Sonja van Kerkhoff - art, travel, events

Caravan From Istanbul gets a Christchurch airing

2011-12-20T16:00:00.001-08:00

On Saturday December 24th starting at 12 midday New Zealand-Dutch artist, Sonja van Kerkhoff will give a herd of origami elephants an airing along the Cashel Street Mall.

Photo: Sen McGlinn.
Dec 7th, 2011, Sonja with her herd in the Octagen, Dunedin, Aotearoa / New Zealand. Click on the photo to see a larger view in a new window.

Otago Daily Times article, Dec 8th

The performance, “Caravan to Istanbul,” was performed in Istanbul while she was there as one of 8 artists in the New Zealand exhibition, “Te Kore Rongo Hungaora” (Uncontainable second nature), at the international new media festival, ISEA Istanbul.

To see photos of the Istanbul performance to go "Caravan to Istanbul"

As she was driving to Istanbul, via a number of other art-related projects, she was thinking of a way to represent a kind of globalism not dominated by money or economic policies. Caravans, in days of old, were dominated by the practicalities of getting from place to place, by politics and by cultural conditions. Van Kerkhoff believes this is still the case, only that so often what we read as ‘international news’ in our newspapers emphasizes the doings of the global elite. Each elephant in her international herd originates from a particular location in one of over 20 countries she has travelled through with this herd.

Photo: Sen McGlinn.
Sonja with the herd from Istanbul in the Nelson Saturday Market, Montgomery Square, Dec 17th, 2011.

Art and culture have been the main influencing factors here. For example one elephant in this herd is made from an Italian village church newsletter, from a church Van Kerkhoff visited. Others use printed material from the Venice Biennale, and from galleries in the Philippines. Come see how the herd is faring at its third airing in the country. Previous locations were Dunedin, Murchison and, last Saturday, in between downpours, Nelson.

Photo: Sen McGlinn.
Three of the herd in the Nelson Saturday Market, Montgomery Square, Dec 17th, 2011.

More photos in various locations: www.sonjavank.com/caravan.htm

dia voorstelling over aspecten van spiritualiteit in de Nieuw-Zeelandse Maori cultuur

2011-06-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

Aspecten van spiritualiteit in de Nieuw-Zeelandse Maori cultuur

22 June - 19:30 - 22:30

Maak kennis met de Maori cultuur door een dia voorstelling van Sonja van Kerkhoff (Taranaki, Nieuw Zeeland). Voorbeelden van Maori kunst; van traditioneel tot hedendaags worden ook getoond.

ActiVite office building,

Simon Smitweg 8

(directly behind and across from the Rijnlands hospital)
Leiderdorp

Ook is er een expositie van Sen + Sonja op hetzelfde locatie t/m 26 juni 2011
meer info >> www.sonjavank.com/2011activite.htm

Sonja will give a presentation on spiritual/cultural aspects of the Maori culture. If English only speakers are present she will do this is English + Dutch.

Free entry.

Send an email to a.vd.houten [AT] activite.nl before 5 p.m. on June 22nd to reserve a place or click "yes" or "maybe" on the Facebook event by midday on the same day.

Open air Hotel in Utrecht, Leiden + Delft - OpenluchtHotel

2011-06-06T07:46:00.001-07:00

Utrecht 18/19 June 2011
Leiden 21 June 2011
Delft 10 September 2011

Visitors can register to book to sleep in one of these artist-beds in the open air in one of these cities. More info in Dutch only is here: www.openluchthotel.nu our bed is an ode to Shakepeare and all of the senses including taste.

"Under perfumed flowers I lie, there I couch when owls do cry"

by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn

[with apolgies to Shakepeare's The Tempest]
Peaseblossom is the name of one of the fairies in Shakepeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who serves the Queen of the Fairies.
This open hotel location is an interpretation of the type of bed she could have made where you can see, smell and taste "pea blossoms" growing through willow branch forms.

Peaseblossom is de naam van een van de feeen uit Shakespeare's A midsummer Night's Dream die de Koningin der Feeen dient.
Dit is een interpretatie van het soort bed dat zij had kunnen maken, waarin je de door de wilgentakkenbeelden groeiende (pronk)erwt bloesems kunt zien, ruiken en proeven.

In Leiden our bed will be set amidst trees in the Kaasmarktschool, artist studio courtyard, Koppenhinksteeg 13

Darling Buds exhibition in London

2011-05-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

For those in or around London, we have two installations in this show curated by
Davinia-ann Robinson, Rebecca Hallett, Nelly Curtis, Jessica Mautner, and Boudicca Collins

at:

Parlour Project Space
181-185 Queens Crescent, NW5 4DS
London, United Kingdom

Open: 6 - 10 May 2011
Fri-Tues: 11:00am - 6:00pm

installations by

Grace Adam, Daniel Bourke, Matt Gee, Sian Griffiths, Melissa Henderson, Sadie Hennessy, Fiona Long and Sonja Van Kerkhoff & Sen McGlinn.

There's a blog about this exhibition and a facebook page.

2 feb video screenings + bijna een laatste kans om de installaties te bekijken

2011-01-27T05:41:00.000-08:00

2 Feb 2011:
19:30 - 20:45
Sonja presents 4 short videos with discussion in between (in nederlands or English)

20:45 - 21:30
Opportunity to view the exhibition
"The unwanted land"
with installations by Tiong Ang, David Bade, Renée Ridgway, Dirk de Bruyn, Sonja van Kerkhoff

Stills from "Wrapping for a Marginal Citizen"

There will also be opportunity to ask Sonja questions inside the installation Kāinga a roto (Home within / Innerlijk huis)

You can view a 5 minute of footage of Kāinga a roto on YouTube below and there's a page of photos about the exhibition here and a page focussed just on Sonja and Sen's installation here or see: www.theunwantedland.com

The programme for the evening is:
7:30: "Wrapping for a Marginal Citizen" (13 min),
won the regional (Limburg) Gulden Vlam award in 1994 in the category, documentary.
The main actors are Sonja's young children, who simultaneously foreground as well as function as background for associative narratives on various levels.

5-10 min question and answer session.

"Athena" (2 min), 1994,
a dance-choreographic work on the theme of wisdom from a feminine viewpoint.

"360 Clockwise around Europe" (3 min) 2010,
music by Sandy Hoover (USA) Kath Tait (UK)

A response to living in Europe for the past two decades. The footage selected from the EU archive contrasts diverse aspects of European life-worlds: cities, institutions, as well as historical events with stills of our family in diverse places - a mix of private and public worlds; a commentary on how we all play a role in a changing Europe.

5-10 min question and answer session.

"Essences and Particularities" (6 min) 1994,
music by Evren Celimli (USA).
Mythopoeic drawings constantly metamorphasize while a choir sing in medival style. We often think of universals as being what connects us to God or to our soul. Here the particular or exceptional are the means for 'stories' or the 'differend'.

5-10 min question and answer session.

20:45 - 21:30, Viewing of the exhibition "The Unwanted Land" and discussion inside "Kainga a roto" (Home within)

Entrée / entry fee for both museum and the screening > 5 euros

RSVP: 7 p.m. 31st January 2011 to either:
info@beeldenaanzee.nl
or ring:
070 358 58 57 between 11 - 5, Tuesdays to Sundays.

Museum Beelden aan Zee website
Harteveltstraat 1
2586 Den Haag

5 minute footage of our video installation on show

2011-01-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

You can also view it on my channel: www.youtube.com/user/sonjavank

We come in Peace - on hackers, media and gender

2010-12-26T05:13:00.000-08:00

The 27th Chaos Communication Congress (27C3), an annual four-day conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) starts tomorrow at the Berlin Congress Center and is one of the largest gatherings of hackers and proponents of open source technologies. These categories: community, culture, hacking, making, science, society say it all and here are links to the presentators as well as often a link to the material to being presented. The website is a wealth of knowledge!

A few randomly chosen presentations to wet your appetite:

Safety on the Open Sea - Safe navigation with the aid of an open sea chart.

AllColoursAreBeautiful - interactive light installation inspired by blinkenlights

A Critical Overview of 10 years of Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Android geolocation using GSM network - "Where was Waldroid?"

DIY synthesizers and sound generators - Where does the sound come from?

They also promote those around unable to attend to gather and join the conference remotely in what they have called Peace Missions, which reminded me of a conference I attended remotely earlier this year:

ElectroSmog << this links to some info about this on de balie website because their actual website is a killer for those with slow connections or on mobile devices.
Even on a large computer screen as I have here: I need to first click away the screen filling popup, and then scroll down past another screen-filling image before I reach any links or content (don't get me started on the usability of this website!) - scroll past all this, click around, and yes there are some interesting articles especially the stuff at the Distance Lab run by Stefan Agamonolis (see a presentation I did on a thesis of his on design for interactive media).

And the conference itself? ...(sigh)... At the time I was going to write a critique of the conference because it was dominated by a few men sitting in a room in Amsterdam - where some men flew over from London. I am so glad I stayed at home (Amsterdam is half an hour north by train). First I wanted to respect the ethos of the conference, that participants don't use up carbon in travel, and second, I found it much better to feel on equal (as much as one can be 'equal' in terms of bandwidth access) with others around the world who hadn't travelled to Amsterdam. The conference was all bad, (I always learn something), but it didn't live up to what it claimed it was abou. It was a real buzz communicating with Zita in Christchurch and Julian and others on a waka in the middle of the Whanganui river! See some fabulous photos of waka.wireless here

Admittedly the female-male ratio of presentations at ccc is no better than was at Electrosmog but access seems freer and the diversity, well there's no comparision of course, it is completely different set-up.

However great things are happening in media worlds such as WikiLeaks (watch this fabulous documentary produced by a Swedish film company (scroll to 25 mins to the Iraqi footage and you will never doubt the important of freedom of open documentation + it raises big issues on secrecy and accountability. I do think that Bradley Manning is a hero (see 23mins into the documentary) and here you can see why OpenLeaks started (at 29:22 mins into the documentary). The documentary stops suddenly and you can watch the final part here (6:03 starts at where the previous one stopped.)
It is great that there's no real squabble here, WikiLeaks takes the strategy of using the media for greater impact on the world, and OpenLeaks works more on the quiet.

And in my own backyard
there's Genderchangers
and the ECT conferences and gatherings,
both run by
and for the fairer sex:)

Crying out for culture (een schreeuw voor cultuur) and Creative Leiden

2010-11-26T02:29:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd make this a post about some of the creative initiatives happening in my city, Leiden, in response to the Dutch government announcement to cut all culture and arts funding by 20% (c. 200 million Euros). They also announced that they will also remove the reduced sales tax for art and culture (from 6% to 19%).

In response to this a national day of protest called, "Holland screams (calls out) for culture" (Nederland schreeuwt om cultuur) was held throughout the Netherlands, on November 20th. In most cities people gathered to 'cry out' or 'scream' -very fitting given that the government just announced just a major cut to all arts funding in the Netherlands.

The website for collecting petitions of protest, enabled you to scream into the microphone, while this page has films and photographs of the day of protest.

Here is a news item with links and photos from the culture oriented broadcasting corporation, the VPRO, Photos from the protest in Amsterdam, and photos from Utrecht, and in this blog has a link on youtube of the protest in Leiden - in summary the first speaker informs us that with a 6 week warning of the increase in sales tax from 6% to 19%, theatres aimed for youth in particular cannot survive.

The Leiden city councilor for culture, Jan-Jaap de Haan the second speaker (here at 3'10" in the video in link above) spoke very well: he wanted to sing, but the orchestra is gone, so he has to scream and asks why is culture perceived as a left-wing hobby. Culture informs and shows who we are. The government is focussed on what we are not (very apt reference to the government focus on the fear of migrants and anti-Islamic sentiments).

It made me realise, that yes, without culture, expression becomes noise -yelling and screaming.

It's ironic that the news today is that yet more criminal records have been revealed of members of the Dutch parliament in Wilders' right-wing extreme nationalist party (PVV 'party for freedom' - oh so Orwellian!).
So the current cabinet remains in power, if Wilders' doesn't remove these individuals who lied about their past 'convictions' (!) from his party. Two weeks ago one member of parliament left this same party because he didn't want yet more limelight put on his past. Ironic that a government needs these people in order to remain in power.

And so to Leiden:

Creatieve Stad Leiden

is a blog run by Jeroen Maters which often has ideas or thoughts or reports on cultural related issues in Leiden.

The 24 Nov blog concerns creative ideas for some ugly architecture along a main street, and his idea there is for a vertical garden. I came across this via the Linkedin Leiden Network group in response to a call for suggestions for this empty block.

The old post office next to this block is now used by a collective of artists as a gallery, de Pieter, which focusses on group exhibitions by Leiden artists.

As a result in the down turn in the economy in the past year or so there are more empty spaces in the centre of the city, and so the artists here are able to pay a low rent to the city council for this space. Below is another arts initiative ultilizing empty shops.

Open Makers

Early in 2010 I first heard of OpenMakers which provides temporary studio spaces in the centre of Leiden utilizing empty shops.

In September + October Sen and I built our installation in one of these spaces. What is so great about their project is that it is interdisciplinary and invites artists from all levels to have the opportunity to work on a project. So far there's been theatre, tango, fashion design, poetry as well other visual artists.

Scheltema

- centre for theatre, visual arts, dance, lectures, events, etc
Scheltema is an old wool factory, converted since 2005 into an arts centre.

New Media Related conferences + publications

2010-11-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

I often am sent interesting links or information about conferences, some I can attend.

So I'll add new links to such events and feel welcome to add your own links in the comments.
15+16 Jan 2011: Fiber festival, http://www.fiberfestival.nl/
hosted by:
MediaLab in Amsterdam whose website has numerous links to media mainly in connection with education: http://medialab.hva.nl/

Two things happening in November are:

Game in the City

gameinthecity.nl/2010
18 + 19 Nov, Amersfoort, The Netherlands: the Third edition of the Dutch Game Awards, the annual business awards for the Dutch Game Industry.

