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8 March 2002

doghouse placed back in cleaned out stable meanwhile

(whatever) doghouse placed back in cleaned out stable

spring 2002 obs

G. reports what is this spring's second Kingfisher observation, its object taking a full 360° (U+) turn over the mill pond, flashing its red front in a trail of ice blue. Half an hour later I spot my first Gray Wagtail.


authority

What composes authority? Knowledge plus style plus communicative skills plus tons of modesty.

7 March 2002

many cities, one sentiment

'Rotterdam is many cities' claimed last year's slogan for Rotterdam, Cultural Capital of Europe 2001. But politics reveal stranger than culture. With council elections yesterday 35,7% of its citizens (in a community counting 162 nationalities) with a right to vote (54,7% taking it) expressed their faith in the Netherlands' latest political and Rotterdam based phenomenon, an openly exclusivist Pim Fortuyn, who has no political experience whatsoever, hardly a programme but a strong media presence and some at best dubious one-liner ideas, most controversial being abolishing the first paragraph of the constitution, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender. Seriously. A political landslide to the 'right', with clear warning signs for the government elections next 15 May, when Mr. Fortuyn and the likes (united in the many 'Leefbaar', 'livable', parties all over the country) are believed to gain some 18+6 on 150 parliament seats, and forming a government will turn out to be a hell of a job.

sorry politics' myopiacracy

Fundamentalism of some sort hurts in many cultures—as the global political stage announces every day. Sorry politics simply aren't ready for multi-cultural society. Issue based localism knows no simple translation to the larger scale of running a country. Fortuyn aims at both, hoping to combine political responsibility for one of the country's largest and economically most valuable cities and for government, from next May. His politics profit from the mainstream politics of confusion, invoking a voters' reaction to the inability in the 'old' system to face issues—an inability to gain anything beyond economic growth, at the cost of fresh ideas on many collective items, multi-culturalism being a prominent one.

The 'greying' of Western European society, and economy, is one of its most serious and seriously neglected problems. Birth rate is too low to supply for a work force to maintain the current level of well-being for a populace which will count 23-26% of people over 65, by 2025. A much larger young population is needed to take over the hard work. If no offspring is produced we will have to mobilize or import a work force, possibly along unorthodox principles (I'm preparing to continue contributing into old age—haven't artists always? OTOH, we don't do jobs). Now that's the economic (and political, and cultural) reality of the early 21st century nobody dares addres in a wealthy West.


lighter news: Gamboree!

G-pack's Alamut, Caterina.net, Latenightpool, NQPaOFU and Sylloge will meet at the occasion of Design Recast, 12-14 April in Maastricht, some continuing to Paris after, for numer02, where Stewart B. will speak, as well as Recast's Malcolm McCullough. I haven't taken the time to submit a proposal so I'll be lurking and reworking DR.

There's still sufficient time (and place) to join us in Maastricht. If you can offer some real solid media coverage, we will even host you...

6 March 2002

3,500 pantalons au 1er étage

Later. Electra publisher's Lucio Fontana complete works are two amazing volumes I held at the Maastricht Slegte when spotting it behind the cashier. I had just acquired his 'Retrospektive' with the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, as well as 'Yves Klein', published with Cantz, written by Sidra Stich—if only for its dust cover, after a 27 May 1962 photo by Harry Shunk, who also shot the saut dans le vide and other mythical Klein scenes. A Shunk search reveals more 1960s and 70s art and performance photography, but no bio.

'come with me into the void' (YK, 1957)
(I wonder what the original French said; re: 'hidden in its original French'—remember Paul?)

Also measuring the stable, scanning color swatches and flipping magazine pages from Nest to Maison Madame Figaro. Gilberthe's birthday, 5 March, celebrated like a real birthday for the first time in years. The evening of the 4th we get to know that also Honorine's birthday is March 5. Yesterday she turned 33. Power 'Unga Bunga' Pete with R+r, who just now storm the studio in total excitement when they have reached level 4, the Candy Level. In Liège last Saturday I noticed the window sign '3,500 pantalons au 1er étage', which must be the lost title I was looking for. I'm writing a new text for De Witte Raaf, after 'vormgeving ontwerpen' en 'omnia in media'. This will be for their globalization issue. Working title: 'De rest van de wereld'.

