Exciting news (well, for me): I’m on the program of the McLuhan-conference that takes place next year in Bayreuth, 14-18 February. I will be speaking about Esther Polak’s work, about GPS as a medium for art. The ‘line-up’ is awesome: De Kerckhove, Kittler, Pias, Zielinski, Broeckmann, Sloterdijk, Bolter, et cetera… Will be, well, very exciting to say the least.
http://www.americanstudies.uni-bayreuth.de/ls/conference_more.php?nr=1&program=1
Do I have any readers in the United States? Anyway, if you’re living on the east coast this month is your chance to hear the music of the various groups of the N Collective http://n-collective.com/, like SKIF++, MoHa, Office-R(6), etc. About the most interesting sounds & compositional & improvisation concepts in contemporary music (well, I think). Very warmly recommended.
Here’s the tour schedule:
The program:
* Oct 6-7 Sonic Circuits Festival, Washington DC
Groups: USA/USB, MoHa!, SKIF++, DB, Office-R(6), Pho, 5.1 surround compositions by Robert van Heumen & Jeff Carey
Website & schedule: http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/index.html / http://www.n-event.net/
* Oct 7 Sonic Circuits Festival, Washington DC
lecture Robert van Heumen (STEIM/LiSa) – 3pm at the Warehouse Screening Room
* Oct 10, Flywheel, Easthampton MA
Groups: SKIF++, USA/USB, DB
Website & schedule: http://www.flywheelarts.org/
* Oct 12, The Tank, NYC – 10:00PM
Groups: SKIF++, DB, MoHa!
Website & schedule: http://www.thetanknyc.org/
* Oct 13, ITP / New York University (NYU), NYC
lecture Robert van Heumen (STEIM/LiSa) & Jeff Carey (Super Collider) from 12 – 1:15PM at ITP, 721 Broadway (at Waverly Place), 4th floor
* Oct 13, Diapason Gallery, NYC – 8:30PM
Groups: SKIF++, DB, USA/USB, 5.1 surround compositions by Robert van Heumen & Jeff Carey
Website & schedule: http://www.diapasongallery.org/
* Oct 14, Redroom, Baltimore – 8:30PM
Groups: SKIF++, MoHa!
Website & schedule: http://www.redroom.org/
* Oct 15, St. John’s Church, Baltimore – 8:00PM
Groups: SKIF++
Website & schedule: http://www.stjohnsbaltimore.org/CRP.htm
* Oct 16, University of Maryland (UMBC), Baltimore
lecture Robert van Heumen (STEIM/LiSa), Bas van Koolwijk (MAX/Msp/Jitter) & Jeff Carey (Super Collider) – time and place to be announced
Especially since the Upgrade night I have the feeling that I am really missing out on something.
First by skipping all of the crossmedia festival that’s now on at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam — okay, the programme is quite ‘American’, commercial, focussed on “the creative industries’, but amongst so much one could pick out the good bits & I’m sure I would’ve met many people I know.
Secondly be skipping the Re:visie exhibition & performances at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht — with a.o. Telcosystems and Bas van Koolwijk + Staalplaat Systems on saturday 30th. The exhibition is still on till the 8th, so who knows…
Thirdly, the Amsterdam Underground Festival: — but I might be there on sunday, and see Federico — who’s also doing some stuff there: http://www.amsterdamunderground.nl/und/.
But I really have to write, write, write, in my studio at the Jan van Eyck.,
http://www.revisie.org
http://www.crossmediaweek.com
http://picnic06.typepad.com/
http://www.amsterdamunderground.nl/und/
Wrt “the creative industries”: there’s some sort of an ugly hype around that word. The creative industries as saviours of the economy, the city etc. (There was this influential book about how creative industries and artists are necessary for the blooming of inner cities, The Creative Class? I mostly immedialtely forget about that sort of stuff, but even I got the queries in my mailbox from researchers stating that I belonged to the creative class and that therefore they’d like to ask me some questions. It was proper academic research yet I hit ‘delete’.)
