alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5104933031888676610" />Art exibition in Danmark
Friday, August 31, 2007
Oresund Bridge
This is the longest bridge in the world from Denmark to Sweden , the structure is amazing the bridge is made out of three parts one underwater and the outher two over the water , the ride over it takes almoust 1 hour and the bridge is sligtly curbed because the desigenrs wanted this efect because if it will be compeltly straight as a structure the driver and the passangers could not see tha beauty of the structure and they would have a boring ride .
Inside outside
why this title? because after almost two weeks that i had spend in Romania I realized that somehow I'm "addicted " to the virtual realm In the same time I started asking myself questions about the Science fiction gendre and the turnaround that had happend in this kind of literature in the past few years .. From a spatial adventure like in Star trek or in Star Wars with aliens and all kids of creatures , androids and robots that all have a common plot in witch they fight against som kind of dark force from the universe , things turned around a little bit in the past years and with the end of the ninties and the begining of the new milennium , the science fiction gendre and the battle between the fantasctic enemyes it is given on a different scale , now the land skape of the action is more urban the teritory where the things take place is the City of the future divided trough gangs or the territory is divided between multinational companies that rule the economic landskape of the world . Te heroes of these kind of science fiction stories are different from the normal heroes they are antiheroes they are citizentz that live on the "borther " of the society , hackers that are living in this kind of tehno oriented society where tehnology is cheap and disposable and the lifestyle is posthuman like ..
So after the space adventure tipe of science fiction stories and movies of the ninties we are confronted with a new tipe of adventure , the cyberpunk gendre that is happenning in the not too distant future .
The first signs of the possibility that this kind of things can happen in reality is the fact that at the Egs(europeean graduates ) in belgium that is a europeean university focused on multidisciplynary aproach to things , there where lectures from the science fiction author Bruce Sterling . He is part of the cyberpunk 1980 movement together with Wiliam Gibson ,Pat Cadigan and Neil Stephenson .
The landskape of the novels is urban , artficial and full of interesting caracters with situations that can turnaround easily each moment .
My personal story related to this kind of world or world was obivious when I went from getting out of my personal and isolated mental and virtual space and landed in the real market ecomomy dominated capitalistic world of Romania where shoing off is like a first nature for the romanian cityzen ( not critical about it ) . It is quite a ride to get out from a more structure world of your own and get out and get bombarded with information that you do not need in a normal way .. so my question is related to realiy and perception is it that the new reality is the virtual one? the real world is becoming slover for our needs ( time is measured in distance as one of the russian constructivists said ) on the word wide web distance is measured in hiperlinks and in connexion speeds , the new gears are modems and different tipes of connexions you can reach any part of the world wit tehnology and the main hubs are the artificial landscapes of the cities what i find interesting about the teotries and the writings of Gibson and Sterling is the fact thet the landskapes where theyr adventures are happening allready exist , the tehnology with what t hack networks and outher things allready is in use therefore the scenarios are plausible . Gibson is leaving the things on a experimental level but Sterling in his blogs for the wired magazine , his novels and lectures goes a littloe bit further and makes you aware of the fact that these things exist and that culture and cyber culture are converging. The internet is a powerfull tool that produces new forms of ecomomical , advertising and social networking ways in the urban landskape .
The last architecture bienalle from Venice had the subject related to the contemporary city that is evolving making the new milenium an urban milenium , with two thirds of the global population living in cityes , in the same time the bienalle from Rotterdam 2007 had the same subject related to cityes making some interesting statististics and preditions related to the new age the age of the Urban . in the same time trends in fashion art and outher subsistem related to this kind of estetics has conected to it the word urban .
What is interesting to some level is what i expirienced after I got out of a normal sizie city like Amsterdam where in the everyday chaos you can find structure and groups of people of international roots with the same passions and the same taste in musique and visual culture . I do not call culture " culture " anymore I call it visual because I think that in today's societi the culture as we know it is becoming extinct we enter in a new fase where because f the shopping culture and advertising as a form of art and expression for designers is tahking over making every thing mixtup and coming directly at the individual thet is living in this kind of enviroment ,
som eof the people thet noticed this kind of mix and remix im some places are art professor Lev manovich that conected as fenomenon in his essays things like fashion , electrnic musique , software culture and human behiveour and explayned this kind of remix .