Now playing: Dennis Wilson's 1977 vinyl Pacific Ocean Blue, side 2, first song, 'Time', with its blaring bombast timpano, horn and guitar finale. Hold on. Wonder who his horn section are?

3 March 2002

dad will do

It's intriguing to know to be remembered as 'dad'.

Meanwhile, back at the Moulin, I spend the day cleaning out the stable which we hadn't thoroughly swept since Coco left long ago. Emptied of its tools and garden furniture stock and horse shit straw mix and archetypical dog house, it's a different place. Now if we would connect it to the 900 square feet and 14 feet high (in the middle) attic with a staircase, where now is the shaft to throw down straw or hay, adding some large studio North windows in the roof, which would also light the ground floor, that would make one hell of a studio apartment... Placing a simple ground floor kitchen and bathroom that would double serve as a summer kitchen for the Moulin would be the thing to do.

Spring is pushing. I'm anxious to rebuild and change this place. To arrange the garden and vegetable garden, to furnish and decorate it. To invite the guests. Soon we will've been here for three years—in four weeks time. 30 March 1999 we spent our first night here and swore not to give this up before three years would have passed. I'm telling you we won't.

24 February 2002

repas d'hiver

In the afternoon I leave my St. Germain des Bois community's 42 neighbours at the repas d'hiver after its main course. Helpful hands fill small containers for me to take cheese and sweets along to NL. Two more entrees and large main course left-overs are added. I am not to starve while away for work. Till next week-end.

22 February 2002

zoom

Sound over temperature. I moved back to the rather chilly studio, from the fire heated dining room, for the funk of vinyl Lionel Richie's Commodores AD 1975. All my idiosyncracies are belong to me (the meme is back, or can they ever be? Yestermemes... duh).

sunny design recast deskscape

Excitement over Design Recast increases. To date speakers include Janet Abrams, Iain Chambers, Malcolm McCullough, Rich Gold, Paul Mijksenaar, Roelof Mulder, Fiona Raby, Maarten de Reus, Sue Walker and John Thackara. As I wrote to Mr. Chambers (author of 'Migrancy, Culture, Identity' and recently 'Culture after Humanism', both with Routledge), upon being asked what DR would be all about:

Designers traditionally face two different worlds, which over the past decade grew towards a different relationship all-together, partly as a result of a changing media landscape: the traditional commissioning community -- corporate, institutional, commercial producers, vis-à-vis the traditional consumer community, a thought-of 'general' public with distinct or only vaguely guessed at or even non-existing needs to be catered to. One way traffic connected these worlds in which' communication designers mediated. It is a rough sketch, that knows endless refinements (of course also between the different design specializations), but in general designers can be traced back as being torn between different interests at one point or another in their careers and practices. From being a mediator, 'advertizing' qualities of products and ideologies, or knowledge systems, or graphically, visually explaining the benefits and dangers of certain habits etc., increasingly over the past decade, the designer's role shifted towards handing down 'life styles' (as Bruce Mau's monography is rightfully titled). On the other hand, new means of cultural production and expression are at everybody's disposal and global communication made for connections on a grassroots level that were unheard of, say 15 years ago. All this can and must be relativized across civilizations and continents, but increased connectivity and mobility has enriched the 'mix' and with it the exchange of identities. Where does all this leave the designer? Who does s/he work for and with, and at whose cost, not only in a financial sense, but certainly in terms of cultural identity. What does it mean to talk about 'globalization', often so lightly, especially in designer terms. These issues are of prime importance for contemporary design and should change the black and white perspective of global capital versus human needs, as it is simplified in e.g. the First Things First manifesto.

