June 8, 2010
The town of Limmen, North Holland got 1800 volunteers with loads of free time to build the highest tower ever made of Lego blocks. The tower is made up of 700,000 Lego pieces and is 30,52 metres high, breaking the old Guinness Book of Records record by a mere 30 cm (see pic), set by the city of Oslo, Norway.
(Link: waarmaarraar.nl)
June 7, 2010
The entire 24 Oranges team visited the Stripdagen Haarlem yesterday, a comics con that takes place only every other year.
The weather was wishy washy, leaning towards raining, but never leading to a cleansing and cooling downpour. Nevertheless, some of the sellers of second hand comics packed up early on Sunday due to the drizzle.
The indoors events largely took place at De Philharmonie where a large number of artists were busy autographing away. Famous artist Jean-Marc van Tol, whose mug (photo) can be seen on TV show De Wereld Draait Door daily, had set up shop outdoors on the terrace of Café Studio, where a camera over his head recorded his every drawing, which was then relayed to a largish screen over his head.
Gr’nn artist Naam (pun intended, but not by us) drew us a button of 24 Oranges (photo), and Belgian comic artist Dominique Goblet told Jeroen Mirck (photo) about how she transformed punishment by her mother into a philosophical event, and how when making photos she is always looking for a narrative, and therefore rarely takes just one picture.
The theme of this years event was Eastern European comics, and this reflected in the tongue-in-cheek ‘Soviet’ style of the Stripdagen’s visual branding. Students from Design Academy Eindhoven were invited to tackle the problem of signage, and did so by introducing checkpoints with ‘guards’ and ‘passports’ where visitors could ask for information.
Tags: Haarlem
June 6, 2010
Last week I linked to a video by Mark Wagenbuur that showed what bicycle rush hour looks like at Utrecht Central Station. If you watched that video you may think that the Netherlands is a relatively car-free country, but the opposite is true (as anyone acquainted with Dutch traffic jams can attest).
If you look at cars per square kilometre, The Netherlands, Japan and Belgium (in that order) lead the world by a wide margin. Not surprisingly, these three countries are both densely populated (skip the microstates for a second, and the Netherlands becomes the most densely populated country in the world) and fairly rich (positions 4, 14 and 19 respectively, again after discarding microstates).
If you look at the number of cars per household, the Netherlands is somewhere in the middle of the pack (400 cars per 1,000 people). Here, the US leads with 92% of the households owning a car (but in New York City less than 50% of households own a car).
It would seem that car ownership is both a function of income and available space and parking, but income is also a function of space, with high population density going hand in hand with low incomes.
Local governments try and find a balance between letting people own their cars and having a liveable environment. As we’ve reported before, some Dutch cities are trying to reduce the number of cars in the enviroment (others try to get rid of bicycles too) by cranking up parking fees.
What it means to be a country of car lovers is shown by the second entry of author John Scalzi’s list on Being Poor:
Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.
In the Netherlands, if you own a car you are not poor, unless you live in your car. On the other hand, like in New York, plenty of well-to-do Dutch people do not own a car simply because they have no use for one.
In case this posting has just wet your appetite for more of Mark Wagenbuur’s mesmerizing videos, here is his latest:
(The video is of a road frequented by cyclists in Utrecht. Note the foreigner at 1.41. The photo is of the traffic jam in Zoetermeer, at around 6 pm. The traffic jam there starts around 4 pm.)
Tags: traffic
June 5, 2010
Usenet community FTD has lost the lawsuit it had started pre-emptively against the Brein foundation to establish that its activities are legal.
FTD’s members publish information about where to find binary postings that contain works published without copyright owners’ consent. According to a very annoyed Arnoud Engelfriet, one of FTD’s lawyers (photo), the judge held that mentioning file names isn’t just aiding illegal publication, it is a form of illegal publication in itself if the person doing the mentioning is performing a key role in getting the work distributed.
The judge in this case, C.A.J.F.M. Hensen, has a job on the side teaching people how to fight ‘piracy,’ and as such has a clear interest in establishing as hard a line as possible in copyright law.
Brein calls itself an ‘anti-piracy’ bureau, and is the Dutch equivalent of the infamous RIAA. FTD is considering an appeal.
(Photo of Arnoud Engelfriet by Petra de Boevere, some rights reserved.)
Tags: copyright, free speech
June 4, 2010
A quirky little idea by DUS Architects: put a 3 x 3 metre box next to the Amsterdam public library, line its inside with mirrors, and put a tree in the middle.
The Urban Woods pavilion is part of the Liefde in de stad (Love in the city) art project about which we wrote earlier. You can visit the forest (a short walk from Central Station) until June 27.
(Link: Bright. Photo: DUS Architecten / Pieter Kers.)
