Author Archive for julius

All in the Family: Familiar Troubles in Literature

julius published on December 12, 2010 in art. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

With Thanksgiving just out the door the mass preparations for Christmas have begun. Most people will spend their holidays amidst family, hopefully resulting in a few unforgettable days. Unfortunately family dynamics also admits lesser situations once in a while, ranging from small fights to major wars; it’s safe to say that everybody knows. In The Netherlands there are at least two television shows that aim to reunite broken families, often resulting in popular television. But what has literature to say about the institute of family? Today a comparison of two well known books that might seem different at the surface, but show some similarities at their core; ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Márquez and ‘The Corrections’ from Jonathan Franzen.

‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ is a family chronicle by Nobel-prize winning Márquez set in the Latin American town Macondo. Covering a century the book describes all the victories and defeats of a single family and their friends and foes from the village they built themselves. It’s an impressive story covering many generations telling about their marriages, births, deaths, perils and adventures. Márquez probably wrote about all things one can encounter within their family.

In the end the story poses the question ‘what’s the use of everything?’ because, in the end, all will reduce to dust. A very beautiful way to end the epoch. Franzen chooses a less existential approach in his ‘The Corrections’, set in the contemporary USA it chronicles the story of an elderly couple who struggle to keep their family together. Their three kids have spread their wings long ago so now they have to put up with each others difficulties.

The main focus of the novel is the mother’s goal to reunite her entire offspring for Christmas. In trying to do so all the difficulties appear at the surface, the first son who’s really successful (on paper, at least) has trouble keeping it all together, the daughter makes some dubious choices and the last son doesn’t accomplish anything at all. Getting all of this together for Christmas seems like forcing a train towards a broken up section of rails at full speed. It has to derail.

Franzen seems pessimistic about the position of family in modern society. Work, wife, own life, everything seems more important. While children want to focus on their own lives parents are helplessly bored and needlessly worried and start calling their offspring on a daily basis. That’s what happens in ‘The Corrections’, all intentions are good, all results foul.

It’s an excellent piece of literature, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re encountering family problems or not, it works on so many levels. Modern society is dissected by Master Surgeon Franzen and the consequences of the philosophy of the mainstream are shown, shamelessly.

Are we headed in the wrong direction? Is family really the cornerstone of society and are we putting it in the wrong place? Márquez seems to say that society wouldn’t even be possible without sturdy families. Franzen agrees, depicting how individual lives derail when families do. Or is it the other way around? That’s a difficult thing to say, both probably influence each other heavily.

There is one very explicit problem that appears in both books, though. Does all the trouble we go through matter in the end, when everybody passes away, gets out of touch? This question is not entirely independent of the question if life matters, at all? I think it is fair to conclude that, if life matters, family matters. And conflicts will arise, but that’s not strange, for families seem to be an almost randomly chosen bunch of individuals. So try to navigate through the troubles as swiftly as possible, and try to enjoy beautiful gatherings such as Christmas as much as possible.

Happy holidays.

-JJM

On the Nobel Prize in Physics

julius published on October 11, 2010 in technology. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

Last week the Nobel committee announced that they were going to award the Nobel Prize in Physics to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for “groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene.” It awoke my interest for two reasons, i) because the it’s regarding physics and ii) because part of the research was performed in the Netherlands. But what is graphene? And why is it interesting?  I would very much like to take this opportunity to try and explain.

Graphene is quite directly linked to graphite, the stuff that’s in your pencils, the only difference is that the atomic structure of the latter is stacked and that the structure of the prior consists of just a single layer. The rest of the structure is the same, both consist of hexagonal shapes like in chicken fence. It’s also similar to diamond which has fascinated people for centuries because of its extreme hardness.

Atomic Structure of Graphene

This property finds its cause in the atomic structure which I’d like to elaborate on now for a bit. All the materials I’ve talked about so far consist of carbon atoms, nothing more, nothing less. The only difference is the way they’re connected. In diamond, for instance, each carbon atom has got four neighbors. This is what carbon likes best, it’s like a party where everyone has got four arms that they bend  in order to chain up with other party-goers. This chaining up unfortunately only happens under rare circumstances like extreme pressure and heat, in the natural world only present underneath and in the Earth’s crust.

On top of the planet, however, the party-goers are only able to chain up with three friends. Leading to the formation of graphite, naturally, in a chicken fence (hexagonal shaped) lattice. This may sound like a big bummer but it’s not. The weak interactions between the different layers create possibilities such as writing with pencil and graphene.

Graphene really has got some stunning properties. I guess most people haven’t tried, and never will themselves be in a position to do so, but diamond doesn’t conduct electricity; graphene does. You can grab a pencil, draw a line on a piece of paper, connect one end with some power supply and the other end with a light bulb and it will work. This conductance is really good, it’s one of the best conducting materials known.