I prefer not to look at the ‘marketing’ side, the self-advertisement, the lobbying, the self-promotion, the politics that are going on in order to get to the big European funding, or get in the big investors. I honestly also do not see what would be so different now. Of course we have design, we have innovation, we have technological research, we have the arts, we have entertainment-development. But we have always had that. The difference might rather be that where innovative research took a time span of thirty years, fifty years, they’d now take a time span of ten years…to look ahead. (That at least is what I heard an old aerospace engineer state at the ASCA-conference last june). I am not interested in business models. I am interested in use.
Btw: the arts do not belong to the ‘creative industries’ — although they are closely related, might operate in the same field, use the same sources and even work in the same labs. What the arts aim at is the reverse of what the creative industries would like to produce. The creative industries might think that they are close to the ‘spirit of innovation’ of the arts, but good art does not aim at usable, clearly defined results.
That said I must stress that I do not believe there is some sort of pure art. Neither is there a clear-cut boundary between the arts & the creative industries. There should be no clear-cut boundary, not even in theory. There is cross-pollination (sp?), collaboration, adaption, sabotage ;-) — and the products of the creative industry migth be very aesthetically pleasing, as art can be. The difference is in the way of applying, in the application. Theoretically the difference is an ‘ideal’ one, one that does not exist in reality. (Cf. Dewey).
Maybe I shouldn’t say too much about these issues. It’s a bit the same with the web2.0-stuff. I am not interested in the hype, not interested in deconstructing the hype. (The investors that hope/hoped to make money by selling their social network-thingie — bought from a small group of software developers — to either Google of Yahoo. The investors of Yahoo and Google, only there to make money. It’s about huge virtual money-transfers, about trust in the future ‘inscripted’ in stocks &c. And that still is a world I am not able to get. Which is to say that I understand how it functions, yet my frame of mind finds it — (in the way it is currently ‘organized’) — so utterly perverse, so ‘full of shit’, so far from what I would see as going toward a good society, that I (emotionally) can only wish it to collapse as soon as possible).
(Note: I’m not so much against single ‘citizens’ investing money in a project or industry, or a person honestly investing money in Google because he likes it, and hopes that it will develop further because it’s a good change of the world. But the big investors are in it for money and run when they’ve collected their “share”. It’s the same sort of ‘not getting it’ as that I honestly, emotionally do not understand how somebody can ever earn enough money to own a superexpensive car (though rationally I get it).)
So I leave that aside and look at the bright side, the open source side ;-)
Anyway, to stop ranting: what I am interested in is in how and why people use the tools and functionalities that have become available to them, how and why they adapt and change them, how they flock to them and how and why they abandon them.
More reading matter (on the train): the most recent issue of the Flemish arts magazine De Witte Raaf. This issue focusses on typography. De Witte Raaf has quite a close connection to the Jan van Eyck, with director Koen Brams as on of the editors & frequent contributors to the magazine. Some (not all) of the JVE-approach to artistic research is reflected in the theoretical approach & editorial focus of De Witte Raaf. This issue also has a long interview with Jan van Eyck’s advising researcher Filip Tacq. But my ‘favorite’ in this issue is Dirk van Hulle’s article on typography and full stops in Joyce’s Ulysses and FW.
De Witte Raaf online here: http://www.dewitteraaf.be/web/flash/default.asp.
Dirk van Hulle’s article: http://dewitteraaf.stylelabs.com/web/flash/content.asp?enz..
Which reminds me that if you would ask me which is the single most influential bookpage for my ‘taste’ of literature & design, it would be page 260 of FW. Or no, it would be the page in the Spectrum Encyclopedie, with the lemma on Joyce, that reprinted page 260 of FW.
