Urban Adventure in Rotterdam

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Gallery Rianne Groen 2015

In 2015 I visited Gallery Rianne Groen and saw some interesting art. Often the art is complex, mysterious and unexpected. It combines everyday parts to create strange jewels. Also it is way above my financial possibilities and not my wife's taste. But I love this gallery.

Indeed, a culture is kept alive by the interaction of all its parts. Its progress is an alchemical process, in which all its varied ingredients can combine to form new jewels. (Gerald Holton, quoted in: Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality (Edward Frenkel))

The corner text by Wouter Venema is not a poem but an object, a painting, a drawing.

Wouter Venema, Two words, 2015

The combination of artworks can be puzzling and even unsettling at times:

A thing cannot be reduced to the definitions we give of it, because then the thing would change with each tiny change in its known properties. A good rule of thumb is as follows:

unless a character gives rise to different interpretations, unless a scientific entity endures changed notions of its properties, unless a philosopher is entangled in contradictory assertions over one and the same concept, unless a new technology has unforeseen impact, unless a politician’s party is one day disappointed, unless a friend is able to generate and experience surprises, then we are not dealing with anything very real. (Graham Harman, The horror of phenomenology)

The corner of a large painting was sacrificed to be used as a postcard.

That kind of fruitful damage makes great conceptual art.

Marijn van Kreij, Untitled (BRESFSI1013, Postcard), 2014, Lower right corner used as a postcard.

Recently, Van Kreij sent a corner of his work shown in the exhibition (Untitled (BRESFSI1013, Postcard)) to Van Duijvenboden. The envelope used to send the piece is present in the drop box on the floor (the original corner is now on show at A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam).

Sunday, April 21, 2019

From a strange planet - 14

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati, 13: Ed Ruscha, 15: Traffic cones, 16: Nothing, 17: Nothing and 18: Melting snow. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places.

I have thought much about this view. I lack the words to describe its atmosphere. The bridge, the sea, the shed and the lamp. The arrangement is more than the sum of its parts.

I tried to imagine a story:

Two locals drive to work each day and cross the bridge. They speculate what's inside the little building. They make hypotheses. The discuss the meaning of the light and the sign. The speculations slowly escalate, starting with a toolshed, and then going from a measuring station, an industrial control system, to a modern chapel and a small temple to the bridge god. But there's never time to test those. And then one day the small building is gone, removed, burned down, blown up. Or just moved to the other side of the road.

Or another story:

Two locals drive to work each day and cross the bridge. They discuss the strange behaviour of light in this area. Sometimes they see a strange glow under the bridge. On some day the shed light burns more brightly. On other days they see the streetlight behaving strangely.

They discuss the theories of Igor Savchenko:

We no longer have a constant flow of sunlight. Light appears to us as a sequence of transient storms. Everything around us is lit up for brief instants. The world picture shimmers. But moments of light and darkness still alternate too fast, for us to notice them.

They retell local urban legends about ghosts, trolls, and dead hitchhikers. But they never reach a conclusion.

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. But sometimes fiction is stranger than reality. It is very hard to make good, strange fiction, that enhances reality. Let's be thankful to writers who can do that. Otherwise our world could be just like the one Thomas Ligotti is describing.

I once knew a man who claimed that, overnight, all the solid shapes of existence had been replaced by cheap substitutes: trees made of flimsy posterboard, houses built of colored foam, whole landscapes composed of hair-clippings. His own flesh, he said, was now just so much putty. Needless to add, this acquaintance had deserted the cause of appearances and could no longer be depended on to stick to the common story. Alone he had wandered into a tale of another sort altogether; for him, all things now participated in this nightmare of nonsense. But although his revelations conflicted with the lesser forms of truth, nonetheless he did live in the light of a greater truth: that all is unreal. (The Shadow at the Bottom of the World (Thomas Ligotti))

When I compare the camera pictures with the Google pictures I see two different worlds. Which is the real one? And which one is made of cardboard?

Sunday, April 14, 2019

From a strange planet - 18

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati, 13: Ed Ruscha, 15: Traffic cones, 16: Nothing, and 17: Nothing. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places.

Between March and April of 2019 the roadside snow has receded. The traffic cams have seen winter going and spring coming. In the lower two pictures you can see how the snow recedes from one day (April 13) to the other day (April 14). Where are the snows of yesteryear? Without the camera it would just be a memory (see also here).

Small islands and promontories of snow have molten in the sunlight.

The strange snow figure from Easter Island has left. And new roads have been revealed.

Small islands of snow remain in the grass and on the mountains.

The shoulder of the road is free of snow. Old dry branches reappear. But in the woods the snow remains.

The thin layer of snow is just a memory now.

Sunday, April 7, 2019

From a strange planet - 17

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati, 13: Ed Ruscha, 15: Traffic cones. and 16: Nothing. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places.

Last time I wrote about a zebra crossing where nothing happens. Today I'll write about an unfinished asphalt road where also nothing ever happens. I've followed the webcam for several years and the place is in stasis. I don't see any good use for the camera.

Even at night nothing happens. I see no people and no animals. Traffic is very light.The camera is watching and waiting, but for what? Now there is even video from this place.