And now we’re gonna have to get a bit technical. The reason graphene is such a superb conductor is that each atom has got a spare arm that isn’t hooked up to another one. When a flow of electricity is applied, electrons (or – and excuse me for this little morbidity – limbs, if you wish) start traveling through the structure. Every atom uses it’s spare arm to hook on to the stream of other arms and give it an extra push from A to B. Because graphene is so regular this happens extremely fast, much, much faster than in most materials.

By means of a bonus this single layer of atoms is strong, not a surprise if you realize it’s a cousin of diamond, which enables applications! Fabulous applications, such as in computer hardware. Right now silicon is used for this purpose (hence ‘Silicon Valley’) but graphene is about one hundred times faster in conducting electric flow than silicon. And since computing is nothing but conducting and redirecting electric flow there’s definitely some future for this material.

Well, that is, in a very abbreviated sense, what all the graphene-buzz is about. I hope you understand this interesting field in material sciences a little better now, and if you have any questions left I’d love to hear them; either in the comments of via e-mail at our correspondence address: contact@superforest.org.

And Are You Ready For The 21st Century?

julius published on June 3, 2010 in zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

In under a week the Dutch parliament elections will be held. I’ve always been pretty interested in this phenomenon but now its even better because of recently I acquired the right to vote. In the Netherlands we cherish a multi-party system which practically means that you hear a lot of different soundbites from politicians from very different wings. In the very right corner we have mr. Wilders who’s biggest point is the Islamization in the extreme left corner is the Socialist Party that wants to take the top-tax level up a notch to 65% (The Netherlands use a progressive, proportional tax system, currently the highest rate is 48%). And between them there’s a wide variety of parties who all have slightly different opinions on matters. The biggest matter seems to be the Economic Crisis though.

All politicians seem to think that if they find ways to give the number of jobs a few kicks upward, reduce the state’s debt and at the same time keep the people happy the crisis will be over in a whim. Most other people seem to agree, because the party that’s shouting about their measures the most (VVD) is way, way, way ahead in the polls. But the question people seem to forget to ask is: Is there a chance – and what if there is – the crisis will not be over when the money has been taken care of? What if there’s a social aspect to this Beast? You know… what if our current society is completely incompatible with the way we desire to live? Or would we all be massively afraid by the consequences?

I found this thorough video summarizing and explaining the entire problem. Towards the end it suggests four models for a future society which I consider to be the crux.

The video is loosely based on a piece of research by Michel Cartier and Jon Husband which is fully presented at the website ConstellationW.com. So what Model of Society do we choose? Do you choose?

State security, consumer society, participatory state or the green society.

As a SuperForester I may be biased to choose the fourth so I’m not going to do this. In fact, I think the video supplies us with a stereotypical view here. It’s not practical, not even possible, to create a participatory state with security. Whenever people are encouraged to give their opinions on matters (participate) they automatically create opponents that could be willing to shut the opinion, and it’s provider, up.  Instead I think it’s better to make a melting pot of the four proposals and try to design the SuperForest State.

State Security directly got me thinking about Orwell’s 1984 again. With patriotism, discipline and loyalty being among it’s core values I start to imagine individuals being forced to work hard (discipline) for the government for all their lives (loyalty) for a small amount of money. But their wage is grand, because they work for The Party (patriotism). Of course, excluding this piece from my SuperForest society would be ludicrous because the other three don’t have the faintest scent of a government in them. I think we’ll need a government for at least the remainder of this century. Perhaps if the value patterns have changed it can be abandoned, but until then lets keep voting for representatives.

The Consumer Society is a lot like what we have in the West right now. Most of us buy everything they want, and when our balance is too low we run for our credit cards. We probably will never be able to make it without consuming – since we’re not all able to retreat to Zero-One at least groceries will have to be bought, and we also like magazines, books and other forms of media. But listen to this; Apple Sells 2 Million iPads Since April Debut [equals sixty days]. Does the Global Consumer Society really need 33 thousand iPads every day?! Ask yourself two questions before buying something, whether it’s a candybar or an iPad:

  1. Do I really want it?
  2. Do I really need it?

Big chance the answer to Q2 is ‘no’. But I reckon, some thing we don’t need can increase or happiness very much. I like to buy books and read them (duh) for instance while I could also replace this activity with a walk around the block. So we have to make choices! Do we really have to buy everything we buy? Is there a better alternative (the green society is coming up in a second)? It’s really strange that a lot of people aren’t able to tie together the financial ends and end up bankrupt.

The Green Society is probably what a good SuperForester would go for. The Earth is the only home we ever had and will have so we better be cautious with it. As the Dutch astronaut Wubbo Ockels (now a sustainable energy professor at the University of Delft) once said: “When I was up there in space I realized that all of human history, and all that we will ever achieve, will happen on that small blue dot.” So lets preserve our home, lets invest in sustainable energy and lets figure out how to produce, consume and reduce our waste with zero damage. A reduce in consumerism is an absolute must for this type of society, because the fewer we consume, the smaller our harm to the environment is.

