Jesper Juul, put it nicely when he said that "we are the hillbilly astronauts of game design." Anyway, these game folks were discussing their views on the big urban/ubiquitous/street games being put on at this and other game festivals and events throughout the world in recent years. The thoughts of the night that were met with a sizeable round of applause from the audience were those of Jane McGonigal on the necessity of committing to expand the occurrence and scope of ubiquitous games (as she thinks they should be called, as they can be played in social spaces other than streets). She ended up suggesting that the ideal would be when people play these high-tech urban games in a sort of "pick-up" setting. I found this, well, a bit disheartening, after seeing all these kids running around playing with balls and scooters and whatever else they could find. As of now, the tech-infused urban games seem to be appealing mostly to the older (20's-40's) crowd, as many of them require cellphones and the ability to move freely throughout a space, but what's to say how this is going to change the face of children's play? Will there be a time when kids aren't interested in games of pick-up baseball or four square or catch? That would just make me sad.

come out and play!

2006-09-23T17:06:00.000+01:00

This seems to be the time of year for new media-related festivals, as another big one kicked off last night. However, before we got to that point, we met with some folks at the hosting site, Eyebeam, who are doing very cool things. The Graffiti Research Lab is comprised of a group of programmers and innovators who are exploring new forms of urban graffiti. One of their latest projects involves LED lights attached to magnets that they call "throwies" because they can be, well, throwed at things, creating a semi-permanent, chaotic form of graffiti involving much of the general public. They are also experimenting with a very cool machine: a 3-D printer that has so far been used mostly to print models of the head of one of the artists [at left]. Overall, very technologically and conceptually innovative, and I plan on following their work to see what else they come up with. Also during our visit, we met with the director of Eyebeam and took a tour of the rest of the facilities, including their education department, which puts on programs for school-age kids to get them excited about new forms of art.

After a trip over to the Postmasters Gallery to see Natalie Jaremijenko's new exhibit, we headed back over to Eyebeam for the opening of the Come Out and Play festival. It features about thirty big urban games played in various locations in Manhattan, and is much bigger than last weekend's Conflux festival. Even as hundreds of people ran off to play games, the venue remained buzzing with activity. Notable was the performance of Modal Kombat, a couple of guys who were playing Mortal Kombat [and later Mario Kart, at right] with their guitars as the controllers. Various pitches, sequences, and volumes played on the guitars corresponded to actions on a traditional controller. The crowd had a great time watching them play, and it actually ended up sounding surpisingly good. Another twist on an old video game was the larger than life Space Invaders, played on the side of a building and controlled by the player moving his arms and torso.

Another highlight of the past couple days was not one, but two encounters with Mexican Mariachi bands. Seriously, how cool is that? The first one was the biggest Mariachi band I've ever seen, comprised of about seven men playing in a pretty good restaurant called Mama Mexico. They even had a trumpet! Very authentic, and it reminded me a lot of Old Town Mexican Cafe back home. And the second was a not so great group of three men who popped onto our subway car and played a song. However, it was the first time I have ever seen people give money to those folks on the subway who demand your attention, and they didn't even have to do the "Can I have your attention? I just need a meal" schpeel, so I was pretty impressed.

various film stuff

2006-09-21T20:12:00.000+01:00

It's been a few days, so I think an update is in order. Things have been kind of low-key lately... I've been working a lot on my big project, which should be presentable, at least in its first form, very soon. We did have a pretty big day yesterday, when we had the chance to meet with a couple groups of folks that are doing very cool stuff with film.

First, we trekked out to Anthology Film Archives for a special screening and tour. It's always very cool to meet Carleton grads who are out and about in the world working at jobs they absolutely love. Here, we met John Miripiri, who told us about the work being done at the archives. They have the largest collection of avant-garde cinema, and they are supported by some of the biggest names in the field (like Jonas Mekas, who unfortunately didn't make it out to meet with us). That said, it was surprising what a low budget place it was. They have a couple very run-down theaters, in comparison to most of the places showing feature films these days, and their offices, storeroom, and library are too small for the work they're doing. It's just really unfortunate that they don't have a larger budget to improve their facilities and bring in more staff to work on preserving these films that are otherwise not being preserved and will be lost eventually without intervention.

Then we headed over to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts to check out their animation department. We met with John Canemaker, a professor there who has had quite the career in animation. My jaw dropped when he mentioned in passing the Oscar he won. The program there has spouted out some animators who are in the center of what's going on at Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc. It looks like a pretty awesome undergrad program, although it's not really my kind of thing. I'll stick to my midwest liberal arts education.