We charge no admission for the symposium. So if 12-14 April in Maastricht NL fits your schedule, you will find us at the Jan van Eyck Academie, where places are limited. Be as smart as to make your reservations soon. This information is first published here at NQPaOFU, to offer its readership and their relations a little advantage. A precise schedule will soon follow at janvaneyck.nl/2002designrecast. We aim at having lots of interaction, so unless you visit this site for a dose of SimWarez (my search engine hits tell me to start putting up disclaimers... this SimThing is getting out of hand), you are invited to join us, and discretely spread the word to your peers. Make your reservations for the exact dates that you will attend, with Madeleine Bisscheroux: madeleine.bisscheroux@janvaneyck.nl, using subject header 'design recast'.

As much as I would like to invite Larry Lessig to the above list, I'm afraid I am running out of budget here. I addressed one large Dutch law firm to join me financially and organizationally, to invite him to Amsterdam as a Design Recast spin off. I hope to hear from them. Otherwise it'll be for the next big thing, like Doors 7 in November? Better start making your reservations with them too...

21 February 2002

mo betta millin'

What's on a miller's mind? Yesterday's downpours came running off the hills when I returned from shopping in the afternoon. From Cuncy les Varzy fat curry colored streams rush along the road at car speed, large surfaces where otherwise there is no water but prairie, water in the woods. But it stopped raining. Later I see an electrical blue streak shooting up stream: Kingfisher's back! Greeting the waters. At 0:30 before I go to bed I peek into the night and listen carefully. We might be as lucky as to keep it out of the house again this time. Waking up just before six the sound is different. I get up and try to see water in the garden, through its reflection of Thurigny lights. I see none, but the meadow on the other side of the road up to Seutin has submersed. I go down and check the basement. Not a single sign of ground water rising, not even a single moist spot. An hour later I hear the first birds excited with this morning's scenery. I go down to open the shutters and find us surrounded by water again, the valley filled edge to edge, and just two tiny pools back in the garden, where they always appear first.

19 February 2002

stealing back the internet? i thunk all your internet still are belong to us...

TidBITS#617/18-Feb-02 Adam C. Engst has some good news for you intellectual property rights craving artists. Larry Lessig creates the creative commons. ©©riders...it's a steal.

'A Couple of Cool Concepts' by Adam C. Engst (ace@tidbits.com)

Say what you like about the Internet letting the wackos out of the woodwork, but it also lets people with truly neat ideas have a chance at trying them out. The dot-com implosion could even be seen as a good thing by turning attention back toward the days when you didn't need a business plan and a cool million in venture capital to do something on the Internet - not that we're bitter because no vulture capitalists ever threw a million bucks our way!

**Recolonizing the Commons** -- Larry Lessig, Stanford law professor and author of The Future of Ideas, along with Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, has come up with a humdinger of an idea he calls Creative Commons. The basic idea is to make available flexible, customizable intellectual property licenses to musicians, writers, programmers, artists, and anyone else who wants to distribute their work widely while still defining what constitutes acceptable use. The best part, for anyone who's had an uncontrollable coughing attack after reading a lawyer's bill, is that Creative Commons intends to provide these licenses for free.

Creative Commons (subscribe to mailing list only)
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (tidbits amazon connection)
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (tidbits amazon connection)

Once Creative Commons launches, which is currently planned for May of 2002, anyone with a hankering for some home-cooked license will be able to visit the Creative Commons Web site, choose the options that fit their situation, and, without even putting a quarter in the machine, get a custom license. Actually, it gets better. Every license will contain a special machine-readable tag specifying the terms of that particular license. When that license and the content it covers are indexed by the search engines, that tag will enable searchers to find specific types of content available under particular licensing terms, such as if an editor of an environmental newsletter wanted to browse through nature photos available for non-commercial use.

Another project Creative Commons plans is a "conservancy" to facilitate the preservation and dissemination of intellectual property. From what I can tell, the goal here is similar to a straw man I proposed back in 1998 under the name of the Electronic Phoenix Project - a group that would exist as a target for donation of old code such that it could be brought into the open source world and kept alive after its commercial parent was unable to justify further care and feeding. The Electronic Phoenix Project was doomed from the beginning by virtue of an overwhelming ratio of opinions to actual effort, but perhaps the times have changed. Best of luck to Larry Lessig, his colleagues, and the entire Creative Commons project - may their efforts rethink the morass that has become copyright and intellectual property.


re: Tribal Media Bank

I was suddenly reminded of my 1995 Tribal Media project for the SoHo Arts Festival in NY. The idea of banking was very present to me at the time. Also: what to do with half-products, unfinished and shelved ideas, hunches, sketches... how to marry them to other artists' half-products or hand them over to someone else to take them where you wouldn't imagine them to go. IP per se, nipped in the bud, shelved rightfully so, never ever thought of after, but retrieved from that old faithful recovered harddisk of GodDieuGottGod, currently itself located in the attic at MdM and rebooted for the occasion.

