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 .

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 .

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 .