Watching a place where nothing happens reminds me of Project Hessdalen, also in Norway. As the project website says:

Hessdalen is a small valley in the central part of Norway. At the end of 1981 through 1984, residents of the Valley became concerned and alarmed about strange, unexplained lights that appeared at many locations throughout the Valley. Hundreds of lights were observed. At the peak of activity there were about 20 reports a week.

In Hessdalen several cameras are watching the landscape full time. You can look at the video recordings of special events. You don't know if you see something mysterious or something mundane. The recordings look like conceptual art. An abstract landscape where maybe something could happen or has happened.

These webcam pictures have the same atmosphere of Waiting for Godot. But this time Godot will be caught on camera.

The Google maps surroundings of this place are actually quite pretty. A typical Nordic landscape with birch trees and snow. The webcam looks suburban but the place is rural.

Sunday, March 31, 2019

From a strange planet - 16

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati, 13: Ed Ruscha and 15: Traffic cones. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places.

I've looked at many traffic cams through the years but none is as boring as this zebra crossing. It's so boring that it becomes interesting. Fv101 Prestebakke is interesting nothingness. Precisely that nothingness that inspires horror writers:

The building was untenanted and desolate. Nothing moved within its confines and I imagined in my mind’s eye the abandoned and silent spaces, the empty rooms, and the labyrinth of dusty corridors. In the teeming metropolis, whose streets and buildings were crawling with people, like insects in a hive, this tower was vacant: a void. - The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Mark Samuels)

Even at night nothing happens here. Snow does not make a difference. There might be some deeper meaning here, a very special place that needs to be guarded. But probably there's just nothing there:

If it were possible to do so, the company would sell ... the ultimate product – Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price – Everything.
My Work Is Not Yet Done (Thomas Ligotti)

Even a year long observation shows no activity, nothing. But maybe this silent space is full of invisible activity. Again I can use horror literature to illustrate this:

This sense of the invisible often exerted itself in moments when he witnessed nothing more than a patch of pink sky above leafless trees in twilight or an abandoned room where dust settled on portraits and old furniture. To him, however, these appearances disguised realms of an entirely different nature. For within these imagined or divined spheres there existed a certain... confusion, a swirling, fluttering motion that was belied by the relative order of the seen. Only on rare occasions could he enter these unseen spaces, and always unexpectedly. - Noctuary (Thomas Ligotti)

But all this dark speculation turns to nothing once you look at Google maps and see how pleasant this place is. A few friendly cottages, grass fields, birch and pine trees and a long white fence.

The only mystery is the message board. What hyper-local secrets does it tell?

You, however, sit at your window and dream of the message when evening comes. - Kafka’s “A Message From the Emperor”

Sunday, March 10, 2019

From a strange planet - 15

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati. and 13: Ed Ruscha. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places

The webcam is called E39 Arsvågen ferjekai. It shows the toll houses at the Arsvågen ferryport. I like small houses in the landscape so I was immediately attracted to this scene. And I hoped that all the traffic would create a lively experience. I was to be disappointed.

But looking at this scene from far away makes it somewhat interesting. Who knows who is looking? And how far away they may be? Just like in the financial crisis:

The final holder of the bond, the distant bank or fund, also held the deeds to the original houses. Which meant that a homeowner in sunlit California could be sitting in a house that was owned by a couple of Eskimos out on the ice floes chasing polar bears, six thousand miles away.
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers (G. Lawrence McDonald)

But otherwise nothing much happens. Snow falls, rain falls, night falls, the light changes. Lights go on and off in the small houses. But there is no atmosphere, no mystery. Everything is out in the open. Everything is explainable.

The view from Google street view is more ancient and much better. Approaching the ferry you look out over the mud flats and over the granite substrate, scoured and fractured by ice-age glaciers.

And even the little toll-houses are more interesting with the sea and the ferry as their background. But no mystery here. No story here.

But there is mystery in the surrounding landscape. You could walk away from the tall-houses and go up the hill. There you could sit in the evening light and listen to the hum of the powerlines. And you could feel the old granite under your feet forming the skeleton of the continent. And you could dream about walking to the top of that hill in the distance. That hill is not on Google street view and eternally out of reach.

The one interesting detail in the webcam picture are the traffic cones. They perform a small dance, moving slowly from one place to another forming random clusters. They are entities that talk to each other. They brave the sun, snow and the rain. We should respect them.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Topology for artists - workshop sketch 11

Topology for artists, walkers and other non-mathematicians

One of my little dreams is to make and give a workshop about topology for artists, walkers and outher outsiders. It might be called: The topological toolkit. What you didn't know about spaces. Or maybe: Topology as philosophy of space. These are preliminary notes: YouTube topology, Styles of topology, Spaces and maps, Translation, Words in linguistic space, Workshop contents sketch, Workshop content sketch 2. I try to post small updates often, to keep myself working on this.

I found this original book in the Rotterdam library. It's called 'Topologie door zien' that translates into 'Topology through seeing' or 'Intuitive understanding of topology'. It is a hand illustrated book. The author took drawing lessons to make the pictures. It's an excellent illustration of the weirdness of topological objects. Many of the illustrations are eerie. I don't think it was done on purpose, but the illustrations are just as uncanny as the Codex Seraphinianus. If I make a workshop, I would like to make that the central point.