The Cradle-to-Cradle concept (C2C in short) by Michael Braungart and William McDonough tries to get this done. Their theory is simplified with waste=food which means that all the waste we make should become food for another organism, they also propose for a production process in which things are not downcycled (as is the case most often with recycling) but upcycled. An example is plastic; some plastics can’t be very well recycled, they go bad after a while. What happens then is that all different sorts of plastic are thrown together in an oven and are melted and blended. The result is this very sturdy black material which is used for small poles on the street for example. You start with pure material (one kind of plastic) and end with impure material (different kinds of plastic blended together).

The ideal situation would be for the plastic to be upcycled to an even purer form.

So yes, The Green Society, I’m all for it.

The Participatory State is what we see a lot nowadays. It basically means a power shift to the individual. Since the arrival of the internet we became more able to ventilate our own opinions and read others’. Facebook enables us to connect with people we wouldn’t have even thought about connecting to otherwise. This type of society is based on loads and loads of respect for differences, which can get frisky when it comes to for e.g. religion and sexual preference.

I think it would go seamless with the Green Society which is really good, because being able to express my opinion is – as you may have noticed – pretty important to me. And I think it’s necessary to have much more appreciation for differences. If this is finally, fully realized we won’t need our armies as much as we need them now, because there simply won’t be a threat because everyone appreciates each other’s differences.

Now you’ve seen what my ideal society looks like tell us here at SuperForest what your perfect little world looks like. Contact us by email and I’ll do some follow-up posts so we can get a lively discussion right here. Lets practice this Participatory State of us!

Ultimate Proposal

julius published on June 3, 2010 in art. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

You’ve got marriage proposals in different sizes and shapes, and over the years I’ve seen a pretty big lot of them on television, but this one is probably one of the best I’ve ever seen.

I hope it’s as sunny at where you’re reading this as where I wrote it.

Have a nice day!

On The National Day Of Liberty And 1984

julius published on May 5, 2010 in art and zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

On the fifth of May the citizens of The Netherlands annually celebrate the end of the Second World War, and the freedom we’ve had ever since. For me, being a seventeen year old whose only alive link to WWII is my grandfather, the war is a very distant concept, only continued through stories and photographs. It’s hard to celebrate something you only know through someone else so I came to the conclusion I’d rather celebrate the other aspect of the National Day of Liberty. Namely; the fact that we’ve enjoyed unlimited freedom for exactly 65 years today. Or more specifically, the fact that I’ve been able to enjoy that freedom for my entire life.

This lead me to another problem though, how could I possible celebrate freedom unknowingly what it’s like not to have it? It seems a bit like celebrating the fact that I was born with two legs, I consider it an omnipresent standard so how could I be happy and celebrate it? To appreciate both my legs I could for a day try to tie my right foot to my back and see what living with one leg is about. Certainly I’d appreciate my two legs afterwards. But how does one do this with freedom? Ask someone to hit me if I told my opinion in public, wrote a piece directed against the government or read a prohibited book? Doesn’t sound like the most efficient way.

Instead it would be better to see what ‘unfreedom’ is like, it would at least spare me pain. I could visit North-Korea or misbehave so the police would lock me up for a few days. Both options would interfere with my day-to-day business, fortunately I discovered there are better ways. Because of the fact that we live in a free society, and have been doing so for 65 years, there is a wealth of written words dedicated to showing unfreedom. I could read some history text books on the repression during various wars, but that would be very distant. Accidentally a perfect alternative came along, and though it’s title and original publishing date might suggest quite some distance from 2010, I thought it was an extremely actual work of art.

I’m talking about 1984 by George Orwell. At first the creative wealth of the fictional world Orwell created occupied most of my consciousness while reading it (Orwell invented the language of Newspeak for example, which is fully explained in an essay at the back of the book). I suppose it’s a pretty wide-read classic but for the sake of completeness: 1984 features a world where the people are under constant watch of the government which tries to control everything, even people’s thoughts. The people are constantly being bombarded with propaganda and their only goal in life should be to serve The Party, logically leading to the eviction of love, friendship and any other sort of unnecessary freedom.

Among lots of other things it made me realize what the world and my life would be like if some organization was prohibiting me to think certain things. It’s such a basic freedom, being able to think whatever you please (like your two legs you consider it a standard), but Orwell shows what it would be like if that freedom were to be taken away. The same goes for the Freedom of Speech; it gives me joy to write this piece of text and hit the ‘publish’ button in a short while. What possible gives me even more joy are the reactions I get from you readers. Monday I posted something about Lady Gaga and got a load of reactions, some agreeing, some disagreeing. That’s possibly the best thing in the world, being able to think and say whatever you please.