(Btw, this is a Dutch encyclopedia from the nineteen-seventies that was organized in longer lemmata — in length between half a page, up to over 20 pages — with lots of cross-referencing: both links at the end of a lemma, indicating related articles, and ‘underlined links’ in the running text. My parents bought this encyclopedia when it was being published, which meant we would get a new ‘tome’ when it would come out. I have spent many many hours reading and browsing this encyclopedia. And I sometimes wonder if my ‘early’ interest in hypertext has been influenced by it.
The wikipedia entry is a bit on the short side: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grote_Spectrum_Encyclopedie. Here’s what ‘bison’ says: http://cf.hum.uva.nl/nhl/bizon/grote_spectrum.htm.)
Which also reminds me that I haven’t yet referenced Jouke Kleerebezem’s most recent article “Onderzoek worden” (“Becoming Reseach”) — in Dutch –: http://dewitteraaf.stylelabs.com/web/flash/showfile.asp?enz..
Tomorrow — wednesday 27th — I’ll be on a panel at Upgrade Amsterdam, the Graduates, discussing the work of recently graduated young artists. De Melkweg, entrance = free, 20.30h.
“Each summer many promising young artists and designers bid their art academies farewell, and graduate. The third Upgrade! Amsterdam, scheduled September 27th, offers a stage to these new young “hotties” to pitch their work to a larger audience, under the scrutinising gaze of a panel of experts and art academy tutors. Most of the installations will be on display during the program.”
The new Ballard is out. The new Powers coming up. The new Pynchon announced for 21st November. I missed that Mark Z. Danielewski had a new book published: Only Revolutions, A Novel. Described as “A pastiche of Joyce and Beckett, with heapings of Derrida’s Glas and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 thrown in for good measure”. Hmmm, with such a description I expect the book to be either very very good, or shallow and forgettable but funny.
The radio woke me up — as it does almost every morning. And I woke up to an interview of professor Ronald Soetaert about ‘literacy and the culture of reading’, on account of the publication of De cultuur van het lezen, a report and essay published by the Taalunie (language institute). Free for download here: http://taalunieversum.org/taalunie/publicaties/. I wonder if it’ll go beyond ‘leesbevordering’ (sorry, no idea how to say that in English…).
The wonderful http://destination-out.com/ posts three pieces of saxophonist and composer Sam Rivers, and writes: “but it’s somewhat amazing to us that Rivers is not better known, if not more celebrated.”
Tonight at OT301, 21.30 another DNK-concert, with Justin Bennet solo, and Juan de la Parra — solo, and a performance of his prize-winning composition Tellura. See: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/. Ok, that’s I think 3 euro’s entrance.
Kees Maas is a young doctor and anatomical researcher with a great love & knowledge for contemporary art (and a good friend of M. I think I’ve met him a few times at parties at M.’s place). Now Kees Maas is the guest curator of the exhibition Rembrandt, Death Dissection & Doctors which is on show at the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam. A medical view on Rembrandts Anatomical Lesson, with a.o. work of Joep van Lieshout, Damien Hirst and Erwin Olaf. Also, on mondays: lectures on the same subject — one of which takes place at De Waag. More info, look for Cultural Embassy at http://www.lloydhotel.com. (Uh, yes, also on the programme: a performance of Oorbeek).
When you are there. But I won’t be there. Thursday evening (– when I wrote this entry –) James Becket & the N-Ensemble at STEIM: http://www.steim.nl.
I’m becoming aware of what I’m missing while enjoying the wonderful cycling possibilities in the Belgian province of Liège.
Like, another example: a Mediamatic Salon on monday night, 20.30: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-12249-en.html.
Or I should’ve gone again to Enschede (sort of really far away, trainwise, from Maastricht), for the GOGBOT-festival, where it seems they have the same kind of incredible, wonderful summer weather as last year, although we’re halfway september… http://www.gogbot.nl. Wonderful line-up of participating artists.
Of course I’ll miss this too: What is Positive? Why?, exhibition at De Appel, Amsterdam, with work inspired by Buckminster Fuller. Until October 15th. Well, I’ve missed the opening — on saturday. http://www.deappel.