Anauther person that was inspired by popular culture is the designer Tom Fored that succeded trough his advertising campaings to stop the urban shopper and gto make him go into the store , in this case marketing senses and visual senses get together anticipateing where the popular culture will be in the next year . as he said the clues are allready here for the next season . Anauther thing is the fact that in the 70 ties the patron saint of the wired magasine the english literature teacher Marshall mcluhan said thet the last form of arhitecture is the highway and the car is the caracpache of the urban person , this i find a n interesting teory because is expanding the conceopt of architecture making it non static ,architecture is now a dynamic element not static anymore .
To end my post that is probably a little bit chaotic i thought about what a teacher from the europeean graduate academy said , beeing more specific Slavoj Zizek, he said that we cannot talk any more about virtual reality but instead we should think about the reality of the virtual .
So after the space adventure tipe of science fiction stories and movies of the ninties we are confronted with a new tipe of adventure , the cyberpunk gendre that is happenning in the not too distant future .
The first signs of the possibility that this kind of things can happen in reality is the fact that at the Egs(europeean graduates ) in belgium that is a europeean university focused on multidisciplynary aproach to things , there where lectures from the science fiction author Bruce Sterling . He is part of the cyberpunk 1980 movement together with Wiliam Gibson ,Pat Cadigan and Neil Stephenson .
The landskape of the novels is urban , artficial and full of interesting caracters with situations that can turnaround easily each moment .
My personal story related to this kind of world or world was obivious when I went from getting out of my personal and isolated mental and virtual space and landed in the real market ecomomy dominated capitalistic world of Romania where shoing off is like a first nature for the romanian cityzen ( not critical about it ) . It is quite a ride to get out from a more structure world of your own and get out and get bombarded with information that you do not need in a normal way .. so my question is related to realiy and perception is it that the new reality is the virtual one? the real world is becoming slover for our needs ( time is measured in distance as one of the russian constructivists said ) on the word wide web distance is measured in hiperlinks and in connexion speeds , the new gears are modems and different tipes of connexions you can reach any part of the world wit tehnology and the main hubs are the artificial landscapes of the cities what i find interesting about the teotries and the writings of Gibson and Sterling is the fact thet the landskapes where theyr adventures are happening allready exist , the tehnology with what t hack networks and outher things allready is in use therefore the scenarios are plausible . Gibson is leaving the things on a experimental level but Sterling in his blogs for the wired magazine , his novels and lectures goes a littloe bit further and makes you aware of the fact that these things exist and that culture and cyber culture are converging. The internet is a powerfull tool that produces new forms of ecomomical , advertising and social networking ways in the urban landskape .
The last architecture bienalle from Venice had the subject related to the contemporary city that is evolving making the new milenium an urban milenium , with two thirds of the global population living in cityes , in the same time the bienalle from Rotterdam 2007 had the same subject related to cityes making some interesting statististics and preditions related to the new age the age of the Urban . in the same time trends in fashion art and outher subsistem related to this kind of estetics has conected to it the word urban .
What is interesting to some level is what i expirienced after I got out of a normal sizie city like Amsterdam where in the everyday chaos you can find structure and groups of people of international roots with the same passions and the same taste in musique and visual culture . I do not call culture " culture " anymore I call it visual because I think that in today's societi the culture as we know it is becoming extinct we enter in a new fase where because f the shopping culture and advertising as a form of art and expression for designers is tahking over making every thing mixtup and coming directly at the individual thet is living in this kind of enviroment ,
som eof the people thet noticed this kind of mix and remix im some places are art professor Lev manovich that conected as fenomenon in his essays things like fashion , electrnic musique , software culture and human behiveour and explayned this kind of remix .
Anauther person that was inspired by popular culture is the designer Tom Fored that succeded trough his advertising campaings to stop the urban shopper and gto make him go into the store , in this case marketing senses and visual senses get together anticipateing where the popular culture will be in the next year . as he said the clues are allready here for the next season . Anauther thing is the fact that in the 70 ties the patron saint of the wired magasine the english literature teacher Marshall mcluhan said thet the last form of arhitecture is the highway and the car is the caracpache of the urban person , this i find a n interesting teory because is expanding the conceopt of architecture making it non static ,architecture is now a dynamic element not static anymore .
To end my post that is probably a little bit chaotic i thought about what a teacher from the europeean graduate academy said , beeing more specific Slavoj Zizek, he said that we cannot talk any more about virtual reality but instead we should think about the reality of the virtual .