Of interest to me is the conference and the session on Sustainability:
* Alma Schaafstal - TFI (Taskforce Innovatie Regio Utrecht [Taskforce Innovation around Utrecht])
(Global Game Jam > will be held 28-30 January 2011)
* Philippe Petit and Rens Vogel – Greeny Games (Be Green)
* Jacky Nieuwstraten – Amersfoort (BioB@ttle)
* Derk de Geus – Paladin Studios (Enercities)
* Bruno Felix – Submarine Channel (Collapsus)

AND in London this weekend the conference:

Besides the Screen:
Moving Images during Distribution, Exhibition and Consumption

New media technologies impact cinema well beyond the screen; they also promote the reorganization of its logic of distribution, modes of consumption and viewing regimes. Once, it was video and television broadcast that disturbed traditional cinematographic experience, revealing the image as soon as it was captured and bringing it into the home of the audience. Nowadays, computer imaging and online networks cause an even stronger effect to the medium, increasing the public agency in the movie market dynamics.
In order to understand how these significant changes in the modes of accessing and distributing moving images might affect cinematographic experience, economy and historiography, we are obliged to rethink not only of its future, but its past as well. Besides the Screen is a one-day international symposium that aims to map research projects on new and old forms of moving image distribution, exhibition and consumption. The conference will be hosted in Goldsmiths College in November, with the support of the Graduate School and the Media and Communications Department.

Their blog has more and they expect to produce a publication: besidesthescreen.blogspot.com

Programme:
Saturday, 20th November
10:30 - 10:45 Welcome! [MRB Screen 1]
10:45 - 12:30 First Panel Session

Panel 1a [MRB Screen 1]: Distribution & TV

* Keith Beattie, Exhibiting Direct Cinema: The Realignment of US Broadcast Television and the Development of the Observational Mode

* JP Kelly, In the “Perpetual Now”: 24 and the Distribution of Real-Time
* Melanie Kennedy, High School Musical as a Made-for-Television Tween Musical
* Hannah Andrews, The BBC Film Network: User-generated Content and the Public Service Broadcaster

Panel 1b [MRB Screen 2]: Marketing and/or Participation

* Adnan Hadzi, Why Openness Matters: the Deptford.TV Project
* Marc Stumpel, File-sharing or attention-sharing? Implications of the hybrid economy
* Stephanie Janes, Viral Marketing Strategies in Hollywood Cinema

14:00 - 15:45 Second panel session
Panel 2a [MRB Screen 1]: The (Archived) Image

* Maarten Brinkerink, Open Images: Establishing an Audiovisual Commons
* Ana Carvalho, The ephemeral in AV realtime practices: an analysis into the possibilities for its documentation
* Evelin Stermitz, ArtFem.TV
* Claudy Op den Kamp, The forgotten ones: is audiovisual archival public domain material really freely available?

Panel 2b [MRB Screen 2]: The Shape of (Image) Space
* Stefania Charitou, Projection dislocated
* Sudeep Dasgupta, The Screen beside Itself: Situational Transformations in Visual Culture
* Zlatan Krajina, How to Tame the Sun: Visual Indulgences at a Screen-Place as Strategies of Appropriation

16:00 - 17:00 Keynote [MRB Screen 1]

* Julia Knight, Distribution, Diversity and Digitalisation

Sunday, 21st November
10:30 - 12:15 Third Panel Session
Panel 3a [BPB 1]: Remix, Appropriation & the Amateur

* Felix Seyfarth, Television 2.0: Exploring user-generated video and online participation
* Marin Hirschfeld, Redacted and the Problems with Appropriating Amateur Digital Discourses
* Nicola Evans, Rambo Remix
* Patricia Moran, The image time: procedure of cultural remix

Panel 3b [BPB 2]: (New?) Image Aesthetics

* Patricia Iuva, Trailer aesthetic
* Luca Barbeni, Until the End of Cinema
* Vito Campanelli, The DivX and MP3 Experience

13:45 - 15:30 Fourth Panel Session
Panel 4a [BPB 1]: The Image on the Move

* Simone Knox, Besides, On and Through the Screen: The Transnational Distribution and Consumption of Cinema
* Laura Rodriguez Isaza, Touring the Film Festival Circuit: Migrating Patterns of Latin American Cinema
* Leandro Valiati, Cultural Economics and Movies: Indicators and empirical research

Panel 4b [BPB 2]: As Art: Authenticity, Originality & Exhibition

* Bojana Romic, New Exhibition Spaces: viral video goes offline?
* Frantisek Zachoval, ART-y-CHOK-e
* Catrien Schreuder, Pixels and Places: Video Art in Public Space
* Dominik Hasler, Party as art? AntiVJ and the migration of VJing into the sphere of fine arts

Oct 11th: Coming out day on the Aalmarkt, Leiden

2010-10-13T02:56:00.001-07:00

Then Sen took the flag home and it nows flies from our Leiden-north balcony.

Oct 10th: final impressions of our video installation in the Aalmarkt studio

2010-10-13T02:49:00.000-07:00

The five videos are:

The Tears of Rangi | Ngā roimata o Rangi,
16 min. 30 sec.

The Moving Heart | Te Ngākau Nekeneke
3min 33 sec, song: Whānau Mārama by Toroa Pohatu, Aotearoa | New Zealand

The Two Lands
16 min 9 sec., voice: Sonja van Kerkhoff

The Dark Valley,
14 min 10 sec

Heart of the Land | Te Ngākau o te whenua
3 min, 33sec

October update on our installation in an old shop on the Aalmarkt, Leiden

2010-10-05T03:34:00.001-07:00

On October 1st Sen started building the front wall and doorway and I started work on the ceiling lights and the illumination for the suspended harakeke and piupiu.

We hope to have all the videos, sounds and lighting in place by Sunday October 10th when we will have an open day for visitors. OPEN: Aalmarkt 17, 2 - 6 p.m.

We are also on the look out for bits of carpet as Sonja will use what carpet she gets from people and the street as a layer underfoot. A layer of the land from this part of the world. Each contributor of carpet will receive a photo later showing how their carpet was incorporated into the sculptural landscape inside this structure.

"The tears of Rangi", the final video (now 16 minute long) is almost finished and I am also working on an 18 min version of the video "Heart of the Land". For the installation the most videos will be much as longer so the sounds, music and voices work more fluidly in the space. View some earlier versions of the videos on my vimeo page.

For earlier photos of this work see September 2010.

Update on the new installation at Aalmarkt 17

2010-09-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

Walls are almost done. Next more work on the lighting, putting the video screens into place + work on the ceiling drawings.

To how it looked on September 18-19 >>

The Leiden 2010 Arts Route - Kunstroute Leiden 2010

2010-09-26T15:23:00.000-07:00

<< Left: For the annual open artist studios weekend (18 + 19 Sept) we shared our space with painter and musician, Anneke van Rijswijk who hung her drawings and paintings inside the framework of our "kainga".
Alet Kortenoeven, who was the previous occupant of our OPENMAKERS studio had drawings along the walls and a small room where from inside this you could look through funnel-like holes containing objects with the city as a backdrop. And across the window and on the television was the "there is beauty in the city" photo-magnet project. >> Info about the Leiden project

We had about 300 - 400 visitors over the 2 days!
A huge contrast to the 30 or so who visted our exhibition 5 minutes away in the Morstraat Kapsalon. However Sen liked it that he was able to read and be out of the crowds. More about our work in this show is here: www.sonjavank.com/09aderna.htm

About 150 artists showed work in around the city and one place that stood out for me was the COC exhibition. Downstairs was a poem in English and Dutch (see photo on the left) which made a strong visual and metaphysical statement against the mirror wall and upstairs were prints and cartoons by Suzanne van Rossenberg among others. All the work not only celebrated gay and lesbian identity but did it with such wit and magic.

Then on September 20th (see photo on left) Alet took the last of her work out and we had room to pull the "kainga" forward to finish the bow and to work on the curved contour. We worked most days from 2 till 7, while in the evenings and mornings I started or finished new edits for the videos. Premiere Pro is a wonderful programme and I've now discovered the open source Flick DVD is good for creating the dvd side of things.
It still takes a computer about 10 hours to render a video, which I then throw it onto a dvd and then view it the best tv we have to test the quality and then I tweak what is needed and start all over again. See some earlier results here: www.vimeo.com/sonjavank

More work on the "kāinga a roto" (boat-home)

2010-09-18T10:33:00.001-07:00

This photo shows that we have now straightened the frames so that they are vertical and started adding permanent braces which curve around the outside.

On Friday (17 September) we put in two tv dvd monitors and had these running to decide on the size of the windows we will build for these on the inside. We've gone for making the two first windows 19 inches. We also had the marante plywood cut which will be 90 planks, each 13 x 240 cm long, placed over and along the outer structure.

At the Gamma it took a man and a machine about half an hour to do all this. This was much faster than the 6 we cut using our bench saw, where all 4 of us held the large sheets.

On September 16th about 6000 Leiden citizens registered at the Waag (medival weighing house, a few metres west of our building) for the annual, free herring and white bread (google "The relief of Leiden of 1574" to find out more about this. This article in Dutch is about this). Many of these spent a good 5-10 minutes standing in the queue outside our window. Typical comments were about how stupid we were building this, because it wouldn't fit through the door. One of the advantages in speaking English to each other while working is that, we don't need to respond as most assumed we couldn't understand them. The other common comment concerned expressions of surprise that a woman as small as I was was handling tools and seemed to know what I was doing :)

The people in the queue were of all ages, but going by their comments and the fact that they didn't seem to notice the numerous images and texts on the windows explaining in Dutch that this was an art project, obviously were people who don't visit art galleries. However we had a number of interesting and friendly conversations with some who did notice that the Leiden shoe-makers shop was now a studio + gallery for the "There is beauty in the city".

More about the there Beauty is in the city exhibition is here

Studio - Aalmarkt 17, Leiden

2010-09-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

Read about how you can participate in the "there is beauty in the city" project here. This exhibition in the window combines global views with Leiden views.

I have this studio thanks to
OPEN | Makers, a Leiden city culture project which gives artists a studio for 2 months in the middle of the city.

On September 12th the first frames for the installation Kāinga a roto (Home Within) were raised in place with Tama, Toroa (his teeshirt bears the text: Das Wort "Vegetarier" kommt aus dem Indianischen und heißt:"Zu Blöd zum Jagen") and Sen doing most of the work.

More photos will be added below documenting the progress.

Four of the five videos to go inside still need a some work but you can get an impression of these on my vimeo page. These are: The Heart of the Land, The Two Lands, The Dark Valley and The Moving Heart.

For the installation there will be no titles or credits and some will be made longer so they loop seamlessly and so the soundscape of the space works as an entity.
These plus the new one I'm still working on will be for sale as a DVD package from late October onwards.

Wanted: Beauty in the city

2010-08-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

>> Lees het in het nederlands

"There is beauty in the city" is an exhibition of images by artists around the world in "OPEN | Makers aan de Markt" (www.openmakers.nl) at Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, 3 September - 13 October. Participants are invited to provide images of Leiden that will become part of this exhibition.

<< Photo: There is beauty in Sydney, Australia, photo by Siobhan Tarr. More images on the blog

"There is beauty in the city" is a global art project initiated by British artist, Anna Francis in 2008 and now managed by Glen Stoker. The Leiden part of this project is coordinated by Sonja van Kerkhoff.

This show will combine global views with Leiden views. Participants receive a magnetic sticker with the text "There is BEAUTY in the city" which they place in their city and photograph. For the Leiden exhibition, we invite you to come to Aalmarkt 17 to collect a magnet for 4 euros from September 3rd onwards, 3 - 5 pm while stocks last, or make an appointment via: sonjavank AT gmail.com

Choose your favourite corner of the city and leave the magnet there for others to see. Be creative.

The first 25 individuals to send or deliver their image will have this shown in a second row in the shop window, as well as having their images become part of the blog and future exhibitions around the world. At the end of the exhibition, participants can come and collect their images to keep.

Gezocht: Schoonheid in de stad

"Er is schoonheid in de stad" is een tentoonstelling van beelden van kunstenaars van over de hele wereld in "OPEN | Makers aan de Markt" (www.openmakers.nl) op Aalmarkt 17, Leiden, 3september t/m 13 oktober Deelnemers worden uitgenodigd om foto's van Leiden in te sturen, die vervolgens deel uitmaken van de tentoonstelling.

"Er is schoonheid in de stad" is een wereldwijd kunstproject, begonnen in 2008 op initiatief van de Britse kunstenaar Anna Francis, en wordt nu beheerd door Glen Stoker. Het Leidse deel van dit project wordt gecoördineerd door Sonja van Kerkhoff.

Deze tentoonstelling zal wereldwijde perspectieven combineren met Leidse perspectieven. De deelnemers krijgen een magnetische sticker met de tekst "There is beauty in the city", die zij in hun stad plaatsen en fotograferen. Voor deze expositie in Leiden nodigen wij u uit om bij Aalmarkt 17 een magneet op te halen voor 4 euro vanaf vrijdag 3 September. Open van 15 tot 17 uur, of maak een afspraak per mail: sonjavank AT gmail.com

Kies uw favoriete hoek van de stad en stel daar de magneet tentoon voor anderen. Wees creatief.

De eerste 25 afbeeldingen die worden in- gestuurd of geleverd worden weergegeven in de tweede rij in de etalage, evenals in de blog en in toekomstige tentoonstellingen over de hele wereld. Aan het einde van de tentoonstelling kunnen de deelnemers hun afbeelding ophalen.

OPEN | Makers aan de markt zet kunstproductie in de etalage. Makers krijgen voor 2 maanden een ruimte, Leiden krijgt zicht op de Leidse kunstproductie.
OPEN | Makers is geïnitieerd door Cultuurfonds Leiden.