Here in The Netherlands people often complain about all the laws of the government interfere with one’s freedom. This is a dangerous remark since those people often don’t know what it is like to have their freedoms taken away. For me, this passage from 1984 shows what it is like:

In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between  child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.

- Ch. III, Pt. III

In The Netherlands we have a political party by the name of Party of Liberty. They’re extreme right-wing and they want to banish all Muslims, stop the publication of the Qur’an and a few months ago when the municipality elections were held they had a plan for city commandos. This were to be ordinary civilians who got a lot of permissions in order to tackle crime on the street, because the cops aren’t doing their work well enough. Here’s a reminder, this party names itself the Party of Liberty. If they had existed before 1984 was published I would start to think Orwell stole the idea of doublethink from them.

I think it can be concluded that we’re all right in terms of freedom, and that the reading of 1984 is a very good way to appreciate the always-present concept.

On Lady Gaga’s Controversial Phone

julius published on May 3, 2010 in art and celebrity. 14 Comments Tags: , , .

A few weeks ago Lady Gaga released a new controversial music video for her single Telephone. Among fans the nineteen-minute long clip has been celebrated as an extraordinary work of art and even most of the art critics agree that Telephone is an artistic celebration containing excellent visual extravaganza. I noted a big discussion started both in the online and in the offline world about Gaga’s clip. Especially now Time Magazine elected her one of the most influential artists of 2010. I must reckon that her songs are catchy but I don’t really perceive her music as a work of (the always difficult to define concept of) art. Funny enough if I’d use the same argument as Cyndi Lauper did in her piece for Time I’d come to the opposite conclusion:

An artist’s job is to take a snapshot — be it through words or sound, lyrics or song — that explains what it’s like to be alive at that time.

To me Lady Gaga does not reflect at all what it is like being alive in 2010. I think we’re living in a prosperous time where the individual can have all the space he wants, he isn’t bound to his phone or whatever other institution. It isn’t a really good argument though, because with Lauper’s definition art would become entirely subjective and therefore would loose it’s value as soon as you stepped out of the culture-boundaries.

Anyhow, my original intention of this post was not to criticize Lady Gaga at all so excuse me.

As I stated in the beginning I’ve noted a huge discussion going on about her work. There are so many people that detest everything she does, and yet, there are so many people that love what she does. Whenever the two meet in the verbal arena it seems like both parties have their own language and don’t understand each other. I got interested in why they fail to comprehend the opposite opinion and I think the answer lies way beyond the ‘this is art and this is not’ classification. But first, the video itself!

Back in the Dark Ages we didn’t have computers, we didn’t have synthesizers and we didn’t even have compact discs, mp3′s or vinyl. Leave alone we would have Lady Gaga. Five hundred years ago it would have been socially and technologically impossible for Lady Gaga to exist, for if she’d have managed to release a video on KnightTube (the Dark Age predecessor of YouTube) she was probably condemned of being a witch. Five hundred years later though social and technological evolution have made the existence of Internet artists such as Gaga possible. Could we say that the force of biological evolution which was first identified by Darwin also drives other processes? Such as societies and technologies?

There certainly seems to be an ever-lasting progress when it comes to… almost everything. But what causes change then? Along the way there have been certain revolutionaries that tried to bring a shift in the current moral world view. In the Dark Ages it was very normal to kill people who fit the profile of ‘witch’, in this day it isn’t normal anymore so somewhere along the road someone or something led to a change.

In the case of the witches there perhaps was a leader who said: ‘no we can’t do this anymore,’ at first there might’ve been some struggle; there might have been an anti-witch league that protested against this new leader, but if there has been their influence wasn’t noted. Progress in the social sphere.

We travel to the 18th century, where we meet J.S. Bach who is still very popular for his entire repertoire. Whenever Easter draws near his St. Matthew Passion is conducted numerous times and often said to be a genuine masterpiece. Knowing this I was quite surprised when my father (who I trust to an infinite extent when it comes to classical music) told me that back in the day when Bach’s Passion was conducted for the first time everyone thought it was way, way, way too jolly and that the extravagant choirs were horribly out of place. And look how the Passion is criticized now.

Bach was a revolutionary, over the years he completely changed the way people listen and experience classical music.

And now the central question: is Lady Gaga a revolutionary as well? Is she able to shift the moral tools we use nowadays to assess music and music videos? She is criticized by a lot of people so I’d say ‘check’ to that one. Real revolutionary work has quality which assures it from being remembered a few decades into the future. And this is where my fear for Lady Gaga starts.

Visually and audibly  her video is agreed to be stunning and probably ground breaking, morally speaking. Gaga’s costumes have what it take to shift boundaries. The general visual is brilliant as well, you can watch the video thrice and still notice new things. The social part of it gets a little worse, killing an entire diner without any real reason is, and will be, morally abject but I’m willing to see through that.  The intellectual aspect is much worse though. The lyrics she produces don’t make any sense and there’s one dialog between her and Beyoncé that gives me the shivers:

Beyoncé: You’ve been a very bad girl. A very, very, very bad girl Gaga.

