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.

If you’re in Amsterdam today or tomorrow, go hear the N-Event at the Muziekgebouw: http://www.n-event.net/, friday, 22.30 & the opening-concert of DNK-Amsterdam, saturday 22.30, also at the Muziekgebouw.

It’s my favorite music…

http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/
http://www.n-collective.com/
http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/
http://www.n-event.net/

Next thing to do here is listen to Steven Shaviro’s lecture at the Thinking Through Affect-conference http://affect.janvaneyck.nl. Shaviro blogs here: http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/.

Rob van Kranenburg is back to blogging: http://robvankranenburgs.wordpress.com/

Back to Amsterdam for a meeting of the jury of the ISOC Awards: http://www.isoc.nl/awards/. I’m a jury-member for the ‘Internet & the arts’-award. Nominees are:

Jan Robert Leegte: http://works.leegte.org
Joes Koppers: http://usemedia.com
Wilfried Houjebek: http://socialfiction.org/palimpsest
Peter Luining: http://ctrlaltdel.org
Niels Schrader: http://www.nielsschrader.de
Danielle Roberts: http://www.numuseum.nl

On friday I’ll fly to Dublin for a short visit. I’ll be offline for a few days then.

Very nice blog: http://www.waggish.org/. Mentions all my favorite writers :-)

I’ll be here the next two days: http://www.actingouttechnology.be.

Leonardo Sciascia, De Raad van Egypte (1963) — Dutch translation of Il Consiglio d’Egitto, buy it here: http://www.serenalibri.nl/romans.php. Sciascia continues to amaze me. This is a short historical novel, based on facts, set in Sicily (of course) at the end of the 18th century. A ‘fake translation’ of an Arabic manuscript about the history of Sicily disturbs the balance of power.

James Boswell, Life of Johnson (well, abridged version, until halfway and the rest via the index). Picked up a few old Penguin pockets, apart from this one also Selected Writings of Samuel Johnson. Why would I be interested in Samuel Johnson? Because he operated, euhm.. wrote at a moment when the press was changing, growing, becoming popular; when a General Reading Publick emerged. And because he was a voracious reader.

In Boswell’s Life Johnson comes across as, well, exactly the journalist type — spending to much time in the Coffee-House, talking too much, with controversial opinions. A quite unsympathetic conservative knowitall. But that’s Boswell’s fault as well, I understand — he met Johnson very late in his life, after Johnson did all the hard writing work — sort of defining modern journalism, modern criticism, etc.

This seems to be a good introduction to Samuel Johnson: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/.

Texts here: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/j.html#johnson

Excited & nervous: on sunday Oorbeek will indeed perform with Koichi Makigami, the wonderful Japanese vocalist, (overtone) singer, improvisor, jew’s harp-player: . See: http://www.muziekgebouw.nl/mondharpfestival/. The concert is at the BIMhuis and starts at 15.00.

Upcoming workshop at Mediamatic, from 11-13 september: RFID, Internet of Things: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-11944-en.html. There’s a reading list online at http://www.mediamatic.net/article-9691-en.html.

One of the features speakers is, yes, yours truly. Next to Julian Bleecker, http://research.techkwondo.com/ and Timo Arnall, http://www.elasticspace.com/.