ISEA - The opening keynote

I arrived at ISEA in the afternoon, nicely in time to attend the opening keynote by Brian Massumi. The keynote turned out to be a flow of thoughts, without a visual (powerpoint) presentation to back up the words. In general, without a visual presentation, it is extremely difficult for me to follow a lecture.

That was no different here. There was not much of the keynote that stayed in my mind... Or maybe it is better to say, I didn't understand much of the lecture at all...

The only thing that I understood from the hour and a half event, was that Massumi was philosophizing about events and their relation to each other. The main point of the lecture, at least as far as I understood, was the question: if two events happen at the same time, but without any relation to each other - for example I am working in my garden and at the other side of the world a plane crashes - how do these two events influence each other? What is their relation to each other? And what is their relation to art? How do different (random) events influence art?

Okay, that might not even seem such an unusual question. You could even say that there were already many  philosophers discussing this theme. But the way how Brian Massumi was explaining his thoughts, was surely different. This question was only the starting point for his talk, but it was as much as I understood from the whole presentation.

ISEA - Zollverein Essen

So I arrived at ISEA this weekend. The first location is Essen. Essen is one of those many cities in the Ruhr Area that I have passed by many times on the highway, but where I have never stopped to see the town. This is the first time that I am not just passing by, but that I will actually be seeing something of the town.

Well, seeing something of the town is not exactly the right way to put it. ISEA takes place at the Zollverein, which is located in the north-east of Essen, close to Gelsenkirchen. The Zollverein is where I will spend all my time in Essen.

The Zollverein is a small city in itself. It is a former industrial coal mining complex. Since about ten years the site is officially recognized as industrial heritage. It is on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites. And it surely deserves that, the spot is truely amazing.

The whole construction of the industrial complex is still there. Long railroad tracks on the ground and long steal bridges up in the air are both connecting different buildings of the complex. Next to the walking paths are huge steal cables, which were once used to transport things.

These days the place is like an urban jungle, made out of steal, rusty after all those years, where you can go for a walk on a sunday afternoon. It also seems the perfect location to have an international symposium about electronic arts.

Fifteen minutes at ISEA

I'm invited to Ruhr2010 to do a lecture at ISEA2010. ISEA is the biggest International Symposium on Electronic Arts. The event will take place from August 20 until August 29 in several cities of Ruhr2010 in Germany. I've been invited to do a lecture presenting my recycling arts work, which I would like to show in connection with my work in the virtual space.

I've been preparing my lecture for quite some time already, but only today I found out that just 15 minutes are reserved for my presentation at ISEA2010. I presented my work two years ago at ISEA2008 in Singapore and during that symposium each presenter had 30 minutes, 20 minutes for the presentation and 10 minutes for questions and answers. But in Dortmund only 1,5 hours are planned for 5 presenters.

So I will have to present my answer to the question of the relation between virtual reality and recycling arts in 15 minutes. Which creates a new problem in itself. Because I don't even know how to present the question in just 15 minutes... How can I explain the answer to the problem if I cannot even explain the problem?

I guess I will have to change my strategy now for this presentation. Maybe I will even have to read my own articles again on how to present an artist's statement. And I guess I will have to write a few articles very quickly now on how to present an artist's statement in just 15 minutes.

Connecting virtual reality and recycling arts

What keeps me less wondering, is the big success of Paul the Octopus. The small creature, only two years old, that became so famous foretelling the outcomes of Germany's soccer games at the world championship. Somehow it seems to make perfect sense to me, that a creature strange as an octopus, fascinates us so much.

We will probably never know, how it was possible for the animal to guess all the outcomes correctly. And knowing now that his predictions were always the correct ones, I would have preferred not to know the outcomes of his fortune telling, before the games were played. But there is not much to do about that afterwards.

In about two weeks I will be visiting Ruhr2010. Paul the Octopus is living in an aquarium, somewhere in one of the cities of Ruhr2010. Who knows, maybe he has his own installation by now as part of the European Cultural Capital program. He would be one of the most famous participants.

I will be at Ruhr2010 at the end of August. I will be giving a lecture on the relation between recycling arts and the use of the internet. Or more precisely, a lecture looking into what connects reycling and the digital age. Or, in other words, on the connection between virtual reality and my work creating wallets from empty milk packages...

I've been searching for an answer to that question for about two years now. Maybe Paul the Octopus can help me to find a connection...

On the road through Germany - part two

All the way through Germany, we were listening to different German radio stations. On that certain day, each and every radio station had just one topic that needed to be discussed. In the morning the comments on the various radios were still a little sad. But as the day continued, the comments of the people on the different radio stations became more and more optimistic again. And almost all listeners who were calling in to the different radio shows agreed that it would at least be better to finish the tournament with winning the game for the third place than with loosing the game for the first place...

But the most important topic throughout all the different radio stations of course, was if Paul the Octopus had been 'forecasting' the outcome of the play or if he had been 'predicting' the outcome of the play. It is two weeks now after the final game of the tournament and Paul the Octopus surely is one of the winners of the event. Just today I read an article about his popularity in fortune telling China. On the other hand, there was another article which was raising the topic if the outcome of certain games had been determined in China...

Which has kept me wondering now for some time already, how it is possible to determine the outcome of a soccer game before the actual game is being played? I know that it is happening more often, but I keep on wondering how...

On the road through Germany - part one

It was the day after Germany had lost the semi-final against Spain, when we drove on the A3 motorway all the way from Duisburg to Passau. Traffic was slow in the morning rush hour before Köln. While standing almost still in the early traffic jam, I noticed the flags along the highway.

Small German flags, dirty and broken, were lying in the grass next to the road. Small flags, the ones that can be mounted onto a car, sticking out at the roof. Looking at the flags I imagined disappointed people, listening to the soccer game while driving home in their cars. I imagined angry people ripping off the flags from their cars, just after the game was finished, throwing the flags along the side of the road, while still driving on the motorway.

At first I saw just a few of those flags. But as we slowly moved on in the traffic jam, I noticed more and more of those flags along the way. It was a strange image, especially since there was still one more game to play for Germany.

We were standing still for quite some time, trying to reach Köln in the traffic jam. But all this time, moving so slowly, I didn't manage to make a good photo. I've tried to catch quite some of the flags with my camera, but practically all of them turned into a vague combination of colors merging with the side of the road once captured on the photo.

A summer soccer break

It has been a month now since I started writing for this blog. It is the middle of July now, Netherlands has just lost their most important game of the last decade and the temperatures are too high to even think about writing an artist's statement. So I will start a little summer break in my blog posts.

Instead of giving advice on how to present yourself online, I will post some photos and videos to keep you entertained during summer. And since soccer seems the only relevant topic, I'll start with posting some football related material.

The final game is finished and again Paul the Octopus made the correct prediction. But nonetheless today is the day that the Dutch team will tour Amsterdam. And for one last day the Dutch will go crazy again, supporting their national soccer team.

I've been living again in the Netherlands since September. But knowing Austria and Slovenia, I realize that it is nearly impossible to describe the Dutch craziness when it comes to supporting their national football team. So I'll share some photos with you of the area where I live now.

I took these photos last week in the city where I am staying now in the Netherlands. This is just a small town somewhere in the Netherlands. All over the country, from north to south and east to west, you could find similar looking houses and streets. Until sunday that was...

I am far away already by now, writing this article near Graz in Austria. I've never really understood this thing about soccer. But after being away for so many years, experiencing it all live again in the Netherlands, I have to admit, there is something special about it...