Gaga: Hmmhmm honeybee. – long pause – Sure you wanna do this honeybee?

Beyoncé: What do you mean ‘am I sure’?

Gaga: You know what they say: ‘once you kill a cow, you’ve got to make a burger’.

Beyoncé: You know Gaga, trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it’s broke…

Gaga: …but you can still see the crack in that motherf***er’s reflection..

I wasn’t able to find any intellectual quality in there. What point does Gaga want to make? That clichés sell?

Not all music has to contain intellectual quality. But I think that an artist won’t make it to the twenty-five-year boundary if he bets all his money on visual extravaganza and good beats. But who said Lady Gaga was meant to be the next Bach?

Free Advice + Coffee

julius published on May 1, 2010 in art and celebrity. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

In the beginning of 2009 Simon Høgsberg surprised me with his 100 meter long photograph We’re all gonna die – 100 meters of existence. It was a huge picture that showed ordinary people walking across a bridge in Berlin. They all seemed caught up in their daily routine which was what made the entity so natural, so human. A few weeks ago I discovered Høgsberg engaged himself in another human project; Free Advice + Coffee.

He piled up some pallets at the sidewalk of a busy intersection in his hometown Copenhagen and put a sign adjacent to it reading: “Free Advice and Coffee”. The goal was to talk about the problems of the passersby that had enough courage to do so. Høgsberg, being ‘just a photographer’, hadn’t got any background in psychology or any other sort of therapy so when people asked what his expertize was he told them that he hadn’t got any therapeutic background but just wanted to help people with their problems.

On his website he showcases a big collection of pictures taken while he was trying to solve people’s problems. One of the best stories he tells is how he was approached by three teenage muslim girls of whom one faced a difficult decision:

One of the girls starts talking to me, the two other girls move a little away. The girl tells me that today she and her two friends started at the same school, but her two friends have started training with a focus on Sanitation and Food and she has started an education in architecture and urban planning. And now she’s unsure – that is what she tells me – if her study is right for her or if she had better switch to the course her friends are on. I ask her, what would your situation be like if – and try to imagine that this scenario is real – so, how would the whole situation look if your two friends didn’t exist, they are not a part of your life, they’re gone, erased from your consciousness? If that were so, would you still consider switching to the Sanitation and Food program or would you stay on the course you have chosen – at least for a while so that you have a chance to get to know the course? The girl said that she was actually quite interested in architecture, and today was her first day on the course and her impression of it was pretty good. So if her friends didn’t exist she’d probably, she said, stay on the course – at least for now. She could always switch courses if she found out later that she’d rather be on the course her friends had chosen.

I said, well, there you have your answer. Stay where you are – stick with the decision you have made – that will be best for all three parties.

For me the beauty of this entire project lies in one ordinary human being helping another one. There’s virtually no difference between the two since Høgsberg hasn’t got any background in people-helping at all, normally when someone visits a shrink there’s always some level of distance between them. Talking with a friend can help solving personal problems at rocket speed because you receive a point of view from an outsider. Imagine what it would be like getting that new point of view from someone you don’t know at all? That would be the biggest outsider possible.

I think that with his Free Advice Høgsberg showed that we’re all able to help a human in need even if it just were for sitting down with them for a good talk and a nice sip of coffee.

Art Talks I: Introduction

julius published on April 13, 2010 in art. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

A year ago I had a weekly series of posts here at SuperForest named Monday Modern Art Chat. Every week I’d discuss a modern arts project. From the impressions that you readers gave me I condensed you liked it. Unfortunate enough I lost the spirit after a while and I stopped writing them. Art never stopped fascinating me though. In the mean time I became an applied physics student surrounded by smart, exact people who usually don’t feel much for more liberal fields like art. Most of my co-students consider sciences such as art history and English literature fake and inferior to physics. Why this happens has been bothering me ever since.

Most scientists that have been studying nature for a big part of their lives (physicists, chemists, biologists and even mathematicians) consider their science the True science. In fact, they consider the collection of related studies True as well (it would be strange for a physicist to consider mathematics not True but still use it everyday). So all the exact people think their fields describe reality and that the other fields (philosophy, art, sociology) don’t. This has all to do with their metaphysical orientation. Most physicists are materialists and therefore believe that reality is, and is nothing more but the things we register with our senses. Obviously artists think differently about this, they agree with the dualist theories. Digging further into this would make a kick-ass subject for another time but now I’d like to talk about the arts again. Excuse me for the little intermezzo.