A functional beauty

2010-05-13T05:32:00.000-07:00

Beauty is a human virtue or quality. It is about what we choose to see as much as how we see. So I placed the "there is BEAUTY in the CITY" magnet on my back, stood on the balcony in my apartment and faced my city, Leiden. This is my view of my city most days. Some who see our balcony wouldn't consider it very beautiful, with the tools and ladder and so on, while others wouldn't consider all the flats around us as very beautiful and neither do I, if I am seeing beauty only as form. What I find beautiful about where I live is that I can easily walk or cycle to where I need to be and that we can use our small balcony for working on new art projects. And this isn't the first time I've used our balcony as inspiration for an artwork, the 3 minute video begins from where you see me standing here

There is BEAUTY in the CITY
The “There is BEAUTY in the CITY” art project is a collaborative project with the people of the world. It encourages a reframing and rethinking of the urban spaces that we inhabit - using a magnet as a tool to renegotiate familiar territories.
The project was started in March 2008 by UK artist Anna Francis
(Her blog -http://annafrancis.blogspot.com- also has links to other art projects too)
in Stoke-on-Trent for the Axis Festival, and has had over 200 images submitted from over 40 photographers/artists which are shown in exhibitions and festivals as well as on the blog managed by Glen Stoker.

“Anna says the project allows people to see the place in which they live in a new way, and differently.

But she is emphatic that it is not just about creating a photo-album: "The project could easily be (mis)interpreted as an effort to simply collect and label images of urban spaces and indeed if the project was to be undertaken by just one person or one individual, this idea of 'beauty' could become very problematic."

"But the fact that many people's views on 'beauty' are included in the project makes for a very interesting end result. The fact that many different people are working with this phrase on their own terms means that the idea of there being beauty in the city is open to a wide variety of interpretations."

BBC website, 9 April 2010

Participate!
If there is a corner of your city that you want to draw attention to, or label as beautiful, you too can join in. Details are on the blog (thereisbeautyinthecity.blogspot.com) which also has photos of places where “there is beauty in the city” sent in by others across the globe.

There's also a facebook group for this project here

The wonders of technology - a response to the Eyjafjallajökull smoke screen

2010-04-22T15:12:00.001-07:00

Around 1906 `Abdu'l-Bahá wrote: "...all the members of the human family, whether peoples or governments, cities or villages, have become increasingly interdependent. For none is self-sufficiency any longer possible..."
(Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá
(Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1978), pp. 31-32))

And in 1936, Shoghi Effendi discussed this theme in reference to "A mechanism of world inter-communication..."
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 203)

Screenshot taken this morning >>
on the website: www.flightradar24.com which shows real-time flights in Europe. The yellow dots are planes flying or landing.
The pink R + E indicate, Reykavik + Eyjafjallajökull

Last Friday morning, messages via my Facebook friends indicated that planes were not running and then I saw the pictures of the cloud and smoke!
Now a few U.K. papers are wondering if the 6 day no-flight ban was over-cautious, but I think, thanks to the wonders of technology a disaster was avoided. Sure people had to stay longer or find trains or buses, or be creative or flexible. It was clear from some of the messages I read, that some travellers had never slept in an airport before. Welcome to my world!
And others complained of having to make train changes, which meant carrying their luggage themselves. Welcome to my world again.
Others complained that information in their non-English speaking country was not in English and I smiled, they could send messages to facebook but didn't know how to use babblefish or communicate by adlibing. We English-speakers are the laziest people :)
Then I thought of these facebook messages that were coming in and how people were using this technology to share their stories. A lot of it seemed to be about uncertainty and frustration and I thought, hang on, a catastrophe has been averted.

Yes, I wasn't travelling and my experiences have taught me to travel light, but still I found it kinda of nice to have a sky free of planes for a few days. To be looking at the sky more often for signs of volcanic ash and glad that the red sunsets were a reminder of the wonder of nature, rather than pollution.

new 2 minute video by Sen and myself

2010-03-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

This is our submission for a call for videos to celebrate Europe where at least 50% of the video utilizes EU archival material.

We decided to contrast stills from our own travels with that of their footage, on theme of Europe as a place for exploration into new territorities - a Europe as a compass or clock, a place without borders or with changing borders.

You can also view this on their website in a larger size

A compass tells us that every direction has its possibilites.
We have taken the theme of a 'compass-clock' as a way of showing our personal experiences with diverse European cultures. The video starts at zero for us, the Netherlands our home for the past 20 years and then turning clockwise, snapshots of us and our children flash by against various modes of documentation to create a dance between the personal and the public record.

The music is a remix of music by friends of ours: Sandy Hoover (U.S./U.K, with credit to Los de Abjo (Mexico), and Kath Tait, U.K. www.kathtait.com) who like us were born outside of Europe but have spent decades enjoying the opportunities of living and working in Europe.

"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends."
wrote Maya Angelou.

The footage we have selected from the European Commission audiovisual archive contrasts fleeting moving images of Europe in various ways to show aspects of European life-worlds, such as shots of cities, institutions, some projects supported by the European Social Fund (ESF), as well as historical events, with still images of our family in locations such as the Hague Peace Palace, Legoland in Denmark, Oulu + Helsinki in winter, Estonian, Latvian + Lithuanian towns, Polish + Czech mountain tops, German streets, Italian waterways, the Spanish sea, Luxemburg, Belgian, French + Irish churches and views, and ancient Scottish stones.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
Marcel Proust.

Aotearoa | New Zealand travels

2010-02-13T08:47:00.001-08:00

Dec 13-16, 19-20: Auckland then Christchurch
Dec 16-19: We drive to Dunedin, visit the Otago Peninsula + friends
Dec 20: We hitch to Nelson
Dec 21: We hitch to Takaka
Dec 21-25: We stay near Collingwood
Dec 25-26: > Nelson > Wellington > we hitch to Eltham, Linda takes us to Tahora
Dec 26-Jan 2: Tahora Folk Festival
Jan 2-6: We are in South Taranaki then Whanganui
Jan 6-12: Whanganui > N.P. > Parihaka Festival > N.P. > Eltham > Kaupokonui beach > Whanganui
Jan 13-15: Roadtrip with Ans along the Desert Road > Rotorua > Tirau > Te Awamutu
Jan 16-20: Te Awamutu > Auckland > Helensville > Waiuru > Te Awamutu > Pirongia
Jan 20 - 26: Whakahoro > Along the Whanganui River > Jerusalem
Jan 27: Whanganui | exhibition > Ratana > P.N. > Otaki > Wellington
Jan 27-29: Wellington | Te Papa > Porirua
Jan 29-Feb 1st: Wellington > Auckland Folk Festival | airport farewell

Ravensbourne view

Macandrew Bay

See my
New Zealand Photos Page
for more images

Variable Oystercatcher + gull, and a seal (below) at Pilots Beach

See my
New Zealand Photos Page
for more images

The “ego-tag”, managing your identity and eco mapping at PICNIC '09

2009-10-13T07:08:00.000-07:00

PICNIC is an annual 3 day technology-art-business conference in Amsterdam
www.picnicnetwork.org | See my 2008 review
The 4th edition was held, 23-25 September 2009

This time I was one of the Mediamatic volunteers, so most of my experiences of PICNIC '09 involved one of their RFID projects.

There were 10 of these playful 'gadget-games' visitors could interact with using their “IK” RFID heart-shaped tags issued free to everyone.

“IK” means “I” in Dutch and these “I-tags” were the keys for interaction, not only for yourself but with others as well.

To start playing you registered yourself with the “I-tag” which then would identify you as the player, from the information gleaned from your profile on the PICNIC website.

Most of the games created at the week long Mediamatic Social RFID Hacker Camp (Link to introduction, blog and photos) were playful interfaces which then uploaded a score, a drawing, or webshots of you. So the “I-tag”, a type of 'ego-tag' was relatively harmless unless you were embarrassed by the webshots :).

On one level the games as games were simplistic, you won a point or lost to your opponent. On another level the simplicity allowed for social interaction: businesswomen run, catch and throw.

>> “IK SPIN” (a frisbee game for teams) by Mark Wubben & Eelco Wagenaar starts when you pass your “I-tag” over the reader. The screen shows your name (found on the PICNIC website) and links this with the others who then register as members of your team for the game.
A photo of the team is then uploaded to your profile on the PICNIC website. Then the goal is to pass the team frisbee over the reader under the flashing light. There are 4 of these and they flash randomly in succession and team members may only catch or throw the frisbee, not run with it.

<< Mark Wubben, one of the makers, passes a frisbee over the reader to start the game.

Like a game of basketball, members throw one of the two frisbees to their teammates until one can pass the frisbee over the reader underneath the flashing light and win a point for their team.

<< Here one of the makers, Eelco Wagenaar scores a point while the other player in the other team runs to the frisbee thrown to him.

More about this project is here.

Below: Overview showing 3 of the 4 lamp posts which flashed randomly during the IK SPIN game. Underneath each is a pink “IK” sticker. Players need to pass the frisbee over the sticker while that light is flashing to win a point.

ik-a-sketch made by Edwin Dertien & Neil Mendoza at the Mediamatic Social RFID Hackerscamp 2009.
This image is from Brady Forrest's blog which also has a review.

Then you could participate in a joint drawing on a metres-large screen with a stranger (or friend), one being the vertical influence and the other the horizontal influence, as in ik-a-sketch.
These drawings were then uploaded to your picnic profile page. It is a pity that it so easy to just make a mess of lines as you can see in the image below. As a gadget it worked if someone, such as myself was there to explain the concept but even then many people once they got the idea, found it too clumsy to manoeuver or not interesting enough to do something creative with it. Admittedly it probably served its purpose, as a fun thing for two people to collaborate with for a few minutes.

FRIENDSLICER is made by Eric Gunther, Andras Sly Szalai, and Jeff Lieberman.

Standing inside the FRIENDSLICER studio you were asked to dance or make a sound in front of a camera which I found silly, but the resulting video shown on the wall on the outside of the 'studio' was amazing. The way the video and sound were cut created aesthetic experiences. My advice would be to re-work some meaning into the instructions so that the process of being inside the studio resonates as part of the end result. Perhaps the instructions inside the studio could be related to the theme of friends and slicing rather than asking for a random weird sound or a dance. The title and the point of using RFID technology was that the resulting clip was made with slices of video and sound from other individuals connected to your PICNIC profile as well as from slices of what was previously recorded. That was part of the surprise in the resulting video as well which then played continuously -a music video with your social network- until replaced by the next recording.

“Breaking The Frame” worked beautifully as a gadget, producing short (stop motion) films of you around the space from multiple viewpoints, which were then uploaded to your PICNIC profile page. I just wish there had been more in terms of a 'why' or perhaps some sort of question, assignment, or comment for the participants to do other than to just madly run around in the space. Perhaps some reference to staging, the panoramic image or even the photographic portrait, but of course, I'm projecting in ways not intended by the makers nor Mediamatic for that matter. And this is a criticism I have of many new media installations or gadgets. I missed some 'engagement.' A reasonable counter argument is that these gadgets were made in a week, so there was only time for 'play'. But how do we 'play' without engagement? Is entertainment actually play?

Yet the Mediamatic gadgets were a valuable contribution at PICNIC as accessible and unpretentious entertainment or as playful experiments. The set-up was very open, so anyone could play, paying member or not, young or old. This openness, was an important element because it broke down barriers. And sometimes the simplicity of the games meant people would just spontaneously join in, such as in “IK TREK” a tug-of-war game where a rope moves one way or the other in response to the amount of friends each registered “IK”tag has). I was showing someone how this worked, and then a person with many friends on his PICNIC profile swiped his “IK”-tag on the other side, causing the rope to reverse and move in his direction. Suddenly those standing around swiped their tags on the reader to help our side and before many seconds had passed, 20 or so passing individuals were now standing on each side of the rope, yelling and laughing. What are the boundaries between entertainment and engagement and where do they matter?

IK WIN was first developed over one week at the 2008 Mediamatic Hackers club by Simon Claessen, Axel Roest and Mathias Forbach, for PICNIC 08.
For PICNIC '09 it was a beautiful machine. I rode up in the elevator a number of times, competing against my opponent in the other elevator. The winner is lifted highest into the air, if their name is linked to the RFID tag with the most google hits

<< The person on the right is wearing one of the “ikGNOME” hats by Tijmen Schep. People could wear a red or a blue hat while being photographed in front of one of the “ikCam" screens located around the displays, the idea being to see which colour would win by being the most photographed.

Then there was the IK WIN set of elevators. Someone small and as badly dressed as I am, standing in one could surprise the man in a suit or the nerd standing in the other elevator by soarng into the sky above him! I love the tongue-in-cheek title reminding us of the absurdity of 'competition' as an end. You won by having more google hits than your opponent. You won by being raised into the air. You won, by having your name announced as the winner. And then one of the phrases: a voice would boom out “Who is this person?”

And so from the extrovert to the inner: I sat in on some of 'The Privacy Paradox in Social Media' lectures.
Rene Hansen from UBC (A global biopharma company focused on long-term illnesses) gave an example of how what is normally considered private, one's health problems, were shared and exploited to help each other on the website: www.patientslikeme.com
Started in 2004 by family members of an ALS sufferer as a way to pool knowledge on treatment and experience, it is built for and around patients. It requires and relies on trust for individuals to supply the information themselves and from this the website generates all sorts of information which anyone who wishes can access, including healthcare charts that show individual conditions and treatments over time. With over 50,000 patient-reported outcomes, this was not only useful for patients but also for research institutes such as UBC, Hansen said. This system is entirely based on information and measurements of health as judged by the patient, rather than on the health professional. Results were made anonymous and aggregated. His presentation was a success story of how empowerment helps research in healthcare.

Benjamin Joffe's presentation: “Humans, Robots and the Digital Panoptican”
(you can view this as a SlideShare presentation on LinkedIn) looked at the issue of privacy as an aspect of the mutable phenomena of just what is public and what is human.

It connected well with the presentation: “Forget Privacy, just manage your identity” by Christian van 't Hof (a researcher at the Rathenau Institute in The Hague). He gave examples of how digital gadgets were creatively 'hacked' by ordinary users, such as a tagging device used by parents to locate their children: the children then used this device as a way of meeting their friends. His focus was on using the digital as a form of empowerment rather than control or lack of control. He referred to the panoptican, the Big Brother idea of a central control, as being replaced by a synopticon, where your information about anyone also means they could find information about you. In a sense this is already happening with various social networks that people fill with data. The issue is knowing how to manage, how to use the data that is collected about you as a tool for negotiation, and to develop systems that empower: that assume individual choice.