So, at one typical Early Information Age insomnia induced euphoric moment almost 7 years ago I saw the future of art and it read like this:

Fiat Lux Tribal Media's post-naive optimism with new technologies comes with some very clear cut demands. first, to enhance the arts' symbolic intelligence by experimenting artists' projects in new media environments. When the artist traditionally supported the development of tools and materials, he now should write software scenarios to comply with his changing needs. He should then commission these to programmers to write code, thus realizing his new tools for creation. second, he should develop these tools not only on the basis of individual needs, but from a true context conscious insight in the force of ideas juxtaposed. He should develop strategies for the banking of his concepts: every artist his own private/public bank of interactive data. Again these are software and representational questions to be studied. Both protected from and vulnerable to infection (in comes encryption—higher math), artists' multi-media data (visual and textual notes, ideas, concepts, icons) should be given time and space to ripe or rot, in part even beyond his own direct influence, by linking them with other ideas and concepts. Also, an audience should be enabled to monitor this process—at a cost, see 4. third, the artist should seek to attract different patrons and consequently a different audience. Somewhere outside the art institution is called for a contrasting approach to the creative act, process and product. New communities, experiments in living and learning, need supportive environments that are not only represented in new media communication, but very fundamentally built up on notions of contemporary cultural identity. fourth, the information conscious artist should examine his economical situation and figure out whether to pay or to get paid for his interrogation of information reality (see also Esther Dyson, Intellectual Property on the Net, here reproduced at EFF, originally in Release 1.0, December 1994). Information trade will be facilitated by his individual studio bank, but every subtle leaking out of ideas in the making should be monitored and metered in one way or another. Again encryption will come to the rescue here. fifth, we better make this a particular demand: new concepts of added value should be examined. The commodity/fetish model is outdone. We will not be selling objects, but information. Out goes the art dealer, in comes the mathematician-magician, to encrypt our cash flow and the proper fluidity of the creative and economic processes. sixth, we will build environments, inside and outside information media. So we'd better walk with architects, and poets, and musicians and writers and film makers. And essayists, ecologists, economists, lawyers and brokers, with programmers (again), and entrepreneurs of sorts. last, for now, May 30 at 4.53am, when the first light of dawn colours the Amsterdam canals a monitor pale pink, we organize. Beyond the Studio Bank lies the organization of the New Concept Artistry. Against bureaucracy and capital stupidity, Exquisite Enclaves of new media artistry will flourish like Medieval guilds. Like Chambers of Rhetoric and Heretic. Join the FIAT, the First Information Arts Trust! FIAT LUX!

16-17 February 2002

ba-by come back

Don't you ever hear that ol' blog calling and whistling a familiar tune?... The weblog simply is another one such a calling and whistling reminding thing, a habit to incantationously recall experiences past and over and again spell the magic formulas for projects future and trace what links drifting moods present and in promptu up and down and around jumpy impulse... blog cry pay some attention to the familiar calls and whistles... the blues, the sun, the eternal question of light. Black and striped P+p were sitting on the wall next to the gate, turned to the street, sharp, when we returned at 1815 hours. We had chosen an alternative route from Troyes, where we are used to get off the toll way when we go around Paris, via Arras, Reims, to take N77 to Auxerre. The new direction appeared to be a couple of kilometres longer, very curly and picturesque, leading by Tonerre and Vezelay, where we explained to R+r that there's three ways to get to the other side of a mountain: around it, across it, or right through it.