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Danmark
I left Holland for Danmark , I had a beautiful bus ride from Amsterdam trough Germany and stopt in Hanburg for a short while just to arrive this afrternoon in Dk with a beautiful weather ( i know that it sounds cliche ..but the weather was pretty nice ) and with the tunes of Trentemoller in the "backround" it was a nice ride and what was interesting is that 80 % of the people that where traveling with me until Hamburg where not from Europe I had people from everywhere , africa , turkey , estonia... so it was a small non EU Babylon on four whels ..or?
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Workshop
Last summer I participated at a workshop organised by Mediamatic cultural institution from Amsterdam ,the name of the workshop was The internet of things and the main task of the participants was of beeing creator of possible future scenarios about the mergence of the virtual realm with the real realm and what could happen if real objects would be tagged and get linked to online data , so basicaly things would go onnline.
The questions that came up where related to the usefulness of these kind of tagging of the realworld objects. The ideea startde from one of the Bruce Streling esseys where he mentioned ideeas about taging objects and linking them to a geo positioning sistem trough radio vawes .
In the first day of the workshop there was a short presentation of the ideea behind the workshop and a presentation of the speakers ; Regyne Debatty that writes the blog we make money not art and is a repotret of things related to the field of art and tehnology ,Matthew Karau former reasercher at the MIT media lab, Heiko Hansen part of the duo Hehe that is a group focused on instalations and enviromental issues actions , Matthijs Kouw , Malcom Mculough that is a architecture professor at the Michigan university , and Rob wan Krannenburg that is a lecturer at ambient expirience design and has been a log follower of the ideeas realted to tagging .
In the seccond day we where divided in teams , got the tools for the workshop and we started working on the scenarios .
the tools where a Nokia 3220 with a reader , tags and the so named simbolic table a tool that is basicaly a table with a reader and any tagged object that is put in contact with surface of the table is imediatly reconize by the table the best example was to put on the table plastic toy pets that when connected to the table made sounds because of theyr tags so the table" recognize" the pets and because of the software with wich is equipped will make the sound related to that pet , if you put a pet like an cow on the table it will make the sound that a cow makes ..
in the third day we presented the projects with wich we came up and the results where interesting , by that I men that the first team tagged photos so when you crossed with the mobile phone over the tagged photos the phone imediatley recodnise the photo and gives exact informations related to that picture .
anauther team came up with ideeas related to the use of the simbolic table in conferences and to put tagged objects on the table and have a image that is produced by the table when it comes in contatct with one specfic oject , so the objects become carriers of two kind of tipe of informations , the first information that an object is carring is the so called formal information that is the information that our eye is perceiviing , and the seccond information is related to the tag information the information that the tag attached to the object is carring .
We came up with a project related to the tagging of information and we called our project Gaya a name taht in mitology means mother earth . we came up with this name because we started thinking at our project in from the position of a consultancy team ( as they used for the MInority Report movie with the purpose of creeating a more plausible future for the viewer ) and as a team that has to coupe somehow with ecological prblems that our society faces these days ...basicaly we tried to find some kind of tehnologicaly ergonomic solution .
So we studied the way that a tagging tipe of technology could be implemented in a turistical circuit because Amsterdam is a turistical city and the influx on the turists is quite big . So we thought about making a connexion between a tags and Flickr photosharing site ,in this way everyone who is linked to the Hostels or the hotel database can have acess to the users of Flickr and they can trace down previous users , we made a hiperlink between the database of the hostel and the users .
After the workhop we had a discution about architecture , tehnology , internet , ourselfes and society .
It was a n interesting workshop that made me think about a lot of things starting with the persons with wich I worked that where hypercolaborative, to the fact that we where 4 people from the states , 2 from ireland 1 from canada and two from the UK and anauther tree from Holland including me so it was quite an international biotope , to the fact that tehnologi and the things related to the internet are becoming more and more part of our lives and have a more and more important role on a personal level .
Sunday, August 12, 2007
3rd International architecture bienalle Rotterdam
The subject of this years architecture bienalle from Rotterdam ( not Venice ) was focused on the forces that produce the contemporary cities in wich we live today and had tried to answer to these quetions ,the answers where connected to marketing economics free market, political forces and some unpredictable forces that shape the contemporary life and city so these where all factors in the answer to the question of "Who produces the city ?" this in a world where major changes are happening (see the subject of the last year's Venice bienalle , Cityes) and where each day 150 000 people leave theyr rural existence behind to start a new live in the city , so the city skape is becoming more and more a place of commerce and private interest .