On the final morning I listened in on the “Ecomap Lab: THINK!” lectures organized by de Waag Society. Six speakers presented various types of mapping and interpretations of environments. Drew Hemment (www.futureeverything.org) discussed a few examples of participatory projects in which technology was used to encounter the environment in innovative ways and were the data collected could help change people's behaviour. He stressed the need for simplicity, transparency and reciprocity to engage people. “Climate Bubbles” involved masses of individuals blowing bubbles in Manchester where they recorded the wind speed for 10 minutes in 'micro' climates. The data was to be incorporated into a map of Manchester's winds. “Biotagging,” another project at the May 2009 Futuresonic festival, went a step further in incorporating individual input. Individuals were invited to classify plants, animals and fungi along a particular route in their own ways. This folksomic approach was used to build a bottom-up taxonomy of an area which could help a city council see how residents relate to this area. Drew Hemment's talk focused on a list of design principles for such projects. For me, all the points related to issues of engagement, who are the people this affects, why, and the meaningfulness of the non-standard and how this can be useful for projects involving masses of people.

Five presenters then focused on project they had or were developing. Daniel Kaplan (click to view his slideshow) presented the Green Watch (La Montre Verte) which records Ozone and Noise levels which are shown real-time on a mobile phone and on a website. It had two aims. to multiply the amount of urban sensors and make individuals aware of these two variables in their environment. I borrowed one of these watches for a few hours but found it heavy, and the mobile phone around my neck was overkill, but as a prototype it functioned well and required no maintenance to do its work.

Because the Dutch government had claimed that it wasn't feasible to distinctively measure the noise of airplanes, in 2004 Rene Post and others set up 23 monitors around the Schiphol airport area, establishing a noise monitoring system on a budget of 10, 000 euros. The system, Geluidsnet, also produced data that could be understood and more importantly accessed by a lay person. As a result, aircraft noise became a political issue, and the value of independent monitoring was made evident. The law was eventually changed so that producers of noise, such as airports, were obliged to supply data rather than to say it wasn't possible.
Screenshot made on 14 October 2009 at 13.53.
See: www.geluidsnet.nl. The numbers and colours indicate raised noise levels. If you click on a number, more information is available from that sensor, including levels over a period of time.

Geluidsnet works brilliantly even today using multiple independent small monitors, displaying real-time and data over time, which can be seen by everyone on a website. It has also meant that noise level agreements, for example with contractors, can be monitored or, on a more personal level, that the noise level from a dance party is transparent. People can also subscribe to an email digest of this data, so Geluidsnet is certainly a success story in using technology as a means for empowerment and awareness.

London-based artist, then Usman Haque gave an outline of the Pachube project, a web service which 'patches' data in realtime from sensors (which can be objects, devices & buildings) from anyone around the world. Any device that is connected to the internet (wired, wireless or via SMS gateway) can store, share, graph and distribute its datastreams in real time using Pachube. So the pachube website can show, for example, that today (Oct 14th 2009) someone in Dipton, (a town about 30 km north of Invercargill in New Zealand) is sharing some data from a sensor measuring carbon dioxide levels. This page has a list of ways Pachube could be used: from farmer to scientist to designer.

Shane Mitchell introduced Connected Urban Development (CUD) organized by Cisco in partnership of 7 cities (Amsterdam, Birmingham, Hamburg, Lisbon, Madrid, San Francisco, Seoul) which works at reducing carbon emissions while enhancing the quality of urban life in these cities. He then showcased the San Francisco urban eco map.

Nerea Calvillo presented In the Air a visualization project for the microscopic and invisible agents in the air of Madrid (gases, particles, pollen, diseases, etc). She showed a number of prototype visualizations where the various elements changed a little like cloud formations in the air in real-time, and in a sense raised the profile of the intangible space of the city. 15 sensors feed information about 5 pollutants into the system which was used to make the dynamic visualization. The aim of the project is to provide a platform for individual and collective awareness and decision making, which it does via the website and displays in public spaces. They also run workshops using low-tech elements for the same purpose such as tagged balloons.

I also participated in the afternoon session, called “MAKE.” chaired by Frank Kresin and others. One of the exercises was to work in small groups to come up with an approach to creating systems that affect human behaviour. The group I was in had the theme: 'engage everyone', and we chose to view the environment as an interface so that individuals not only didn't need any gadgets to facilitate interaction, but rather individuals were needed to look or listen to the environment around them for input or output. Some examples we came up with were sensors that could read the speed of a passing mass (whether you passed by car, by foot or bicycle) which would affect a display on a board, in a tree or a shop. Some displays could be made so you could only see them if you cycled or walked, while perhaps for a driver, if they passed a point, the display went blank. In looking at ways to reward rather than punish, we thought that on days when pollution was high, buses would be free, and cycle lanes widened. Other ideas included using planning in the way plants or pathways or shelter-ways were made, so that walking or cycling to work was more stimulating as well as easier.

The Mediamatic Hackers Camp

2009-09-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

Tama and I worked at this for a day in Amsterdam doing odd jobs. See their own site for more

Open Monument Weekend in Amsterdam + Leiden

2009-09-21T17:01:00.000-07:00

On Saturday 12th of September, Sen and I cycled around Amsterdam visiting the Huburtus huis (rainbow coloured banisters with lots of light and appartments designed for single mothers of young children) and few old mansions before visiting Claire + Tahirih.

On Sunday we cycled around Leiden and these photographs are from our visit to the Leiden Museum of Weaving (Wevershuis) which had demonstrations and displays of weaving from the ages. Sen and I exhibited our art in this atmospheric museum last year. See the youtube film I made from this here

And speaking of atmospheric we now have work in another part of the old city centre of Leiden. In a hairstylist shop that has been in business in this location since 1872.
See my future page for details of where and the opening hours. There's also a page linked to this with a list of the artwork in the show.
It is on till December 31st

Change is a Law of Nature

2009-08-18T04:53:00.001-07:00

Please don't copy this photo © Marco Secchi 2009.

About a month ago similiar photographs to this one featured on the front pages of newspapers in the U.K. of Sarah Brown, wife of the British Prime Minister taking part the London Pride March on July 4th.

And for a blog I wrote, I was generously given permission to use this photograph by London-based photographer Marco Secchi (www.marcosecchi.com)
More of his brilliant images of the march are here.

The blog is an attempt to get Bahais to discuss the implications of equality and justice for the LGBT community. Many Bahais believe gay Bahais can't have partners let alone marry, so that's the background to my blog where I'm looking at what the Bahai Writings say about religious law and communities being adaptable and changeable in response to the conditions of society.
There's also no Bahai Scriptual basis for this homophobic attitude, because Bahai Scripture is only the authenticated writings of Abdul-Baha, Baha'u'llah and the Bab and official interpretations of these by Shoghi Effendi. However the real issue I think is, for Bahais to look at where did these ideas come from and what Bahai principles could possibly support such an attitude if they are serious about the Bahai principles of equality and justice.

It is here, and if you have any responses to the blog, feel free to post these anonymously if you wish. In April 2010 I collected some of my posts together from Bahai Rants and put them in chronological order on my Just a Bahai blog.

July - August : Travels in the UK

2009-08-18T04:47:00.001-07:00

A summary:
*Driving to Dunkirk + arriving at Dover
*Art in London + hanging our work in Regents Park
*Matt's BBQ in Sheffield + losing and finding our valuables
*Downpour in York (and lots of walking around)
*Debbie and her amazing mahi harakeke
*Tyre blow-out and a night at a garage
*Bahais in Newcastle and at Burnlaw
*Roger + Marion help us set up art for the Carlisle Arts Festival
*Discovering my gr gr grandmother's tombstone and of 5 other ancestors in a Haddington graveyard
*Meeting David and his rabbit-killer dog
*Hunting for Pict stones in Angus
*The Lossiemouth Folk Festival!
*An overdose of Prehistoric + Pict stones.
*Chilling in Inverness + the Black Isle
*A day at the Scottish Bahai Summerschool
*Sen gives a talk at the Bahai Studies Seminar
*Taking down our installations in Carlisle
*Overkill of castle and church ruins in Yorkshire
*Sen gives a talk in a tree in Regents Park, London
*Lots of art shows in London
*Castles and estates south of London
*Stonehenge, Avebury + being in a crop circle
*Haily Abbey + Kenilworth Castle
*Norfolk coast and art in Norwich

Bahai Related, Culture/Politcs/Gender, Friends, Travels, etc

2009-08-15T09:11:00.001-07:00

Culture~Politics~Gender | Friends + Acquaintances | Travels + Places
Events, seminars, workshops, etc, I've participated in - things I've been up to not in other categories

Arts + New Media Related

2009-08-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Projects I have organized or curated | Own Art projects | Art by Others
New Media Related Art Projects | Theatre, Theatre-Performance or Dance | Music or Sound Related

My own art projects or our work in others' projects

10 October 2010: Final views of our video installation in the Aalmarkt studio
7-9 October 2010: Our video installation, Kāinga a roto, in the Aalmarkt studio
1-5 October 2010: Our video installation, Kāinga a roto, in the Aalmarkt studio
29 September 2010: About our video installation, Kāinga a roto
19 September 2010: Leiden art route | de Leiden kunstroute
September 2010: More about building our installation + "There is beauty in the Leiden"
September 2010: About the "There is beauty in the Leiden" project & our video installation, Kāinga a roto
August 2010: About the "There is beauty in the Leiden" art project
May 2010: The "There is BEAUTY in the CITY" project run by Anna + Glen
March 2010: Two minute video with music by friends, Kath + Sandy

September 2009: Exhibition of prints + paintings till December 2009
May 2009: Performance in Cyprus
March 2009: waka huia : new art work

Sept 2008: Solo show in Museum of Weaving, Leiden
July 2008: Show + performance in London
June 2008: My augmented reality game idea : Follow the Rainbow
Feb 2008: new video : Kitchen Pythagoras

Dec 2007: new video in Dog show
Sep 2007: sculpture in London

Art by others

May 2009: Exhibition in Leiden, the Zen of Japan
Jan 2009: A few NZ artists
Dec 2008: Contemporary art in London
Nov 2008: Contemporary art in London
Nov 2008: Installations in Leiden
March 2008: Art exhibitions in Amsterdam
March 2008: About the Leiden Museum of Weaving as an art gallery
Dec 2007: Contemporary art in London
Dec 2007: Area 10, artbook launch, London
Dec 2007: Contemporary art in Leiden
Sep 2007: Exhibition in Hague Art school + sound course
Sep 2007: Contemporary art in Leiden

Projects I have organized or curated

September 2008: mini-symposium I co-organized in Leiden
June 2008: Exhibition in Leiden shops closes : Olivier raps
May 2008: Galerie TamTam, Leiden

New media related art / design

November 2010: New Media related conferences and publications
September 2009: The “ego-tag”, managing your identity
and eco mapping at PICNIC '09
April 2009: Lectures in Amsterdam,
Utopian practices : Art, Science & Design REunited
March 2009: March 24th: women + technology
September 2008: My review of PICNIC '08, a new media professionals meet
September 2008: Sarah Kettley's wearable interactive gadgets + a mini-symposium I co-organized
September 2008: ARS Electronica in Linz, Austria
June 2008: Augmented Reality
June 2008: Augmented Reality workshop at Mediamatic, Amsterdam
May 2008: Eclectic Tech Carnival (tech stuff for and by females), Amsterdam
Feb 2008: Learning Cinema 4D for a game engine called Unity
Feb 2008: Video Vortex exhibition, NMiK, Amsterdam
Jan 2008: About Vlogging, New Art TV + Flash
Oct 2007: Cinekid workshop on gaming + augmented reality, Amsterdam

Theatre, Theatre-Performance or Dance

Dec 2007: Performance at the Laban Centre, London
Dec 2007: Tap dance performance
Nov 2007: Theatre-music performance in The Hague

Music, Musicians or Sound Projects

Feb 2009: Link to a song by Brenda Liddiard
Jan 2009: Links to a few NZ musicians
Dec 2008: Luke Hurley + Kath Tait (NZ singer/songwriters)
Nov 2007: Theatre-music performance in The Hague

Artworks for the "go-ganesha-go" event in Cyprus

2009-04-29T11:27:00.001-07:00

I'm in Cyprus for 2 weeks for 1 -14 May and the following is what I plan as my contribution to the go-ganesha-go project happening in and around the Ledra Street.

“Greetings From Leiden” is an art performance featuring origami elephants bearing local news of my city in the Netherlands, the city of Leiden. The performance involves laying these out along a street and responding to people's questions. In other performances I've found that this can lead to discussions, for example about what is a greeting, about communication in general, or the relevance of communication (or a greeting) in a situation of tension between local communities. As an outsider to the Ledra Street and to the country of Cyprus, it felt it would be most honest not to bring any sort of message but rather to bring a greeting, a potential for dialogue in equality.

See other performances i've done

On the other hand, the short animation: “And these realities of things, though in the utmost diversity, are yet intimately connected one with the other” by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn is loaded with messages. Yet as a viewer, you have to work out your own message.

The title, a quotation from the Bahai writings, could refer to the changing elements in the animation or it could refer to a narrative that seems to spin off in several directions at once. In the end, elephants surface, fly and seem more human than the people in the animation, in the sense that they are more free from the constraints of the world around them. This freedom is as much a message about free will as about peace, because peace is chosen and created by society. The song, Son Maloso, is by Colombian David Dely + the band, Tumba y Quema, currently based in Budapest, Hungary.

Exhibition in Leiden, the Zen of Japan

2009-04-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

On till May 31st at the Expansionist Art Empire Gallery, Nieuw Rijn 94 in Leiden.

Utopian practices : Art, Science & Design REunited

2009-04-20T04:32:00.000-07:00

I attended this on March 19th 2009
It was a day of lectures and discussion organized by the Waag Society, the Virtual Knowledge Studio (KNAW) and the Centre for Arts & Genomics Leiden at the De Balie in Amsterdam.