My co-students act funny towards art and even my house-mate who studies at the University of Music looked a little awkward when she found me studying Phaidon’s The Art Book while cooking. This caused me to gauge even more interest towards art, and now I think the time is ripe to start talking. I’d like to talk to you lovely SuperForest readers on a regular basis about art and what it does to me, society or anyone else. I’m not so sure I’ll be sticking to modern art strictly this time but I guess we’ll see. If you guys want to share your opinions please, please do so by sending an email to the superforest email address to be found in the contact section or by placing a comment. Why not just get started? I’m a physics student talking about art so please bear with me.

Last weekend I went to London with my mother to see some art. On Saturday we wanted to visit Tate and this small tourist guide we had said that the gallery was split in two parts, Britain/Modern. The guide was from 1999 though and I wasn’t smart enough to check out Tate’s website so upon arrival I discovered the acclaimed Tate Modern was moved somewhere else. Tate Britain is pretty nice, though I was sometimes under the impression they had a lot of art and very few walls to stick it on to. It’s Modern counterpart is slightly different. It’s located in an old factory building and the main entrance must be the part where lorries used to drive down to dispatch their deliveries. They have two big floors showcasing their permanent collection which is absolutely mind boggling. Bacon, Mondriaan, Matisse, Dalí, Picasso, they probably have at least one work of every prominent 20th century artist.

The collection has been chopped up in bits and has been given beautiful names such as Poetry and Dream which showcases the art that relates to the new insights of the 20th century (Freud, mainly). I walked into this big room completely filled with surrealists like Miró, Magritte and Dalí. High up one of the walls there was a big Miró (Une étoile caresse le sein d’une négresse was it’s name, meaning ‘A star caresses the breast of a negress’). There were a lot of people gawping at it but my attention was drawn by the painting that hung beneath it. The Beached Margin by Edward Wadsworth.

The Beached Margin by Edward Wadsworth

Wadsworth isn’t very often associated with the surrealist movement, though this work may suggest the opposite. At first I found it – like most surreal paintings – unsettling. What do we see here? What does Wadsworth want us to see? The background is very normal, a couple of sailboats cruising on the deep-blue sea possibly enjoying the fine weather. Then there is a beach, but what is on the beach? Three big poles with various objects hanging from them make the entity quite puzzling. This star shape in the front suggests a starfish but it could also be a beach parasol. The figure hanging on the left hand side, could it be a man? The smaller objects popping up from the ground look like small shovels used by children to build sand-castles. Could this entire picture be showing how temporary these moments at sea are? Before you know it the blowing sand has buried the shovels and soon the sea (symbolized by the starfish) will take over the beach again through changing tides. Then the margin which is spoken about in the title could be the space that appears when the tide is drawn back.

It’s an utterly fascinating picture that leaves so much space for interpretation. This Beached Margin is built from many parts, and everyone sees another part highlighted. This is completely different from the exact sciences, they’re the same for everyone that studies them. Art gives the opportunity to critically think about what you see and to form an opinion of your own about certain matters. You don’t have to see what all the art book experts see; their vision is a good handrail to hold on to though.

The Mayonnaise Jar and the Coffee

julius published on March 31, 2010 in zeitgeist. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , .

image courtesy of Jeffrey Beall

Everyone is familiar with those days when everything becomes too much and you’d like to leave everything and exchange your life for one on a far away island. It’s probably not the best solution for the longer term (how are you going to make a living, what’s gonna happen to your family, etcetera) but heck, it’s a nice thought. Yesterday I found a story that’s probably an even better solution to the problem of Daily Stress. Here it goes.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.  When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.  He then asked the students if the jarwas full.  They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.  He shook the jar lightly.  The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.  He then asked the students again if the jar was full.  They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.  Of course, the sand filled up everything else.  He asked once more if the jar was full.  The students responded with a unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand.  The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.”

The golf balls are the important things-your God, family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.  The sand is everything else-the small stuff.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.  The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.  Play with your children.  Take time to get medical checkups.  Take your partner out to dinner.  Play another 18 holes.  There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.  Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter.  Set your priorities.  The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.  The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

From boards.ojar.com

Beautiful story, right? Next time everything becomes too much for you think about the philosophy professor and his big mayonnaise jar filled with golf balls, pebbles and sand. If this story made you happy and inspired you, please share it with some friends and family of yours, they’ll love it as well ;).

Yours,

Julius

This Too… Shall Pass

julius published on March 3, 2010 in art, build, celebrity and technology. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In 2006 Illinois alternative rock band OK Go surprised and inspired us with their Here It Goes Again-treadmill-video. The music clip, being one of the most often watched  an absolute peak in the internet video era. Only of this morning I watched OK Go’s new video, from their song This Too Shall Pass; it’s equally mind-boggling. (And oh my God, it’s available in 1080p, so play this baby full-screen!)