Meanwhile since I moved along from somewhere where there's no signs pointing here (coming to think of it: where there's no signs at all, just amazingly fancy scapes)—this new or next déménagement practically coinciding with that mean new year's flu—since turning up here, I find such clear presence of place and moment at ever so many detailed sites, in ever so many actions, in ever so many names, that it is hard not to pay attention and try to stick to and learn from a new experience while comparing it, though not too much, to memories of similar victories over delusion, like playing hooky, in order to as fast as possible peddle out and take in fresh hallucinatory springtime meadow or sand beach and broom covered sand dune scents, to daydream and inhale, pounding heart, a head filled with ownership, hearing bird song in every sound. Some memory that is ('speak memory, speak').

I'm not selling you anything.

7-15 February 2002

all of myNL

The Sheltering Shed

patati patata... still en route and wearing out. Three vernissages and several visits later we returned to camp FIL, family in law, Zevenaar NL. The weather has improved, thank you very much, but our Randstad (The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam) days past were filled with windy wet vast parking lots, some of which on top of factory outlets; we stayed at the best little Boterenbrood/Keip backyard tool shed-like chalet in Amsterdam to protect us at night—but not when you have to venture out for early morning hygiene, when you risk multiple wind and water related dangers; keeping pace with R+r's programme, meaning all they can plan and more with their old Dutch friends; enchanting Amélie Poulain; seductive Arlésiennes, sun flowers, pear trees and whatnot, in short: paint, at the van Gogh/Gauguin double, a marvellous exhibition, so thanks to Willem van Gogh's kind invitation for Monday night we had the occasion to fall in love with that noble art of covering canvas, all over again; re: painting, aren't we incredibly slow learners on blue, blacks, greens, yellows, whites, red and pink; earlier this trip: dinner at Schlemmer, The Hague, when we forgot but next day retrieved an Important Bag at the Haags Gemeentemuseum wardrobe. Made many miles for such a tiny country.

R+r in Hotel New York after their visit to the Wereldmuseum and lunch

We met <names of many friends and colleagues>, most notably <names of many friends and colleagues which we hadn't seen since a long time>. Apparently we picked the right gatherings. Or possibly all of (our) NL meets all of the time at all of the NL events we ourselves were so used to go to? Plus ça change. Fact of the matter is we will soon return to the Moulin, after a Maastricht detour.

from 6-7 February 2002

Going out for a no-neige short winter break, including vernissages and social visits. NQP is iProminent in my lite luggage. Did I tell you BTW how cool it is to plug her into the amplifier and play that K.D. Lang's When We Collide, (love that song!) or Amanda Ghost's Cellophane from her MP3 jukebox—music that I would otherwise probably never have accessed, blasting into the studio, where I simply had to return and take care, after having stated its disarray... 'administrative space', what affront!) (oh, the new Cabinet 'evil issue' #5 sports my Flusser quote on cabinet making, I hear. Buy that magazine! Subscribe to it!

5 February 2002

genius loci? radius loci

What I have been referring to as 'radius loci', since a couple of years now,

I think I coined it with the ijsseloog.nl (discontinued) domain, or with the Enclav'Exquise idea ('driver, follow that URL!'), with its latest manifestation in drechtlog.com, starting its second (in situ) phase this spring—but also in OCI (Office for Cultural Intelligence) times, when a small group of artists (Jan van Grunsven, Jouke Kleerebezem, Arno van der Mark, Maarten de Reus, QS Serafijn, Willem van Weelden) were imagining projects around some physical foothold (a bunker studio and storage), which' prime effect and value I already in the early 1990s literally projected away from its object(s), 'somewhere out there', in media space.

certainly applies to the micro topography of NQP production. Since iHave the iBook my 'studio' is in decay, or at least in disarray, administration space. NQP is where the iBook is, and since there's no Apple Airport wireless network connection (yet) at the Moulin, occasionally it hooks up in the library or master bedroom, where the physical ports onto the Internet are situated. Otherwise NQP production drifts, much like its conversation. Plenty spaces apart from the studio are of importance to NQP, from 'god's own attic', to the dining room when a fire's lit, to the vegetable garden between spades. NQP is distributed locally and accessible on the larger scale of the network.