Dutch trains are usually punctual but this time not, so Amalia and I arrived a half hour later than planned and so missed the beginning of Suzanne's talk.

>> Susan Kennard, Executive Director of the new media institute BANFF in Canada, presents Tracklines, a location-based storytelling experience designed to be delivered on wilderness trails in Banff National Park using GPS-enabled mobile phones.

I'd heard about the Art Mobile Lab from Angus who I met in NZ in February and did a residency at Banff in 1998, so wanted to meet the new director.

Next Beatriz da Costa spoke about PigeonBlog which equips urban homing pigeons with GPS enabled electronic air pollution sensing devices capable of sending real-time location based air pollution and image data to an online mapping/blogging environment. I'd heard her talk about this at Mediamatic about a year ago but what was new was her mention of her book Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience.

>> Martin Kemp discussed some of his articles from his 2006 book, Seen and Unseen

March 24th: women + technology

2009-03-24T04:34:00.000-07:00

I received an invitation to announce The Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Find out more at findingada.com.

For me personally, this is easy, since I'm so obsessed about technology myself, but recently I was invited to give a paper at a conference in Bremen on gender and ICT and there I met many amazing women from Costa Rica to the Philippines and quite a large number of women came from Scandanavia. In the spirit of openness that I'd like to think is a feminine characteristic (yes, men have this quality too :) most papers can be read or downloaded here. And so this blog is dedicated not only to those who organized this conference but to all (the men as well! - feminisim works to address gender imbalance afterall) who attended and participated in the
5th European Symposium on Gender & ICT
"Digital Cultures: Participation - Empowerment - Diversity"
University of Bremen, Germany, March 5 - 7, 2009

Now you might ask about the connection this image has with all of this. This is a reworking of a design for Kath Tait's song "Leaky Umbrellas" I recently submitted for a London show on artworks inspired by music. Made using photoshop and illustrator and a rather old mouse (I still haven't gotten around to using a pen) on my trusty computer, Huianui. Yes in our household we personalize our computers!

In making the pledge to mention some women involved in technology, I came across the pledge for praising those over 40. Being over 40 myself, well that's easy too :) Actually 40 seems so young since I'm closer to 50, but there's a lot of good work being done by us over 40 year olds. Here's a link to Kath's music as one example:

And I had a look at some of the responses to the Ada Lovelace Day.
See Suw Charman-Anderson's blog about why she created this pledge.
UK artist, designer, educationalist, Christine Wilks made a flash animation, Binary Kitten (who's blog has some interesting links) posted about LornaJane one of the women in PHP women, which I must check out, since PHP is something I would like to get at. Roxanne wrote about Sandra Lerner, co-founder Cisco Systems and mentioned a number of other contemporary woman involved in technologies. Nice it was about someone living, Ada Lovelace, one of the world’s first computer programmers, died at the age of 36 in 1856. I loved bone's blog on Laurie Anderson.
And if you want more the list of blogs is here.

waka huia :: new art work by Sen and myself

2009-03-17T12:37:00.001-07:00

I'm still struggling with a persist flu but have managed to get into the swing of things. This is a new work for a show (if it is accepted) that will travel from London to Venice called "Travelling Light" (and most likely to other locations as our work often ends up doing).

Here is our write up about the work:

Waka Huia (Feather Boat)

by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn (Aotearoa | New Zealand | The Netherlands) www.sonjavank.com/sensonja

A “waka huia” is a container for holding valuables, but the name also
means “feather boat” in New Zealand Maori. Our work is a transculent vessel bearing a cargo of lightness. A cargo of the spirit.

Our ‘vessel’ is formed from the image of a feather from an extinct bird, the Huia
(Heterralocha acutirostris) combined with drawings by Sonja.

The Huia bird was last sighted in the 1920’s but its feathers and body have travelled the world, following the trade routes of colonialism. Seven skins are in the Leiden Natural History museum, the city where the artists live. These were acquired from a museum in Germany, from an auction house in London and from museums and auction houses in New Zealand.

Feb 1 :: Climbing Mt Taranaki with my sister

2009-03-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

>> View of Mount Taranaki and my sister, Linda.

We intended on an early start but it was 8.45 by the time we started our walk at the DOC (department of Conservation) North Egmont carpark. Then it was almost 2 hours of steep trekking till we got to the Tahurangi Lodge. And then the stairs, and then the scoria (a killer), but with Linda and only 5 or 6 others on the mountain there wasn't any dust and I could stop and video and take photos while catching my breath. Linda made the climb much easier for me by supplying the walking sticks, a good backpack and leading me up.

It was about 3.30 by the time we got to the top and it was extremely windy on the summit.

>> Linda in the crater

We both grew up in the shadow on this mountain in the heart of a red-neck farming area seeing it from the west with Fanthom's Peak in front.

Jeff had lent me the book Taranaki Whenua which I read later. It is a catalogue that went with an exhibition in Te Puke Ariki (Museum in New Plymouth) in 2008, which was beautifully illustrated with work by artists, photographs, survey maps and artefacts from the Puke Ariki collection. I learnt that in 1962, Moa bones had been excavated at the beach (Kaupokanui Beach) where we went as children.

Listen to this stunning song by Brenda

Sonja visits Aotearoa - New Zealand

2009-03-03T01:08:00.001-08:00

Part one: 21-30 January

I arrived in Auckland on January 21st at 5 a.m.! My aunt Sue met me and we spent the day together. It was fantastic to be home again.

>> Detail in the Manuwera Sculpture Gardens

Still adjusting to a different time zone, I went to Jane's birthday party on the 22nd and on the left are a few photos of some of the music that was happening.

I spent the morning of the 23rd meeting a few old Tahorites and then headed off towards the Auckland Folk festival site. Jeff had warned us to take a different route because someone had been shot by the police on the motorway.
It felt like a scene out of a Western.

>> Jam session at Jane's party

Arriving at the site, I found it to be much bigger than I realised. So in the end just found a spot for the tent under some trees. Enjoyed my time at the festival wandering from place to place. A jam session (me on clogs) with Peter, Simon, Fiona, Richard and others late one night was particularly memorable. I also spent a lazy afternoon at Jeff's, drinking coffee and sorting out a paper that had been accepted for a conference.

Funny to see so many vaguely familiar faces and it was lovely to catch up with old friends.

>> Taranaki's Gumboot Tango perform their own stuff at the Auckland Folk Festival

I also videod vigorously and took heaps of photographs, for possible future art projects and with my current video project on migration in mind.

A day after the festival Michael took me to breakfast on the back of one of his Harley-Davidsons. What a blast zipping along Devonport.

Above: The Penman Family (David, Chris, Thiea and Jack) perform at the Auckland Folk Festival (They have a cd out - a fab English trad collection!)

Left to Right: Auckland Folk Festival:
Blue Grass musos jam along with Tracey, a loose group of Tahorites jam, session with Peter, Fiona, Simon + Richard and others, and Tracey Haskell performs on stage.

Jeff at work

On January 28th I went over to Waiheke Island to see the Headland Sculpture exhibition.

Naturally I thought Jeff's was one of the better works!
His is this water tank containing a choreography of debri (waves were created by the solar panel at the top). Jeff had salvaged this debri from the sea below this location after a boat fire a year or so ago.

Met up with Paul Cullen, an artist I'd met in South Korea in 2004 and then spent the evening with Elizabeth discussing film. On my final day I met with various gallery people and thanks to Hilary heard James Luna's inspiring talk before driving in Jeff's car to Hamilton. At Hamilton met up with an old friend Chris experiencing family life with hens and a huge backyard!

Filipe dropped in on his way north, showing me some images of his latest work for the New Plymouth Natural History Museum.

Then while driving at 80 kph, the bonnet flipped up smashing the windscreen. Fortunately it was an easy car to drive, so I could slow down and stop and managed to use the edge of the jack to fix the bonnet shut again. It was a nerve racking drive for the next half hour or so, while I looked for a place to ring my sister from. But after that I realised that the windscreen probably wasn't going to get any worse and then sped up again and took the "Forgotten Highway" route via Tahora to Taranaki. It was a magical drive even though driving on loose gravel isn't my cup of tea.

Part two: 1-20 February 2009

Canoeing and cycling along the Whanganui River: 10-16 February

7 - 10 Jan 2009 :: Daniel Visits

2009-01-11T16:36:00.000-08:00

Daniels blog says it all.
This is Daniel in front of the underground Leiden station bicycle racks.

His blog shows images from our neighbourhood supermarket and one of the mosques.

Later I took him by bicycle through the city to the Breestraat (the street shown in the next image here) on which is the Waalsekerk (Wallonian Church) where Tama had his lessons on the 1746
Gerard Stevens organ. This building (the photo here, shows the edge of the church on the far left) hails from the 1400s with major renovations in 1737-39. See Daniel's blog for images of this.

That evening we filled the living room with 16 people! It began with a dinner and moved onto two rap numbers by Olivier, then piano by Tama and then violin by Toroa with some slides. Then Daniel delivered his slide-lecture on Ethnomathematics.

See Daniel's photos of Leiden taken with Sen on January 8th

And his photos of the whore :) frost around our place.

On Jan 9th, Daniel and I cycled around Amsterdam. Here are gulls on ice on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. See Daniel's photos of Amsterdam and of the Homo monument. (www.homomonument.com)

14 Dec, London :: Luke's house concert

2009-01-11T16:35:00.001-08:00

Luke's website and his Best of cd is brilliant!

Next to him is Kath and 3 brilliant CDs of her songs here.

12 - 15 December 2007 :: London trip to collect some work from an exhibition

2009-01-11T16:33:00.000-08:00

15 - 17 november: Sonja is in London

2008-11-19T09:06:00.001-08:00

This installation in the Tate Modern by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was fantastic. I lay on the beds, looked at the books scattered on some, but most importantly watched the liveliness of the diverse people also walking around, trying out the beds and interacting with each other. The atmosphere was quite festive.

A large text in the turbine hall gave a context for the works:

Essay: October 2058 - Tate Modern - London
It rains incessantly in London – not a day, not an hour without rain, a deluge that has now lasted for years and changed the way people travel, their clothes, leisure activities, imagination and desires. They dream about infinitely dry deserts.
This continual watering has had a strange effect on urban sculptures. As well as erosion and rust, they have started to grow like giant, thirsty tropical plants, to become even more monumental. In order to hold this organic growth in check, it has been decided to store them in the Turbine Hall, surrounded by hundreds of bunks that shelter – day and night – refugees from the rain.
The list of sculptures (these were copies), books and films (shown on the back wall) is here and more info about the work is here.

Next was Martin Creed's work in the Duveen Galleries in the Tate Britain.

Every 30 seconds someone ran at top speed through the galleries.
Here you see a shadowy figure of a runner.
More info about this work.

BP Exhibition: Drawn from the Collection consisted of rooms of drawings.

More info about this work.

A highlight for me was a room of blackboard drawings by Tacita Dean. More info about this 1997 work: The Roaring Forties: Seven Boards in Seven Days is here

More info about the Drawn from the Collection exhibition.

Under Scan
by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Trafalgar Square
15 - 23 November 2008

The bright projection light means that the projections are only visible in your shadows.
This work was first developed in 2005 and for this installation hundreds of video-portraits came from video portraits contributed by the public between the 19th + 21st of September at Tate Modern. The portraits were shot from above, as members of the public lie beneath a suspended camera. Each individual was free to represent themselves any way they wished.
See this page for more about this and other projects by Rafael

Then Molly and I went to the Royal Academy to the GSK Contemporary Spartacus Chetwynd's Helmut Newton Ladies Night‏.

There I encountered the multi-channel digital film installation Triangle of Need by Catherine Sullivan made in collaboration with Los Angeles-based composer Sean Griffin, Minneapolis-based choreographer Dylan Skybrook, and Lagos, Nigeria-based actor and director Kunle Afolayan.
It was breath-taking. More info about this is here.
The images accompanied by a music score and sounds are an unfolding of a complex set of ideas where three participants weave stories that touch on 'normalilty', class, wealth and poverty, and inequalities and injustices.

SEIZURE by Roger Hiorns is an Artangel commission in a housing estate in south London. The large crystals you see on all surfaces were made by filling the appartment to the brim with detergent and then draining the fluid out after it had catalyzed.

29 september: we sign on the walls of the 'zweetkamer'

2008-11-19T08:55:00.001-08:00

Masters Graduates may sign their name on the walls of this 14th century room. Alex Reuneker, Joris Slob and I went along to add our names for prosterity :)

11 September: Mini-symposium + "killer tv" presentation

2008-11-19T08:29:00.000-08:00

Sarah Kettley was my co-supervisor for my graduation project for my masters in media technology and to make the most of her visit to Leiden in September with Alex Reuneker (www.reuneker.nl) + Kirsten Korevaar I organized the mini-symposium issues of engagement
in digital media artworks
and literature (go to this page for more about this event) and thanks to Lucas + Rob, we had an evening in the Waag where she gave a session on her wearable technology for their interactive internet "Killer TV" event.

Above: The ceiling of the waag main conference room is filled with paintings of shields from when this room was used by the surgeon's guild for displaying and demonstrating the cutting up of bodies.

Right: Sarah presents while Matt watches.

More about Sarah is at: http://www.sarahkettley.com

13 + 14 september: old buildings in Leiden + Amsterdam

2008-11-19T07:53:00.000-08:00

Once a year in most Dutch cities, Monument Weekend means that many buildings normally not open are possible to visit. Sen and I visited 3 churches, 2 courtyards and the Leiden Free Mason Lodge on Saturday.

Right:
The Hooglandskerk, Leiden, 13 September 2008

On Sunday we went to Amsterdam and cycled to various churches, the De Beurs van Berlage (built as a stock exchange between 1898 and 1903, but now used as a conference centre) and the Oost-Indisch Huis (where sea trade in the 17th + 18th centures was managed, which resulted in the wealth which built Amsterdam)

Amsterdam
Left: The Westerkerk.

Right: The St Elisabeth Catholic Church.