Personally I thought the video was one big creative outburst. Engineers must have thought about every single part of the machine and all the parts had to be joined, and they must have had tremendous amounts of fun in doing so. To my surprise the actual filming only took two days while 60 people were working on the project. It must have required enormous manpower to reset the track each time.

According to Wired the music video was filmed in sixty takes of which most didn’t last longer then thirty seconds because something went wrong. But when the machine had fully ‘rolled’ it took about an hour in order to reset it(!). Interestingly enough Adam Sadowsky, one of the engineers that designed the project, said that one of the design requirements was that it couldn’t feature any ‘magic’; Sadowsky: “Because we are all engineers, [..] we love magic. We love computers, and servomotors, and fire, and all of that stuff.”

But what did the OK Go bro’s actually ‘dance’ with in their creative music video? It turns out to be nothing less then a Rube Goldberg Machine, or abbreviated: RGM. In common language this would be best described as “an over-engineered machine that performs a simple task in a complex way”. This certainly applies to the thing in the video because there have to be more efficient ways to launch paint in the direction of four innocently-looking guys.

Anyway, the machine got it’s name from the American cartoonist, author and – not surprisingly – engineer and inventor Rube Goldberg. He used to draw cartoons featuring the machines that eventually got his name like the one below.

As an applied physics student who also fancies an interest in the Arts I find Goldberg’s work from the artwork gallery on his website nothing less but flattering. I’ve never seen such a complex – but working – ‘simplified pencil sharpener’.

(And cheers to SuperForester Claire for sending this in!)

Every Pair Of Glasses In The Drawer Pt. 2

julius published on February 24, 2010 in art, celebrity and technology. 7 Comments Tags: , , , .

Yesterday Jackson posted an arsenal of pictures showing him trying out all the glasses in his parent’s special glasses drawer. It fascinated me, it truly did. In first instances glasses were just objects to increase perception of visual reality but of the past few decades they grew out to a fashion object. Therefore they depict a certain spirit, a certain story of a particular time period. Also, glasses don’t get thrown away as often or as fast as a pair of jeans. In fact, the most likely faith of a pair of spectacles is to be lost somewhere in a drawer.

Fortunately Jackson’s parents decided to ‘loose’ all their pairs in the same drawer so Jackson could take some crazy pictures showing him with all the spectacles. I already said the result flattered me; this was reason enough for me to collect all the glasses I could find in my parents’ house and take eighteen pictures. Though I couldn’t keep up such a straight smile as SF Jackson I hope the result is SuperForest-worthy. Enjoy :).

It was really fun taking all the pictures and I think this concept has quite some potential. So, dearest readers of SuperForest from all around the world, I ask you to find all the glasses you can, put them on and photograph yourself. Send us the results then we’ll place them for you or put them on your personal blog, then we’ll link to you. I think I speak for the entire Team SuperForest when saying that I’d love to see this spread all around the world and all around the internet.

Much, much love,

Julius

Aesthetics in Vancouver

julius published on February 23, 2010 in art and celebrity. 7 Comments Tags: , , , .

A week ago the Olympic Winter Games began. A big ‘yes!’ for sports freaks since all their favorite disciplines will come by within the coming weeks. To me though the Olympics are about more than ‘just sports’ because whenever I read the paper or watch the evening news I hear about China not liking Obama anymore because he receives the Dalai Lama, I hear about an ever growing mess in the middle east and recently I even heard about a priest who refused to give a homosexual Christian the Holy Communion. But whenever one of our beloved Dutch ice skaters enters the Olympic Oval the entire country seems one, gays seem accepted. And even better; when Mark Tuitert won the 1500 meters there wasn’t a sign of war on the front page of the newspaper.

The Olympics do more than confiscate the front page though. Every time I tune in to watch – I don’t really care what’s on, whether it is speed skating, figure skating, biathlon, alpine skiing or freestyle snowboard – I find it extremely beautiful in a way that’s pretty hard to describe; I’m gonna try to do though.

Probably the best example of extrinsic beauty at the Olympics is figure skating. At the time of writing two Americans are giving me the goose bumps with their dancing on ice. They’re performing the craziest stunts I wouldn’t even dare to dream about while wearing beautiful clothes covered with small shiny stones; it’s ballet on ice.

So far for the obvious beauty, there’s much more aesthetics to figure skating. Look close and you’ll see the clothes waving in the wind generated by the momentum, you’ll see the guy lifting the woman before his head and – without sight – carry her from the one side of the arena to the other. If you’ll look beyond the outer appearances there’s even more. You’ll see a beautiful ‘dance’ between man (two ice skaters) and nature (frozen water leading to almost no friction, making such artistic expressions possible). And if you look close enough you’ll see all these aspects in a certain variety in all sports.

Another good example is freestyle snowboarding, with the U.S. hero Shaun White. I hadn’t heard of him until I read about his new trick at The New Yorker. It appears that he can manage to do the Double McTwist 12 – this is a crazy trick can hardly be described with words, it would be two screws around his vertical and three around his horizontal axis. I think you can better have a look for yourself; the fun starts at 0:28.