The bienalle was divided in tree major exibitions two of the exibitios was held in the Kunsthall theyr subject was focused on the new Dutch city and on the Visionary power , and anauther exibition held in The Nai institute .
the exibition from the Kunsthall had two main subjects that where focused on a macro and a micro level but tried to answer in a rational way to the question related to what produces the modern city . So the first exibition took things on a global level and divided the cities of the world after some caracteristics that where identified earlier .
The first issue was economical and it was focused on some emerging markets as the markets from Asia , so cityes like Busan South Korea , Luoyang , China and New Jersey USA where named Corporate Cityes because of the global capital that is pumped in these cityes by multinational corporations .
The next few cityes where related to the seccond big global force that is turisms so there where idetified cities like Havanna , Cuba , Innsbruck , Austria and Rome Italy that are the so called spectacle cityes because of theyr strong turistic caracteristics .
Capital cities are the cities thet reflect trough theyr architecture the society and culture of that speciffic country . A few examples would be :Astana , Kazachstan , Beirut ,lebanon and Moskow ,Russia where Alexander Swerdlov a russian architect and developer has designed 400 identical rezidential towers that reinforce the endless fields of prefabricated bloks of flats on the fringes of the city giving present day Moskow a powerfull face.
The Hidden Cities are cities like Cueta , Spain and, Johanessburg, Africa where the refugees problem is accentuated .
Informal cities are the cityes that are dealing with anauther form of movement that is the migration of people . The cities that have this problems are Mexico City , Sao Paulo , Brasil and Tijuana , Mexico \ san diego , USA .
On a micro level things where focused on the Dutch city and the way in witch it will expand in the future having in sight that the city is the place where the economy grows where phisical and digital networks link up where culture flourishes and science grows . So what I found interesting was a small simulation of Rotterdam 's sky line that was presenting an evolution of the city until 2050 , different buildings rise from the multilayered city of Rotterdam so called the Manhattan of the Maas . the city ewas until recent years the world's most biggest port and it has this feeling a combination between port post war straight buldings that where build in an interesting international style with theyr main purposse to be office buildings for the maritime Dutch companies that trade ith asian companies . The port is an impressive site and as i took a tour of one hour and a half trough I understood how Holland a relatively small country has such a broad range of products , the port of Rotterdam is full of factories that produces from orange juice to just stock big quatities of products from all over the world .
The conclusion is that the best way to understand a city sometimes is just by exploring the landskape of the place to understand networks and outher things that are generating the city .
Goeing back
How to stop thinking , the reason for this question is the fact that I'm returning home for a short vacantion wich will be quite unpredictable because I theink that a lit of things changed in Romania because first of all because of the long expected entering of Romania in the EU . I do not know what to think about this because I allready know how romanians are seen in the west ..... and It is not a verry good image , regarding my person I can say that what I noticed was that there where multiple filters trough I was seen in Holland and in the outher parts of Europe ...Althow it is a small country the nederlands has a big cultural and racial mix and the place where I studied had the same international feeling there whare people from all around EU , Japan and Iran, irak etc .. strange mixure .. In a way a creative isotope but in the same time quite unstable .. so I tried to find my own way trough this mix , I thought that the best expiririence that I can have is to go and search on my own the things that I'm interested in ; So i went and visited things that im interested in like the offices of Mvrdv , Oma , UN studios and buildings made by them like the Silodam building that is part of an exibition at this time called "Seeing is Knowing" , Kunsthall by Oma that is a beautiful modern bulding with straong accentuated proportions and it goes hand in hand with the highway feeling of the site where it is built . What suprised me was the fact that I had stayed for a while in a student building that was basicaly a container , after I had left the place I found out that it was a Mvrdv project for student housing ... anyway it was qite an expirience living on the containers and beeing sorounded by old ships and industrial wharehouses .
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Visit
Just visited the house designed by UN studio and it is great , a nice place with DIFFERENT architecture , the expirience is quite something ,the house is basicaly two arches that intersect and form the house that has multiple levels and an interesting space arrangement what i noticed was the fact that the materials that where used in the interiour design where not so high tech but where organic making the living, working and leisure expirience more warm . In the same area is the amsterdam arena stadion home of the Ajax amsterdam footbal team and of the Sensations festival . The stadion is a pretty amazing structure by itself .