Art installations in Leiden in September 2008

2008-11-19T04:36:00.001-08:00

Installations by Leiden based artists, Rudi Struik (www.rudi-struik.com) + Piet Franzen (he runs the Sidac Studio and organizes various exhibitions and mail art projects) in the prison cells and the torture chamber of Gravensteen, The city prison of Leiden between 1463 and 1955. Info about this on Rudi's website in Dutch

Above Left: Installation by Piet Franzen. Above Right: video projection by Rudi Struik.

>> Two views of an installation in a prison cell by Rudi Struik

The incision-like lines on the hung sheets relate to and are reminiscent of the incisions along the cell walls made by prisoners from the past.

A Picnic Sampler :: 24- 26 september, 2008

2008-10-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

"8,535 professionals from the creative and technology industry from more than 100 countries took part in at least one of the sessions at the PICNIC’08 event. A third of the conference delegates were visiting from abroad. A further 3,000 or more, watched the PICNIC live video stream."

I was one of the lucky 25 researchers who were given a free pass to this event in exchange for writing an article. Below is a variation of what I wrote for the Reader, comments and criticism are welcome.

My experience of Picnic was the result of dipping in and out of the parallel sessions, a kind of mobility and open access that the picnic format encouraged. My zapping gave me an overall impression of a great diversity of perspectives.

Charles Leadbeater in his presentation: “We think: The Power of Mass Creativity,” on the first day of the PICNIC conference, used the metaphor of pebbles on a beach for individuals in the 21st century who have use of the internet and web technology, contrasting this against the bygone age of boulders broadcasting. I loved his optimism and agree that user-generated systems are a way to develop communities, and from them innovations that could be globally empowering (see the 10 minute summary of his book:
We Think on YouTube).

However more access doesn't necessarily lead to better or more diverse communication. As he stated himself, without collaboration or something more, pebbles lie randomly and unconnected on the beach. One of the issues of the web 2.0 world is that it is for those with time and access, for the privileged. However his premise: openness, open source, everyone contributing and sharing en masse not only makes sense, it is also a means to a diversity beyond. Wikipedia is an example: it could not have worked, not been such a wonderful resource, if it hadn't been open to all. However wikipedia also demonstrates the inbalance of access. English language contributions far outweigh other language contributions, yet Wikipedia is more diverse than any other reference tool: as of 9-10-2008 there are 255 language versions. However because it is user-generated, we are aware that the 'truths' added by individuals like ourselves contain some level of subjectivity. So knowledge can be treated differently and in multiple ways, in contrast to having a canon of knowledge accessed via library books. Leadbeater's emphasis was that we need systems that allow people to contribute and share, and in which contributors gain some sense of purpose, some shared payoff which makes the conflicts that diversity entails worthwhile. This differs from a hierachical system in that the content (or meanings) are created by the innovations of pebbles, of various individuals, and is open to use. My only criticism of Leadbeater is his seemingly uncritical acceptance of all that is available on the web, where the perspectives of women and non-westerners are less visible than they are in other worlds. However his stress on sharing and openness is a way towards more diversity.

Stefan Agamanolis's presentation hit one of my concerns of Leadbeater's presentation on the head. While showing an image of various real wearable gadgets that all looked like technological sportswear, and he asked why were these designed like this? Why the need for speed and the instant?

The next images of wearables: a solar fan and a parasol, immediately made the point. They were aesthetic objects with a purpose. The solar panels in both items provided evening ambient lighting. These intricately embroidered elegant lace-like objects were not only ecologically-sound, and cultural expressions of a quality not often seen in new media, they were also examples of gadgets that seemed to celebrate the passing of time.
Earlier Agamanolis compared things like mobile phones to Fast Food, where the taste (of the experience) and nutrition is subordinate to the access. Physicality is always part of an experience, and the projects he demonstrated gave insights into how the physical experience can be savoured as part of the communication or purpose of a gadget. One example was Jogging over Distance, in which your heart-beat in relation to your co-runner affects the spatialised voice, so runners speed up or slow down in order to "stay" with their partner. Agamanolis seems to be celebrating distance in a world that seems to have traded hierarchical centres (Paris, New York) for virtual ones.

Two of the mediamatic hacker projects touch on the idea of being part of “virtual centres”with humour. iKWiN (developed by Simon Claessen, Axel Roest and Mathias Forbach) consists of two elevators in which you stand after registering your “ik” RFID tag (tags which each person at the conference were instructed to wear). The 'game' is to see which person's profile scores highest on google. Of course, a winning score doesn't relate to any content or the quality of impact.

Likewise with between two points, to register your RFID tag.
IkRun: a race of about 200 metres
Designed for speed, this system threw your registration out of the system if you were slower than about 20 minutes. Artists, Harold Schellings and Peter Mertens (pictured on the right taking 11 minutes to complete the run) had also noticed this. Their project, (The Right to be Slow) during picnic was to celebrate the range of time.

Admittedly both of these projects were made in a workshop a week before Picnic started, but it would not have been difficult for IkRun to be inclusive for slower participants if that had been the purpose.

The author of How Computer Games Help Children Learn, David Williamson Shaffer, gave a presentation on “Epistemic Games”. This reiterated Leadbeater's emphasis that creatively is developed by practice and participation. Josephine Dorado's presentation of Kids Connect showed teenagers communicating between New York and Amsterdam in the virtual (Second Life), but Shaffer's games were rooted in real-life problem-solving projects.

>> Josephine Dorado presents Kids Connect at the Young Picnic Special

And as part of the session, on “Anytime Any Place Learning”, a donkey-borne webcam made an appearance. The donkey
was part of the school project, Donkeypedia. Children were asked to list locations in their neighbourhood in various ways, and they added them to the website. The donkey visited these locations indicated by the children as part of a visit to the school, and if possible, fulfilled a child's wish. In one case, lighting was provided for a “scary” place. The project, launched in August 2008, will proceed from village to city, throughout Europe. The locations and assignments, recorded and stored by the gadgets the donkey carries, are uploaded to the website (at the moment only in Dutch), enabling children to follow events.

There was also a day of presentations by various European medialabs which I dipped in and out of, randomly encountering Simon Robertshaw's show-and-tell of Sandbox in Preston in the north of the U.K., Irina Blomquist who mentioned that collaboration wasn't just consensus but about taking responsibility, and Frank Kresin who presented two waag.org projects located in Amsterdam. For one of these, people wore headphones and followed a route and instruction for experiencing your religious heritage. Madretsma (Amsterdam backwards) was a
visualisation of Amsterdam's slavery history. Simon Robertshaw presents Sandbox

Next morning I joined The Next Women (www.theNextWomen.com) breakfast, which included an offer + ask session to match people who could help one another. It felt rather odd participating in such an entrepreneurial way, but it broke the ice for a group of 50 and might led to some work.
25 matches were made within fifteen minutes!

During The Next Women Brainstorm Camp

Normally I would not attend a business-centred session, but here I felt quite at ease, the three pitches were called presentations and while the criticism given was direct, it created a sense of trust and respect. Three women were competing for one opportunity, but the atmosphere was dominated by constructive criticism rather than competition. An atmosphere dominated by female voices is an opportunity for other ways of doing business.
Simone Brummelhuis, organiser of the event mentioned that women don't like the word ‘pitching,’ so they called the event a “Brainstorm Camp”. This small example of an alternative approach provided an opportunity for inclusion and as a result, more diverse feedback for the event. In contrast, I walked out of the “Games go Social” session, even though the gaming world is more my environment than a business world, because the atmosphere was so oriented to under-35 male interests. Admittedly, if the sessions had been more open in orientation, I would not have noticed the gender nor the fact that I was one of the few females (briefly) in the audience. One of the points that resonated from "The Next Women" session was the emphasis on collaboration and involving the knowledge of your audience, and in their case, involving female and male perspectives.

Adam Greenfield's session was a reminder of how mutable 'space' is. His image of four people seated next to each other, each engrossed by the phone in their hand, is funny but a poignant reminder of how technology can and does distract us from our physical surroundings.
Even more intrusive, he argued, is the information gleaned via the web, (such as data representations of the amount of crime in an

Adam Greenfield presents at the conference.
The caption reads: Where are you when you are on the phone?

area or Twitter notifications of what all your friends are doing) which influences our actions, especially if the interface seems ubiquitous such as via billboards. Even though his talk centred more on the benefits of surveillance systems, such as avoiding queues, rather than on how technologies change the choreography of our daily movements, such as allowing us to avoid interacting with an entry attendant by just swiping a handbag bearing a chip, his presentation did warn of the subjectivity of data. A touching example is the flickr geotagging function (which depending on your perspective reveals how un-unique you are as a photographer or is a visualisation of how this monument has been seen by others). A scary example was of a driver being killed by an automatically actuated pole that suddenly blocked an entrance. Greenfield's slogan “Everyware” is the title of his book.

During the “Open Museum” session, Fiona Romeo of the London Maritime Museum spoke of using museum objects as game objects in a virtual environment for visitors to build experience in various time frames and mappings. She noted that copyright was a major barrier to releasing data for open creative use. Jelmer Boomsma gave some examples of using existing social networks such as Hyves to enable users to customize what they wanted to see or participate in during museumnacht, and to forward this to their friends.

Fiona Romeo, discussing how the “The race to the South Pole” project of the London Maritime Museum, made use of web technology. http://www.nmm.ac.uk

Seb Chan's (www.powerhouse.com) presentation addressed more long-term issues for museums such as how to build forms of reputation and trust online, so researchers and those with knowledge would be willing to share. He also mentioned the need for museums to connect more with other institutes online, to give more relevance (and context) to their collections, adding that museum communities are now not just those inside the physical building.

Loic Le Meur's presentation in the conference of seesmic.com was punchy and inspiring and showed potential for an alternative video-sharing portal. After various talks about making change in the way we do things, that evening's Green Challenge Awards (www.greenchallenge.info) was a demonstration of putting some of this into practice. Greensulate (www.ecovativedesign.com) organic insulation won the 500,000 euro prize to go towards marketing a greenhouse-gas reducing product.

Another event that seemed to be about alternatives and putting these into practice was the day-long “Surprising Africa” sessions. It was a pity that I only found time for 2 sessions. Journalist Olivier Nyirubugara (www.africa-interactive.net) demonstrated his mobile reporting project, Voices Of Africa, where reporters use mobile phones (General Packet Radio System (GPRS)) to produce video footage, written reports and photographs and upload them direct. It was an impressive demonstration of no-fuss innovation.
Two things that I took from Ethan Zuckerman's presentation was how access to media helps protect citizens against injustice, such as a phone call which was then immediately broadcast via the radio, resulting in the police leaving a home, and the high quality of the reporting made with mobile phones. On visiting www.globalvoicesonline.org initiated by Ethan Zuckerman and others, I was impressed by the diversity of news stories from all over the world.
At least that is how it seemed: on reading the guidelines, I read that news from West Europe and North America was not covered at present :) “Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore.”

our exhibition in Leiden's tiny museum of weaving

2008-10-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

is on until october 12th.
more info is here: www.sonjavank.com/threads.htm

View the 4 minute video on YouTube which shows most work

september 4 - 7th: ARS Electronica in Linz, Austria

2008-09-09T10:12:00.001-07:00

I travelled by bus with about 40 other students from the Hague to Linz. It was a 14 hour overnight journey. I took a pile of bedding hoping to sleep, because in 2005 when I last took this trip, I was a wreck.
I sat next to Matt, mainly, because I just didn't feel like making small talk with anyone and he had recently had his jaw broken, so ignoring him wouldn't be a problem! As it turned out we chatted all night and I am really glad that we got to know each other.

Downtown Linz

The ARS ELECTRONICA Festival for Art, Technology and Society is an annual event. I decided to go at the last moment because of the conference on September 4th which featured 4 speakers I'd cited in my graduation paper Engaging Media: issues of engagement in media art projects for my masters in Media Technology. Interaction, Interactivity, Interactive Art - a buzzword of new media under scrutiny was the title of the 8 hour conference. It was fantastic and I even got into a little debate at the end.

September 4th: SoUNdSET, an interactive sound collaboration by Italian artists Domenico Sciajno and TeZ aka Maurizio Martinucci, is a 8 channel sound performance made for the Pöstlingberg circular terrace on a hill above Linz.

September 4th: Performance at Pöstlingberg by Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand

...to be continued...

Travels in the UK+ Scotland

2008-08-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

It was fantastic!

The yellow dots indicate where we slept at least one night.

a summary:
*Kath's performance at our opening
*Yorkshire Sculpture Park
*Enjoying the Burnlaw Bahai community spirit
*Getting feedback from Sarah in Edinburgh on my paper
*Spending time with Tim + Vanessa and their daughter
*The Stirling Folkclub night
*An overdose of Scottish castles, cathedrals + mansions.
*Paddy + Catherine's farm+forest
*Finding Pict stones
*The sea at Lossiemouth
*Findhorn community
*Painting a house on skye
*Folkclub in Biggar, but the elderly centre the following morning was more fun!
*Final dose of Scottish ruins before we returned to Roger + Marion at Burnlaw
*Taking down the exhibition in London
*St. Albans Cathedral + Roman ruins
*The Shuttleworth airplane collection in Bedford
*Dinner party in our van + performances in a Bethnall Green gallery (London)
*Winchester on our only day in the UK it did not rain.
*Camping in a paddock near Beer, Devon
*Chilling out in Somerset
*Cookham town
*Toroa returns for work via Luton airport
*Visiting NZ Bahais in Romsford
*Sonja returns for a meeting via Stansted airport
*Punting in Cambridge
*Ely Cathedral
*Norwich + some lakes (Hickling) on the coast

exhibition in London :: 18 July - 2 August

2008-07-15T14:27:00.001-07:00

Kath Tait will be performing her songs at 8.30 on July 17th

All are welcome

address is here: Willesden Green Centre

We will be back on the evening of the 2nd of August to take the work down, if you wish to meet us.