June 3, 2010
This green metal device can be attached to a regular bike’s rack to greatly increase the amount of freight it can carry. Sort of a free-form pannier.
Inventor René Bijsterveld came up with the Vrachtpatser (from the Dutch words krachtpatser, strong man, and vracht, freight) because as a student he has to lug a lot of heavy stuff around on in his bike, and not in the least crates of beer he confided to NOS Headlines.
The design netted him first prize in 2010’s HEMA design contest in which design students were asked to come up with items that make life on the road easier and more fun.
Worthy of their respective second and third prize were the cardboard pet coffin by Toon Welling, and the juice boxes by Annet Bruil that double as toy cars, air planes and boats.
Voting for the audience award will start June 14. HEMA is a retailer which holds a design contest for students each year with the express purpose of including the most marketable designs in their own line-up.
See also:
(Photos: HEMA. Link: Bright)
June 2, 2010
Among the tidal wave of World Cup themed commercials, a disturbing trend emerges. Several Dutch companies have come out with TV ads that prominently feature German bad guys.
Heineken’s ad is perhaps the mildest, featuring a representative of the German football association proudly presenting earplugs to counter the noise of the Pletterpet, an orange cap. It paints Germans as rather dull folk, not quite the traditional stereotype over here.
Supermarket C1000 on the other hand goes the full nine yards, as it has a Cruella de Ville look-alike announce that she has to take one for the German team. Utilities company Nuon lets a ‘typical’ arrogant German fan get his comeuppance when his T-shirt turn orange, the Dutch national colour, while standing among his fellow fans.
Both Germany and the Netherlands participate in the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. Anti-German sentiments were alive in the Netherlands from World War II onwards to well into the 1990s, but kids these days just don’t seem to see the point. Which makes it even odder that these ads are so blatantly anti-German.
Something I heard a lot this year, now that Dutch coach Louis van Gaal and Dutch players Mark van Bommel and Arjan Robben have had such a successful year at Bayern Munich: “I never thought I would say this, but I am actually supporting the German side.”
Tags: advertising, Arjan Robben, football, Germany, Louis van Gaal, Mark van Bommel, Oranje
June 1, 2010
Spanish artist Maider López is organising a football tournament on September 3 and is looking for both participants and an audience.
The tournament called Polder Cup will take place on the pastures of Ottoland in South Holland, halfway between Utrecht and Rotterdam. Contestants will be given food, drink and swag all for coming out to the middle of nowhere (using the charter bus of the project) and having their picture taken.
What’s the catch? Is there a catch? There is always a catch! As you can see in the photo, the pitches will be drawn across drainage ditches, and the players are expected to come up with their own rules and methods for dealing with these hazards. If you want to know beforehand how to fish a ball from a brook, check out Hans van der Meer’s photo book on Dutch football pitches. As for crossing ditches, see here.
(Link: Bright. Photo: poldercup.nl.)
Tags: football, polders, Spain, Zuid Holland
May 31, 2010
Law professor Yvo Buruma has sounded the alarm about the number of innocent people being detained pre-trial in the Netherlands.
According to Buruma the numbers of acquittals in the country has risen from 4.5% to 7% in the past five years. More people are in gaol awaiting trial than people who have already been convicted.
In a blog entry last week Buruma claims this is a worrisome development because robbing somebody of their freedom is an exceptional power that the state should only exercise under exceptional circumstances, and because a person should be considered innocent until proven otherwise. Although he does not outright say it, it would almost seem that the justice department is keeping people imprisoned for the wrong reasons.
The criminal law professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen determines four categories of aquittal:
An example of the latter is the 14-year-old who jokingly told Prime Minister Balkenende on the social networking site Hyves that he was going to die and was acquitted earlier this month.
It is perhaps interesting to note that the falsely imprisoned typically only receive 80 euro a day in damages, regardless of actual income lost.
Link: Sargasso.
Tags: crime, damages, Hyves, imprisonment, Jan Peter Balkenende, law
May 30, 2010
Designer Roeland Otten hopes to mass-market these alphabet chairs, writes Bright. He can see them being used by elementary schools.
The so-called ABChairs were made possible thanks to a grant by Fonds BKVB, the rich government sugar daddy for the visual arts. Otten, a 1999 Design Academy Eindhoven graduate, calls the Naked Alphabet by his teacher Anthon Beeke an inspiration. He is looking for a manufacturer to help him mass produce the chairs in plastic.
Unfortunately Otten uses one of them newfangled and unlinkable Flash sites instead of a real website, I would have linked to his work earlier if he had not. If you go there, see under “recent stuff / transformatie-transformatorhuisje” how he let an ugly electrical substation disappear from his Rotterdam neighbourhood.
(Photo: Roeland Otten.)
Tags: alphabet, chairs, Design, Eindhoven Design Academy, furniture, letters, literacy, Roeland Otten