Friday, August 10, 2007
Lets dance
Amsterdam parties can be quite crazy , lots of fun and nice Djing , this year I went to a lot of interesting partyes , ranging from squad partyes held in former industryal building on the outside of Amsterdam to good clubs with Dj's that you can only dream about , and a lot of nice visuals.. so for the eyes Vj 00-Kaap ,Vj urbi et orbi , Vj Mikhal Butink, Vj De Beeldfabriek , Vj Visuals Kitchen from Belgium , andfor the ears, musique that ranges from minimal , electro pop , tehno, disco house and electroclash ....the dance culture is quite strong here first of all because this area of europe has the highest mixtrure of races and people from all over Europe ( the area between Belgium until north of Amsterdam is called the Holocore because of the high density and because of the high cultural mix between people from all over the EU ) . Outher major dance events are I Love tehno ( belgium) ,Sensations(Amsterdam) ,Dance Valley ( Amsterdam ) and the AD 07 Amsterdam Dance Event that is one of the major festivals with an impresive range of dance musique here are some of the names : Adultnapper (us), Live: Alpha Omega (uk), Live: Alter Ego (de), Andy Norman (uk), Andy Stott (uk), Benjamin Bates (nl), Live: Bogusman (be), Dave Clarke (uk), Dave Vega (de), Live: David Gilmour Girls (nl), Dennis Ferrer (us), Digital Mystikz (uk), Dirt Crew (de), DJ Andy Daniels (uk), DJ Benno Blome (de), DJ’s Dash & Bx (uk), DJ Eddie Argos (uk), DJ FeatureCast ( uk), DJ $jammie the Mon€y (nl), DJ Joyce Muniz (br), DJ Marcelle (nl), DJ Sun-E (nl), & Dexon (nl), Live: Ebola (uk), Live: Electric kettle (f), Fedde Le Grand (nl),What is interesting about the festival is not only that there are a lot of Dj's but the fact that there is also a conference that is dedicated and works as a platform for the people that are interested in electronic musique in general so .. not only musique but also interaction.
If you are not a fan or have different tastes you can also go have a nice a quiet evning enjoing the sounds of a wiked jazz evening
Thursday, August 9, 2007
And it is finnished
This is the new Library of Amsterdam , It contains a big colection of books from all shorts of fields , a mediateque with a big colecton of movies and all kinds of footage , a reading room with a good lighting and a presentation room , and a area that is destinated to bigger events so in total five floors full of fun , If you are there you can get lost because of the ammount of books and movies and cd's ..anyway it is a good place where you can spend your time and be in toutch with culture in a nice ambiance.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Museum again
Some while ago I went to Bonn and I wisited the Kunst Museum, the museum has a big art colection but in the same time has a historical oriented colection what I mean by that is that a part of the museum is dedicated to the second world war period and it has a colection of artifacts ranging from phones to cars and interiours from that period . One of the rooms reminded me of the Terror museum from Budapest a museum where comunism and nazism are put together in a face off expirience, anyway the architecture was great minimalist with a touch of surealism and with a nice atrium style garden . The museum is a tipe of building that pops out of the urban tissue of the city , that is quite the same except a residential part and a administrative part and some Tv station with broakasting functions . Some more pictures you can find on the site of the museum , here is the link http://kunstmuseum.bonn.de/start_e.htm
Thursday, August 2, 2007
EU
Some while ago I participated at a small presentation about the Identity of the Europeean Union held by Reinier de Graaf one of the partners in charge of the Office of the Metropolitan Architecture and the head of the AMO the think tank and the mirror image of OMA ,a company that works beyond the realm of architecture and urbanism . The presentation was about the comission that AMO got from the Europeean union in the matter of finding a new identity (image ) for the EU , So the AMO studio that works in the cultural analysis field studied together with academics and scholars the problem of the Identity and they came up with a flag that was quite controversial in the press.
I thought that the presentation was quite good and that Reinier de Graaf is a interesting person , In the same time I think that the AMO studio Is an important conceptual barch that has some fascinating activities that are cultural analysis , politics , advertising and media started produceing work that is not related to architecture but it has a feel that is connected to an architectural notion of things . For this you can check out the ad that was made for the Prada parfums Thundermind and identiti work for the Europeean Union .
I thought that the presentation was quite good and that Reinier de Graaf is a interesting person , In the same time I think that the AMO studio Is an important conceptual barch that has some fascinating activities that are cultural analysis , politics , advertising and media started produceing work that is not related to architecture but it has a feel that is connected to an architectural notion of things . For this you can check out the ad that was made for the Prada parfums Thundermind and identiti work for the Europeean Union .