And we are doing a performance in East London on 7th August
at Wiebke Morgan

Exhbition in Leiden shops closes :: Olivier raps

2008-06-12T16:29:00.001-07:00

Julian and others talk about Augmented Realtiy + their projects

2008-06-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

Augmented Reality workshop at Mediamatic in Amsterdam

2008-06-12T16:23:00.000-07:00

I participated in the: Augmented Reality Games: Rapid game design workshop hosted by Mediamatic and given by Jonas Hielscher (Cologne), Julian Oliver (NZ/Spain) + Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (NL).

After some lessons in the opensource 3D modelling programme Blender and Julian's demo of Levelhead, we were introduced to the open source C and C++ language software library for building Augmented Reality (AR) applications: ARToolkit.
The ARToolKit was originally developed by Dr. Hirokazu Kato, and its ongoing development is being supported by the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab) at the University of Washington, HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa /New Zealand, and ARToolworks, Inc, Seattle. More info: artoolkit.sourceforge.net

<< Julian demonstrating his AR game, Levelhead. You hold it in front of a webcam and when it reads the markers on the sides of the cube, an image of a room and a animation of a white silhouette of a male figure appears. You navigate the figure in the rooms by moving the cube at different angles until it reaches different levels.

<< Jonas + Julian show the how the simple type of marker works with an earlier version of ARToolkit than Julian used for Levelhead.

The ARToolkit Pro doesn't work on Apple computers which were supplied by Mediamatic. However I ended up - largely due to Julian doing 99% of the work, developing our game idea on my 2 week old Linux system on my laptop.

<< Floris Schreuder (on the right) my partner for our AR game (left) Follow the Rainbow
The workshop also involved working in groups to develop a game, that hopefully utilized AR. The 9 of us worked on 3 games and there were two c ++ programmers in the group. I was absolutely delighted that in our group of two, I ended up being the "pretend" programmer for our game. I say "pretend" because Julian did the programming and all I did was play with variables.

The goal of the game was to find the pattern (the rainbow sequence in order to change into an "angel", "superhuman" or "alien". So in wearing the marker (a feather) a 3D blender-made head would appear (here Floris used the default monkey head with some textures and for this prototype we just had one head) and this would change randomly when you moved into another space (such as taking a step).
<< Jelle van der Ster is the individual behind the mask

While the square of colour (over your soul/heart) changed meaningfully and was the real clue to follow. So part of our idea was the illusion or trickery (also fun) of following sensation or the face or what is most visually impressive rather than the more subtle indications of one's heart/soul. The head was not supposed to change colour, but, all this was programmed by Julian in between helping all of our groups, so it definately was a rush job.
<< Hein Eberson is the individual behind the mask

I was really pleased that Julian was patient with my questions and that I was able to follow most of what he did. Of course doing it myself is quite another story, but I'm inspired to pick this up again once pressing deadlines in my life are out of the way and then to see how far I can develop this game idea into something interesting and who knows, engaging :)

ETC conference in Amsterdam + some Leiden uni courses

2008-05-31T07:23:00.000-07:00

I was at the Eclectic Tech Carnival for 3 days in Amsterdam last week, which is a gathering of women to learn technical or computer related stuff from each other. I gave a workshop on making websites and in a few weeks will add some images and thoughts on this event.
I met some fantastic women!

It was also lovely to catch up with Claire and we cycled at 2.30 a.m. across a very quite Amsterdam to a Bahai event and then back again at 4.30 to the sound of birdsong and a lightening sky.

Blast with my sister + sights in Leiden, Delft + Amsterdam

2008-05-31T07:14:00.000-07:00

no time to write about May 10 + 11 yet, but i will soon!

Galerie TamTam :: exhibition in Leiden North shops

2008-04-20T05:01:00.001-07:00

This image is the front window of a baker's shop with Piet Franzen, the Leiden artist who made the installation of 'gold' bread visible on the lower left.

All information about this exhibition by 36 artists in 19 shop windows is here: www.tamtamfestival.nl/galerie. The exhibition is on until June 9th.

The TamTam Festival is an annual cultural festival in my neighbourhood and this year I'm coordating an art exhibition in 19 shops (3 butchers, 2 bakershops, a snackbar, a vet's clinic, 2 hairdressers (or barbers), a video-dvd hire shop, a pharmacy, a florist, 2 community centres, 2 activities centres for the elderly, a corner shop specializing in selling cigarettes, a medical centre and a domicile :)

It will be fun. The shopkeepers are so enthusiastic and I've a little funding for a decent flyer. Deadline for submissions: 24 April.
All info about the project is here.

Bio art course in the Gorlaeus Lab, Leiden University

2008-04-20T02:08:00.000-07:00

Photos: Kaisu Koski, 11 April 2008

Canadian artist, Jennifer Willet runs this 7 session course and it consists of lectures related to Bio art issues as well as practical workshops on: mammalian tissue culture, microscopy, DNA extraction and imaging, and genetic modification in the lab.
Last week (18 April) Dr. Alice Alia (Assistant Professor, Biophysical Organic Chemistry) gave a talk on her research utilizing MRImaging for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. The week before this (11 April) we all worked with calf livers using an adaption of a tissue culture technique developed by researcher and scientist, Anne Kienhuis.

Some links related to this course:
The Arts & Genomics Centre, based at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Gorlaeus Laboratories, University of Leiden, The Netherlands hosted this course.

The blog for this course

Oron Catts + Jennifer Willet YouTube interview at ISEA2006 / ZeroOne, San Jose, August 2006 where they engineered Teratological Prototypes (cancer cells) in collaboration with the Tissue Culture & Art Project Initiated in 1996 by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, Tissue Culture and Art (TC&A) is an ongoing research and development project into the use of tissue culture and tissue engineering as a medium for artistic expression.

SymbioticA (Perth, Australia) :since its foundation in 2000, SymbioticA has enabled dozens of artists to engage in and comment on "wet technologies" while complying strictly with scientific requirements. See the 2007 article on some projects at we-make-money-not-art.com

Interview with Oron Catts + Ionat Zurr, 1999

I will keep adding links as I come across them here until the end of May.

Bahai and all that...

2008-04-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

I made this image in early April for an exhibition Miyuki Kasahara is organizing here: Shed and a half in London (Shoreditch) gallery in May.

Her project For Whom Do You Speak called for contributions in non-European languages. My Maori is very rusty and so I sent her a couple of Bahai prayers I still remember. This is a children's Prayer:
O God Guide me, Protect me, illumine the lamp of my heart and make of my heart a brilliant star. Thou art the Mighty and powerful.

And while on the subject of the Bahai Faith, I'll mention a few blogs by Bahais I look at occasionally.
www.bahairants.com is run by baquia who writes engaged journalist-like stuff where there's usually a lively debate.
The topic at the moment, which I wish I had more time for, is on homosexuality. Some Bahais think homosexuality is a big no, no, and are clear about announcing this. Most think homosexuality is a big no, no, but try to sweep this embarrassment into the closet (pun intended) and others, myself included, think that while there are a lot of homophobic attitudes expressed as if these are Bahai attitudes, there's nothing in Bahai Scripture to support this and if we dig away, discuss away, we create a healthier community based on Baha'u'llah's teachings of equality for all. Anyway read the debate for yourself. Most who post on this take the position that the Bahai Faith cannot offer equality towards homosexuals.
For contrast here's the blog of dear friend, Daniel Orey,
a gay married, out-the-closest Bahai!
Bahai related blog I enjoy is Bahaitheway: witty + sharp observations.
And of course Sen McGlinn's blogs on Bahai theological aspects related to the Bahai Writings.
A lot of Bahais post blogs, but these are the ones I keep returning to because they are engaging or make me think about things.
Alison's blog is a beautiful and clear tribute to Baha'u'llah's Teachings and Writings.

March 28th: art exhibitions in Amsterdam

2008-04-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

First I was at the opening of Territorial Phantom in the Dutch Institute for Media Arts. I was impressed by the film Mary Koszmary by Yael Bartana set in an abandoned Polish stadium.

During the years of the Polish Republic (1921-1939) this stadium was one of the favoured locations for political rallies and street festivals. The speech reflects the aesthetic of nationalist propaganda films, but its content runs counter not only to the style, but to everything on which that style is based. The speaker wrestles with the form, revealing how much we are still hampered by nationalistic codes. He speaks before an almost empty stadium. Sierakowski, the speaker, describes the cultural and linguistic consequences of the departure of the Jews after the Second World War to Israel, and calls on the Polish Jews to return to Poland. See the gallery website for more. The show is on until May 12th.

Then I went to see Joseph Semah's performance, The Doubling of the House (see the image above) at the Galerie Ferdinand van Dieten - d'Eendt. I love his installations combining drawing, objects and often some form of lighting, along with references to the metaphysical.

Then I went to see an opening at Arti et Amicitiae.
Arjo, Marja and Astrid curated the digital view: an exhibition by 21 artists.

Astrid's painting (left) was a subtle changing patterns of elements. It was quite meditative and extremely well-crafted. The timing of the animation was so well done that effect of the artwork seemed create an existence between the what I would call 'static and painted' and 'mutable and animated'.

Anoniem 1, projection + paint on canvas by Astrid Moors

I met Arjo + Marja in March last year when they did a project in Leiden.
See their digi-paint website for more.

Dutch Culture Polychrome print on ceramic tiles by Marja van Putten

music theatre by Paul Koek + Dick Raaijmakers

2008-04-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

I am taking a course in "electric music theatre" which consists of Paul Koek showing and discussing some of his many impressive productions.
The first was Hermans Hand, which premiered 19 October, 1995 in the Spui theatre as part of the in Festival in de Branding in the Hague.

The theatre piece is a hommage-critic-farce of the Dutch novelist, W.F. Hermans, played by Hans Dagelet (the man with glasses). It begins with slow motion performance of two men walking in the rain. The only real water is that splashed dramatically by a passing motorized car wheel. Each time of the 4 times, the two men were soaked and they responded with slow motion shock and horror. Behind them street lamps moved very slowly, suggesting a progressive movement the two men did not make along the platform. It reminded me of Raaijmaker's performance I'd seen in January where motion is so slow normal vision doesn't register this as movement.

Next the two are in a cafe, being served microphones as well as drinks and what you hear (via playback and excellent acting) is the exact text of an interview with the novelist recently (in 1995) aired on Belgium television.
The interview focussed on Herman's hand which was in a bandage and Herman's claim that he hurt it picking up a typewriter at a second-hand market, but the text was dominated by Herman's ranting and vicious comments about a theatre-maker (clearly a reference to Raaijmakers) who made nonsense out of mechanics.

However the main theme of this theatre seemed to centre on the fall (failure), a recurring theme in Raaijmakers' work, where in the 3rd act Hermans' literally falls in very slow motion, as he stretches his arm out, here aided by being attached to a support, powered by a steam engine (you see pumping away), which gradually lowered his body towards the typewriter on the ground.

More about Paul Koek + Dick Raaijmakers' theatre is here

Festival of new music in the Hague

2008-03-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

On March 15th, there were two performances in the Hague City Hall. The first was Six Pianos by Steve Reich and the second was the hour long piece Crazy Nigger by Julius Eastman which began with 4 pianists (see image on the left) and finished with 12 pianists on all six grand pianos. It sounded awsome.

The festival is a day long event which occurs several times a year. The website is only in Dutch.

And late that night, our work was on the screen for about 20 seconds in a theatre in the conservatory :) You can play in our world here

Our world MAGNETica

2008-03-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

is coming along. Eric Kuijl and I have been working on this for the Hague Conservatory ArtScience Research group, "Virtual Communities" for the past month.

Basically we have been learning Cinema 4d and then it was a 3 day crash course in the game engine Unity. It seems quite amazing programme, with just one major drawback. You can only use it on an Apple operating system.

Now all 4 or 5 worlds in our group are to shown on the final night of the
Heiner Goebbels Festival in 5 days. A bit tough, when we can only work on the project at the art school because we do not have Apple computers. But it'll probably work out. Mainly because Wim is so helpful and the class is so small.
In being asked to relate our work to the contemporary German composer, Heiner Goebbels, in some way, I've used images of his head in the forms I've made. So if you look closely you'll see his head repeated on the 'spikey' rods of the spidery flower form. Likewise on the animated cone.

Our idea was to create a world of "attractions" hence the title "Magnetica" for our planet. We have also used sound clips from his composition "Surrogate Cities" for sounds in our world.

3D modelling and a game engine called "Unity"

2008-02-16T18:46:00.000-08:00

The Virtual Communities research group that I'm participating in from Feb 4th onwards for about 8 weeks.

A major part of this is learning Cinema 4D. Wim is a fantastic teacher. This image is the marriage of a freeform spine + a sweep nurb.

some home entertainment + an exhibition opening

2008-02-16T18:11:00.000-08:00

Leiden, February 3rd:

A number of Leiden Bahais and friends cycled over to our place and our entertainment was to give them creative tasks until they realised that what they were really doing was doing our housekeeping. It was a lot of fun and the fridge got cleaned, the washing put out and the kitchen was tidied up.

For each task, each person received a letter and their task was to work out what the word was.

Then we all cycled over to the opening of U Bevindt Zich Hier at the RAP gallery.

It was very crowded! The curators, Sanne + Jos did a brilliant job on PR, display and the whole look and feel of the show in a very difficult space. The red wall and ceiling is a permanent part of the space.

Daniel Lehan was one of the 12 short-listed for a prize. The winner was a boy who made a skater's map of Leiden. Daniel's work "This makes no sense" is the narrow work in the top row on the left. It had these words printed over a map of Leiden and referred to the fact that having never visited Leiden and not reading Dutch, this map made no sense to him.

Two other London friends
also had work in this show.

Ella Guru's is on the left and relates to her visit to Leiden last year and the discovery that the prilgrim fathers, her ancestors, had lived here before emigrating to the U.S. Elaine Arkell's is the red + blue small print on the right. Her work, The Shift, associates the circular streets and canals of Leiden with blood vessels.
My work is the deep frame in the middle and Sen's is the shrub with the engraving below.

Dick Raaijmakers book launch, appearance + performance

2008-02-02T04:11:00.001-08:00

I attended this event on January 27th in the Amsterdam concert hall on the Ij.