Which brings me to one more thing I've been realizing the past week or two: I'm not really a city girl. Yes, I grew up in a decent sized city, but in the more suburban area of it. New York is pretty awesome, and it's been really fun trekking around and being overwhelmed by how many big, cutting-edge places are packed into this city, but it's just a bit too much for me. The other day, I ended up walking over 100 blocks from where I'm staying down into Chelsea, and halfway through, I felt like I just needed to get away from all of the people and noise and shops and trash (they pile trash bags on the sidewalks here! where are the dumpsters?) and go take a walk in the arb or something. Yes, there's Central Park here, but it's not the same. At all.

make do and mend

2006-09-19T03:30:00.000+01:00

So, on Saturday, I had a chance to sit down and talk for a bit with Hilary Jack while she was hanging out at the Conflux HQ presenting her latest work: "Make do and Mend" (also known as the umbrella project). Hilary and her friend and fellow artist Paul Harfleet came out from Manchester (yes, in the UK) to spend the week in New York for Conflux.

Hilary's project involves taking found items off the streets, repairing them, and then replacing them where she found them. It was initially done somewhat out of convenience: she found an umbrella on a subway on a rainy day, repaired it and used it, and then left it where she found it in case another subway user was unfortunate enough to be stuck without an umbrella.

For this execution of the project, Hilary picked up some items she found around the Conflux HQ a few days before her presentation. She ended up with quite a few umbrellas (it was a rainy week in NY), a couple pairs of pants she found in a gutter, a ring that had been run over by a few cars, and a gutted baseball. She repaired as many umbrellas as she could (although a few were too shot to be salvaged), took the pants to be dry cleaned, and took the ring to a jeweler. She couldn't find anybody who knew how to repair the baseball, but she's hoping to get that done eventually. After her exhibit at Conflux, I went with her to replace the items right where she found them.

She's not really sure what happens to these things after she puts them back, but she says that the process is what she cares about. She takes all these items that were almost built to break (how durable can you expect $2 umbrellas to be?) and repairs them, often at more cost than getting a new one. When she leaves them in the street, there's a good chance they will eventually be discarded anyway, but she will have done something, realistically quite futile, to augment the cycle of using and discarding cheap items in a consumer world.

I snapped some great photos, but the internet here is ridiculously slow tonight, so they will have to wait. More to come in the online magazine highlighting Hilary and other artists at Conflux.

conflux... and other weekend activities

2006-09-19T02:40:00.000+01:00

As you may have noticed, I've kind of gone missing from this blog in the past few days. I've had a busy weekend running around meeting with artists, visiting with a friend from school, and starting to work on some art of my own. Highlights are as follows:

Conflux ran from Thursday through Sunday, and each day featured artists showcasing their works at the main gallery, giving talks at local bars, and leading excursions out into the neighborhood and larger city. The projects all had something to do with psychogeography: the artists' way of interacting with the spaces around them.

As far as general impressions of the Conflux festival go, it was interesting. It was a bit of an adventure: at times, it all felt very disorganized and honestly a bit boring, but there were also some fascinating projects on display and being carried out during the duration of the festival.

My main complaint, and maybe this is just because I'm not very familiar with the field yet, but many of the projects just didn't really feel like art. Most of them were interesting, but just not terribly artistic. As an example, take the lecture I attended that discussed a commute done in a kayak that included a trek through a ditch. Interesting? Could be. Art? I'm skeptical. Another project of this type is "Freestyle SoundKit" by Jessica Thomson (photo below). She designed a set of devices that picked up impacts on pressure sensors and produced an audio beat on each impact.

I also had the chance to conduct a more formal interview with an artist to include in the Roadtrip Conflux magazine (more to follow on that!), and I'll go into more detail on that one later.

As far as the rest of the weekend goes, it was pretty awesome. Pinsh came out from Carleton to visit her friend Kris, so Joe and I met up with them for dinner and an excursion into Brooklyn. At dinner, the boys ended up ordering almost matching pasta:

Other highlights included getting a Berry Lime Sublime smoothie at Jamba Juice and finally going to see Little Miss Sunshine, which was very good.

Today I also dug in on my big project of the trip, which is going to be AWESOME. Seriously. Stay tuned for more on that, hopefully within the next week or so. It is going to rock your socks.

raaaaaainy day

2006-09-14T23:32:00.000+01:00

New York is absolutely beautiful in the rain.

And here's one just as beautiful, but in kind of the opposite way.

Had lunch at a pretty good sandwich place... probably one of the best meals I've had so far in New York. I didn't notice until looking at my picture that there was a little surveillance camera hiding in the corner.