Furthermore 'radius loci' has been (expect an important re-introduction this week) lemoulindumerle.com's credo and mode of operation since its start: how to expand and integrate real estate with an Internet domain, how to mix information, how to culturally and legally connect physical place, lived reality and distributed information? How to forge life spans in which radically different cycles meet? How to connect dislocated histories and live them to the fullest...

Just how totally exciting it would have been, to have access to abundant information on the Moulin du Merle site and history of its buildings, on its industrial development as a water mill and saw mill and household, over the past centuries? Yet there's none, or hardly any, four 1900ish postcards and other small objects. We will be unearthing some more for lemoulindumerle.com. We will keep record and project from the here and now, in actual plans and works ('digging, planting, airing') of the hand and the head and heart.

becoming information, value of becoming

In radical information reality every single object connects to networked accessible information. Relevant to the object's life span the information 'attached' tells about its 'becoming value': to live in what is heralded as the information age, I need to have access to all and/about everything, have access to information, that as soon as it is uploaded (approaching real time) I can search, match, monitor and interact with. Edit and redistribute it. 'Talking back' is the conditio sine qua non of information society. Becoming information, as becoming value—raising from noise the value of becoming is exactly what, when and where it is: just that, 'becoming' or statu nascendi.

Information is not 'attached to objects', nor are what we call objects 'attached to information': both are manifestations of data exchange. Do I have to remind you?

"...what exactly do cabinetmakers do: they take a cabinet form (the idea of a cabinet) and force it upon a piece of amorphous wood. The trouble with this is, that not only do they inform the wood (forcing it into the cabinet form), but also they deform the idea of a cabinet (by locking it into the wood). So the trouble is, that it is impossible to make the ideal cabinet."
(Vilém Flusser)

4 February 2002

50/50

Aiming to spend half of my time awake outside and the other half of it inside. Then half of my time working (outside or inside) and half of my time not working. Some days I would spend 8 hours at my computer working and 8 hours outside lingering, other days I might work like 5 hours in the garden and relax 5 hours inside, going out again for a two hour strut and in the evening do two hours of maintenance work inside. Guess I won't be able to force that much time off.

As a matter of fact recently we are so hooked 50/50 that G. and I finished that bottle of Veuve Ambal Crémant de Bourgogne at perfectly equal shares before supper. Leaving a mix of home grown hand picked mint and verbina tea for later tonight. While I'm filling in on 50 work at 51 NQP.

color fields above Ouagne

dirty finger nails

Digging. Planting. Airing. Extending the vegetable garden, inch-by-inch emptying it by hand, of grass, roots, stones, turning big chunks of clay; planting the Nordman pine which served for Xmas; replanting wistaria against the barn's south wall and planting the flowering snowdrop which Baptist's mother gave me when I picked R+r's friend up this morning, to come play and stay overnight at the Moulin.

digging along the edge of the vegetable garden, under the old apple tree

rhubarb shoot, three year old plant

3 February 2002

short cuts

Quelle Coincidence: since that flu my attention panned. Wonder what kept me so damn long. Biological time, probably. Chant de l'heure.

Bear with me. 65% SimSearch SimScore over January. Best compensatory hits: 'unattainable' and 'abundancy'. Keep up the good searching, folks!

FYI: Design Recast. Catering design.

My days are filled and fuelled.

Because of poor snow conditions we decided not to go to Villars this year. Nevertheless R+r are in vacances de neiges mode.

Now playing: Ian Dury: 'New Boots and Panties!!' Dated cabaretrocity. Change to one year earlier Weather Report's 'Black Market'. I'm looking for the right match. Let's hope it's not going to be one of those record flipping days. In that case you will soon find me in the garden, continuing the digging. I'll pick that up anyway. It's part of that shift. The potager came remarkably clean out of the winter. Thanks to the low temperatures? We're expanding it a bit, along the edges. Weather Report's title song does the trick. What clean production for '76.

2 February 2002

2 February 2002: chant de l'heure

Migratory patterns bring along abundant bird song filling the air to liven up spring conditions down at the Moulin.

nqpaofu.com 2002 jouke kleerebezem Notes Quotes Provocations and Other Fair Use