So this is what the Olympics are for me, a perfect ballet between people, countries and nature. And if you look close enough you’ll see all.

How Holden Relates to the Education Problem

julius published on February 11, 2010 in art and celebrity. 8 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’m having a hard time trying to remember when I last posted on SuperForest. Ah, I found it, it was on the last day of the previous year, 2009. I hope every reader, every co-SuperForester and every co-human has had a tremendous start of this year, of this decade. My start was okay, I had a few tests about calculus and dynamics right in the beginning. I’m still waiting for the results to come in but I hope I made them well.

My last post was sort of an oversight, it wasn’t a regular post. A lot of stuff happened since I made a regular post. Recently I started reading much more than I was used to do. Chris’ one-book-a-week action was one of the reasons, but the death of Catcher In The Rye author J.D. Salinger was one too. I read this book back in highschool (seems centuries ago, but as a matter of fact it’s not more than a year). Back then I despised it, yes I despised it.

Original Catcher In The RyeThe first page of The Catcher In The Rye

A highschool friend told me about Salinger’s death. “Julius, our favorite author has died!” he – heavily sarcastically – messaged me. (We all considered Salinger’s little red book a major pain in the ass). So I heard about his death, I read a big story in the paper and it started to interest me again. How could such an acclaimed part of English literature not be according to my taste? I read The Catcher again, only to find that it interested me for a great deal! From that moment on Holden’s affairs seemed very genuine, even funny in a way. It amazed me how Salinger weaved his themes through the story and gave them an identity with characters. I spent all my free moments reading – taking plops, cooking – and thus finished it within one week (YES!! Chris, can I join your programme?)

The question I want to ask here is not why Salinger wrote a book that is still popular fifty years after publication (I wonder if Harry Potter is going to live up to that). That’s slightly irrelevant because every newspaper and every magazine has already explained it. The question to be asked here is how the hell is it possible that I disliked the book when I read it in literature class but in reading it three quarters of a year later, found that it truly fascinates me. The answer to this question is the solution to the problem of schools, because why aren’t kids motivated enough to do all their homework and to come to every class? I’m still surprised pretty often when I find co-students unmotivated as heck.

Lets extrapolate my experience with The Catcher in the Rye to macro-scale. The essential problem with me was that I totally didn’t want to read it which led to me disliking the novel, the story, the characters and the main themes. All because I didn’t want to read it in the first place. Now you might wonder why, the best reasons I can come up with is that I had already read enough books to do and pass my exam, the print of the book was really small, the pages were thin and my teacher wasn’t the best motivator as well. I was this really lazy and easily disturbed class who didn’t want to do anything for the subject, so my teacher probably felt like: “Guys, I’m not going to invest any effort in you.” She told me once or twice that she was really sorry about the bad work-environment and that she would step up to the disturbing students but nothing really happened. It’s okay, I read The Catcher at last.

That’s probably the A-side of the problem, an unmotivating work-environment. Quite logical of course, what’s the point of working if no one does so? The other side, the B-side, is the one of the intraperson, within my person. At the time I was a little furious at my own generation, mainly because my co-students valued school in a different way. A clash of values, you could say. So then Salinger comes along, with a novel featuring a main character that is hates everything except himself. I totally couldn’t understand, causing me to put the book down after reading the first few incomprehensible chapters.

With the knowledge I have gained by now, how would I say the school system should be fixed? Of course this is a pretty big dilemma – too large to be covered here – but it’s a theme I like so by any chance I might weave on it in the near future. But in short then; clearly there’s a problem with the motivation of students – that ain’t rocket science, the fixing of it comes close though. The gun has two sides, the teacher and the student. Teachers have a tremendous but limited influence, I recall an art teacher I once had, he seriously evoked my entire interest in art. Teachers can do that sort of near-magic stuff only, and only if, the student is open for it. “This is stupid, this I don’t like”, it went through my head all the time, no teacher in the world that can change that; I simply wasn’t opening up for Holden’s adventures.

Getting the right teachers is a question of good teacher-schools and finding the right people to enroll. Opening up students is more difficult though. I find that opening up happens when good stories are told. If my teacher would’ve told me about the life of Salinger after the publication of his acclaimed novel I would’ve been much more open to it. If a mathematics teacher would tell his students the story of Newton’s Principia they would never think about differential calculus the way they used to.

I guess that all I’m saying is that we shouldn’t leave the humanity out of seemingly cold scientific subjects. Same goes for technology, it seems very inhuman and complicated at first, but if you investigate the systems and the patterns that lie at it’s source you might find a wholly new approach to it.

Okay, lets leave it here for today. I would love to hear everyone’s reactions and feelings in regard to this subject. Thank you for reading.