We tromped across Central Park in the rain to catch the tram over to Roosevelt Island. Pretty quiet place, but a cool view of Manhattan.

Other stops of the day included a funny little thrift store and FAO Schwarz. Quite opposite places, but each had its own charm.

I still haven't really picked a direction for my big project of the term, but I'm sure I'll get it figured out pretty soon. Until then, I will explore and take pictures, which has been great so far.

cubes and bananas

2006-09-14T01:31:00.000+01:00

1. Google Earth officially rocks my world. It is soon going to be invaded by cubes, so watch out! Haha this will be very confusing for anybody who wasn't at our meeting this morning, but purposefully so.

2. MonkeyTown was pretty sweet. We met with the folks from the Institute for the Future of the Book there, and it was just a cool atmosphere and an interesting presentation from them. Here's a couple pictures of the dining part of it, which apparently has really good food that I just might have to try later this weekend when I'm out in Broooklyn again.

I'm kind of skeptical about the digital book, or BOOK (that's upside down, although you can't really tell) idea. There's just a lot of value in having the actual printed material in hand, and especially with old books, the book itself - the binding and structure, are art. My summer job has made me such a library nerd. Yes, it would be convenient to take a whole library of books in one electronic piece of equipment, but I don't think the printed book will ever become obsolete. People can try to compare it to the switch from cassettes to CD's to mp3's, but the difference is that all of those formats are already mediated like the digital book would be. Printed books are like live music that you can relive over and over again.

3. Where are the bananas, you might ask? Well, MonkeyTown. Except they didn't actually have any. And I want to go shopping for fruit at a grocery store that isn't twice as expensive as it should be, if those even exist here.

4. Just because I like it (and yes, I'm aware it's blurry, but that's part of why I like it), here's a picture I snapped yesterday on the way down to the subway.

5. I am officially done for the night. I need a few hours off. Yay!

day 2 in new york

2006-09-13T03:34:00.000+01:00

Today was much slower paced... a nice reprieve in prep for a big weekend. Found out we'll have the chance to work with more experienced New Media artists, which should be pretty sweet. I think it will be nice to be able to be a part of bigger projects that I would never be able to make myself because I have no idea how to do any of the programming stuff. I'm really just feeling quite clueless in general at this point... hopefully by just going out and doing stuff, meeting with artists at Conflux, etc, I'll be able to get some project ideas started.

As far as what I did today, pretty uneventful. I was feeling exhausted by midday, so I took a nap in the afternoon. Then I headed downtown to meet up with some friends for dinner. It was my first time out navigating the city on my own, and not quite as scary as I thought it would be. The subway station at Times Square is absolutely insane... people going in so many directions, and they are all just so focused on their destination. I almost walked into so many people... there must be a trick to being able to walk in a straight line and having people go around you instead of the opposite, which is what I found happening to me.

I think that at this point, even cooler than the city itself and the buildings and the history, is just the people. You hear the most amazing little tidbits of people's lives when you're walking past, and there are hundreds of thousands of these people out and about in the city. Most of them you just walk by without giving it a thought, but then there's others that are more memorable. Like the lady on the subway who smiled at me. Or the man on the street corner who started raving about Michael Jackson and then a minute later announced, "I've been a bum for 19 years now... 1 more and I can retire!"

I think that's all for now, folks. I'm out.

wheeee!!

2006-09-12T02:11:00.000+01:00

Arrived in New York this morning, and my afternoon and evening were spent wandering around the city. I went a little bit crazy snapping pictures, and here's some of the highlights:

Ground Zero was pretty busy, probably because of the fact that it's the 5 year anniversary today (am I allowed to use that word here? anniversaries are usually good things...). This picture doesn't have much to do with it, besides the flag and the fact that it's right next to the WTC site, but I really like how the neighboring building is reflected in the glass and distorted by the curvature of the panes.

The boys trying to get the same shot. Thought it was cute.

The New York Stock Exchange. Yes, the rightmost small flag is the Campbells logo.

In a sea of huge square buildings, this one stood out each time I came across it from different directions. This one was the most surprising.

We stumbled across a little park with some crazy sculptures in it. I call this "tree through tube".

So, now that my day has been logged for all to see, I think I will head off to get some much needed sleep. Whoever invented red eye flights ought to be slapped.

on the brink of an adventure

2006-09-10T17:23:00.000+01:00

So, I leave tonight to head off to New York, and I figured this would be an appropriate time for a first post here. I really don't know what to expect from this program and my travels afterward, but I do know that it will be awesome. So, stick around and read all about the awesomeness of the next few months. Hopefully I'll end up with some cool stuff here.