Dick Raaijmakers (1930) live on the screen via a webcam from his home, while Arjen Mulder (a Dutch media theorist and one of the co-author's of Dick's new book (Monografie: the website is only in Dutch).) asked him a pile of questions. In one of the stunning auditoriums in the muziekgebouw aan't Ij,

Dick Raaijmakers, one of the pioneers in electronic music in the Netherlands, is mainly known as a composer, who has made numerious installation-performances involving electronic music or sound where visual aspects are part of the artistic production.

I know of him mainly because of a lecture I heard in 2006 in at the Eindhoven Strp festival, given by Kees Tazelaar, where I heard his compositions and saw his revolutionary 1960's animations.

Some interviews with Dick Raaijmakers are here on the v2 website.

Then Raaijmaker's 1979 performance De grafische methode fiets (The graphic methodical bicycle) was re-performed by Bart

See this arts blog (in Dutch) for a series of photos of this performance.

new video starring the kitchen sink

2008-02-02T04:07:00.000-08:00

This features music by Waiting for Donald (New Zealand Tahora friends: Mark, Brenda, Robbie + Chris). It is a fantastic funky music cd. See Mark and Brenda's website for some samples.

A low resolution version of the video Kitchen Pythagoras is here.

Video Vortex exhibition at Montevideo, Amsterdam

2008-01-27T12:20:00.001-08:00

Two works made an impression on me in the video vortex exhibition, I saw on January 17th.

This image is a detail of P.T.S. (Public Television Sculpture),
the time-based installation of 8 videos seen distorted through 32 prism-like spheres in a circular cabinet by Dutch artist, Jaap de Jonge (www.jaapdejonge.nl)

Beneath these balls, which function as lenses, are eight hidden monitors. The video material was taken from 32 broadcasts, which were made for Park 4DTV (Amsterdam cable television) in 1996. New images and image combinations are created by the 32 prisms, all of which distort the image in some way or other. By pressing a button, the viewer can trigger the sound that accompanies each image.

The other memorable work was the film Flat Earth a film by Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead (view some stills here). It is a journey around the globe using visuals and material found on the internet.

music link of the week: Dave Thorpe Fantastic slide guitar! London folkie.
art link of the week: Simone de Jong Leiden artist who's website I came across

Vlogging workshop at Montevideo

2008-01-27T12:16:00.001-08:00

Hitting Vlogging with a Hammer was the name of this workshop held at montevideo (Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo/Time Based Arts)

Their showinabox application is a way of showing good quality video in a format where you can have a lot of control. It is open source and works inside Wordpress.

http://showinabox.tv/

http://jaydedman.com Jay Dedman's wiki.

http://ryanedit.blogspot.com Ryanne's blog

http://ryanishungry.com Green video blog.

music links

2008-01-19T09:24:00.000-08:00

Listen to a section of Laurie Anderson's 2006 production Homeland on the Dublin Theatre Festival website.

Vlogging, a New Tube + Flash

2008-01-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

Today I learnt a new word: vlogging, which means video blogging or a blog that uses video as its medium. For more this go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog and you can see that the word has apparently been around since 2000 and since 2005 there have been Vloggercons: videoblogger conferences.

I came across the word because I received an invitation to a workshop called Hitting vlogging with a hammer, and so before I could get the hammer out...

It is given by the Melbourne-based Aussie, media theorist: Seth Keen (www.sethkeen.net) and Video Defunct Collective (which is Seth + the programmer, Keith Deverell) see: www.videodefunct.net

I'm still not sure what they do exactly in terms of look and feel because nothing would work without QuickTime (oh those apple people) but they refer to their video-blogs as poetic interventions into vlogging.
I thought, well, the workshop's free and if there's space still, then I'll go.

The workshop is in the context of the conference: Video Vortex: Responses to YouTube (www.networkcultures.org/videovortex), coming up this week, but I've a paper on Making Community: a survey of some European Festival Websites to finish by Sunday for my own study.

In the Rhizome newsletter there was a link to a New Tube. Actually called New Art TV, (www.newarttv.com) an online "channel" of well-made short videos on contemporary art. Launched in mid 2007, by creator Robert Knafo, who used to be a writer and editor of various art and culture magazines such as Slate, Art in America and GQ, also the brains behind another online art project Studio Visit, the New Art TV mini-documentaries (5 to 15 minutes) include interviews with artists, curators, and collectors, exhibition walk-ins.

And... finally a note on flash. I'm very excited to be able to attend a workshop in February on ActionScript3 by Colin Moock (http://www.moock.org/) in Amsterdam. He is here as a guest of Adobe and the Flash in the Can conference (www.fitc.ca).

And while I"m on the topic on flash, I've been working on a new animation, only this time for broadcast (for a festival) and so have been experimenting to see if it is best to export a sequence of stills which I then import into Premiere or to export the animation directly out of flash as an AVI. Yesterday I came to conclusion that both methods seemed to result in equal sharpness on our television, so now I have to make a choice :)

All the above links are also on my delicious bookmarks.

Frost + Snow in Leiden

2008-01-05T07:56:00.001-08:00

A r-a-r-e event.
Sen, Tama and I went for a recreational walk in our neighbourhood.

This image is from one of the garden plots beyond the end of our cul-de-sac.

The hoar frost lingered for 3 days (20-22 December) and there are more photos here.

New Postcard

2008-01-05T07:56:00.000-08:00

A new postcard of a recent sculpture by Sen and myself. More photos of this is here: www.sonjavank.com/crossp.htm

Or here: www.sonjavank.com/product2.htm

Wevershuis - Leiden Weavershouse

2007-12-26T18:18:00.001-08:00

I'll organize an exhibition in Leiden's smallest museum in September 2008.

Art seen in London Galleries

2007-12-26T18:17:00.000-08:00

Detail of an installation by David Johnson
or (david-johnson.co.uk)
in the Fieldgate Gallery, London, in the Analogue & Digital show.

It was a projection of a stream onto a suspended wooden table on which was placed a small white rock-like object.

Detail of the installation
(a video projection and pencil drawing on the wall)
Clear by Sarah Gillam
in The Women's Library, London.

Performance at the Laban Centre

2007-12-26T18:14:00.000-08:00

London book launch in Area 10

2007-12-17T16:26:00.000-08:00

Installations + performances in Leiden

2007-12-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

1st December, Scheltema Arts Centre, Leiden

performances in The Hague

2007-12-15T03:52:00.001-08:00

24th November, The Hague
I saw two performances that were part of the 5 event festival POW Reflections 2.

Theatre-maker and performance artist, Peter Zegveld, created a half hour of sounds, explosions and fleeting images.

Then the POW ensemble (a Dutch-based computer music group) gave us their Noise of the Loudspeaker performance of sound + image conducted mainly via various loudspeaker constructions. See: www.powensemble.nl)

Above: POW: Luc, Robert, Horst, Han

"Dogs" exhibition opening in Leiden + new video / dvd

2007-11-13T16:39:00.001-08:00

sound course + exhibition at the Royal Art College in The Hague

2007-11-13T16:37:00.000-08:00

The rest of the month flew by, with me learning Audacity: a fantastic crossplatform open source sound editing programme, which you also control by programming or by moving knobs or sliders.

Have I raved enough about this yet? Have a listen: my Big Ben remix is made in this.
I also spent the month, gradually clearing out some boxes from our recent move, did a bit of freelance webwork for the HBB site and some reading for the Paragone courses on image + text and the contemporary festivals in Europe courses.

Birthday of the Bab and a walk in a forest

2007-11-13T16:33:00.001-08:00

20th October
We drove two and half hours eastward to Ab's family home in a forest, where Toroa, Tama, Tahirih and I created a short mediation of music and slide projections in the living room.

This link has a little information about who the Bab was on a website that I will finish oneday.

And this link: What is a Bahai, is a short intro
(ook in het Nederlands).

Then some of us went for a walk in the forest and we took some photos of Toroa with his namesake, Ab. We used to see Ab a lot in the days we lived in a tiny summer house in rural Limburg.

16th October :: on gaming + augmented reality :: Amsterdam

2007-11-13T16:25:00.000-08:00

On October 16th I attended a seminar titled Games as tools. The first lecture by Friedrich Kirschner (www.zeitbrand.de/) who showed his Moviesandbox application for modifying characters and setting inside the Unreal Tournament engine. It was the first time I'd seen a mod that I thought went a bit more than showing off the programmer's skills. In his case, he had developed something so non-programmers could use this. (see: moviesandbox.com)

Above: Friedrich Kirschner at the Cinekid Games as Tools Seminar. This image shows how he dipped objects in milk to make a 3D (displacement) scan. He has instructions for how you can use this Milkscanner application for use in 3D environments here.

The next speaker was Daniel van Gils who showed an interactive project he developed for the VPRO (Dutch public broadcasting corporation with a focus on culture + art) children's programme Villapark.
There's a review about this event on the University of Amsterdam Masters of Media blog. The seminar was the kick-off for the 4 day Games-in-crossmedia workshop.

I went to another lecture a day later, given by New Zealander Julian Oliver where he showed his augmented reality box, Levelhead. Basically: a webcam interpretes patterns on a face of a cube and c++ converts these into a 3D image of a rooms, doorways and stairs which a figure can move about in. You navigate the figure's walking movement by moving the cube in front of the webcam.

festival link of the week: Cinekid annual festival in Amsterdam of interactive installations, films, lectures, etc:

13th October :: Leiden art galleries

2007-10-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

On a sunny October the 13th day, Sen and I went to our first art opening in many years.
The gallery has been around in Leiden for a while, but it is was our first visit.

Molly + Fred, who run the gallery were so welcoming, and in fact the atmosphere was great.

Some artists, curators, a small museum director, and Leiden visitors in the Expansionist Art Empire gallery, on the Nieuwe Rijn.

I also visited another Leiden gallery for the first time a few days beforehand. Gerda had told me about the RAP (Rijnlands Architectuur Platform) gallery, which focuses on architecture and art or art with a some connection to space. I liked the idea of this Leiden artist's project, Stadsvogel zoekt huis (city bird seeks home), where everyone was invited to submit a sustainable birdhouse to be added into the space ove a period of two months.

Fredy Beckmans (in the photo) has made 1000s of birdhouse reliefs for the past 10 years. For the lecture/opening, he made a performance of taking out loose pages out of an artist book of his, which he then opened up each page, to reveal an image of a bird. Then he dramatically crunched each up into his fists. The acoustics of the narrow space were really good, as the sounds of crunching and smoothing made each page seem like a tactile experience. He then held up each straightened out page displaying the creases (and materiality of the page and bird image). Finally he refolded each of the 5 or so pages. Now he announced the book was much fuller (with creases and all).

The rest of the week was filled with some freelance web design work and the 3 courses I'm taking. For one of them, for an exercise in sound synthesis, I came across some brilliant interactive / sound work by the Japanese musician, composer, programer and improvisation performer, Chikashi Miyama. He's got a few interesting videos on YouTube at: www.youtube.com/user/chikashimiyama

music link of the week: Granular Synthesis. Jon Mackey, the author of the video says of it: The audio processes of Granular Synthesis was adopted for video in the process of editing this piece, producing a distinct separation between myself in the present and myself in the past. He also has some music on mySpace: some wacky experimental folk. Go Listen!

art link of the week: Ludy Feyen, one of the Leiden artists in the first photo above
new media link of the week: AV festival, U.K.

October :: Study in Leiden

2007-10-11T04:33:00.000-07:00

Busy these past few weeks with some studies at Leiden University plus a sound course held in the interactive media department of the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague. The sound course is run by Geert Oddens + Robert Pravda and I'm re-vamping the soundpiece/s for the Cross Pollination sculpture, partly as an experiment to see how much I can do in the open source programme: Audacity and partly to see if the work might be interesting with various sounds (via 9 speakers) as well as the composite of sounds from the 'beehive'. If I'm happy with it, I'll post the stuff on my myspace.

I took this photo during the performance Man in e.space by the French dance group, Res Publica + the Belgian designers, Lab[au] at the Today's Art Festival on September 22nd in the Hague Atrium.

The two other studies I'm doing are one in the Literature dept on image/beeld and one in the Arts dept on festivals in europe. Also Joris and I made a start on an interactive imaging project/thing we want to make together. Toroa is in Rome this week for a school trip and so we are currently a one teenager family. Yesterday we bought a massage chair (on special for 49 Euros) to go with Nandor (the computer Tama is often at and which often sends these blogs). Sen is working on a new Persian translation project with a lecturer at the university for a book.

music link of the week: POW Ensemble Hague based experimental folk / jazz / electronic
art link of the week: Clare Carswell a friend and Oxford-based artist

30th September :: New sculpture + London visit

2007-10-01T05:59:00.001-07:00

I'm just back from an invigorating 3 days in London.
I went to pick up our latest sculpture from a group show on the northern edge of London, which was in the grounds of the Museum of Domestic Design + Architecture.

<< Cross Pollination 2007
by Sen McGlinn + Sonja van Kerkhoff
See: www.sonjavank.com/crossp.htm for more images and text about the ideas behind this work.

However as usual, I used it as an opportunity to catch up with friends and to see art exhibitions.

<< Tamatea + Sonja
28 September 2007
Photo: Shaun

Even though I've been over to London 2 or 3 times a year for the past decade, it still excites my antipodean roots to walk the streets of London.

This time I started with a few galleries in the Picadilly area and walked up along Edgeware Road but the Lisson was still putting up it's show, so I took a few photos of the foam wood-foundations of installations-to-be in in the space.
I then zipped eastward to Bethnal Green for another 6 or 7 exhibitions, soaking up the luxury of so much visual diversity before arriving tired + happy at Kath + Shaun's for a night of catching up.

Eve, Tama, Shaun, Kath, 30 September 2007
I know Kath and Eve from our Tahora Days.

On returning on Saturday, I was almost high from all the socializing. I'd met some old friends (artists) at one of the galleries, which almost never happens in the Netherlands, but always amazes me that it happens at least once a year in London.

music link of the week: Kath Tait of course!
art link of the week: Daniel Lehan a London friend