May 6, 2011

Art student = 1, Louis Vuitton = the big goose egg, (O)

Filed under: Art,Design,Fashion by Orangemaster @ 10:42 am

The verdict is in: Amsterdam based Danish artist Nadia Plesner who attends the Rietveld academy in Amsterdam successfully defended herself against major French brand Louis Vuitton. Plesner used a depiction of an LV bag in a painting entitled Darfurnica for which Louis Vuitton tried to sue her for 5,000 euro a day for using their image.

“The court in The Hague ruled that Plesner’s right to freedom of expression through her work weighed more heavily than Louis Vuitton’s right to protect its property. The use of the bag in the painting is both functional and in proportion, the court said,” according to Dutchnews. Case closed.

(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Nadia Plesner)

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May 5, 2011

American film expert publishes book on Amsterdam cinemas

Filed under: Film,Literature by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am

Originally from Kansas, Jeffrey Babcock has been living in Amsterdam for over 20 years and often reminisces about how Amsterdam, the city were you could once do anything artistic, has become quite regulated in his time. However, if there’s one person keeping the dream alive and well as far as unknown films are concerned, it’s him. I myself watched a film shot partially in my hometown of Montréal and partially in Amsterdam that I had never ever heard of and was blown away. Babcock gives the audience an explanation beforehand, like the cool teacher at school that probably has the same extra curricular activities as you do.

Together with Rietveld Academy art student Agata Winska, Babcock has published a book entitled ‘The Illicit Cinemas of Amsterdam’, with stories and an interview about the more ‘undergound’ cinemas where Babcock presents films to small yet packed audiences around the city. They purposely made 300 copies of the book, hand bound in Poland and kept the price as low as possible, something Babcock believes in strongly with his easily affordable movie screenings. “Even if I were to up the price by a euro, people would come, but it wouldn’t be the same people. Polish squatters now talk to people from Dutch television station VPRO, which wouldn’t happen if the price went up.” Safe to say, it’s never about the money, it’s always about film.

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May 3, 2011

Special font for dyslexics wins lucrative Dutch prize

Filed under: Design,General by Orangemaster @ 12:24 pm

(In Dutch, with enough English (Dunglish) info in the presentation)

Winner of the Future Minds Awards, presented on 28 April 2011, Christian Boer, graphic designer and dyslexic himself, has created a font that helps people with dislexia to be able to read better. He explains in the video that dyslexics see letters in 3D and not 2D, which gave him the idea to ‘ground’ letters with a shaded background. It really looks simple and you wonder why nobody thought of it before.

The real prize for me, is that it really works. Parents of dyslexic children have come to me in awe, because their child had been reading for over an hour, which never happened before. With the prize money (EUR 10,000) I intend to further develop the font. Some languages have different letters, such as the ß in German and accents in French, so I want to investigate that. Furthermore, I have always been working on a low budget, and with now I can work on a slightly bigger and faster scale.

(Link: depers.nl, blog.smart-urban-stage.com)

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April 29, 2011

Successful film has German tourists invading small town

Filed under: Dutch first,Fashion,Film,Music by Orangemaster @ 11:32 am

Last year we told you that white trash was the new cool and that it was contagious. The film New Kids Turbo is a huge hit in the Netherlands, but New Kids fever has hit Germany so hard that tourists are ‘invading’ Maaskaantje, Brabant the actual town where the film was shot. As of yesterday, 186 film theatres in Germany are featuring New Kids Turbo, an absolute Dutch record. The Dutch actors dubbed over their own film into German, and I agree, it adds more comedy to it.

In true Dutch style, people are seeing an increase in German kids and even families hanging out drinking beer and swearing like in the movie in Maaskantje, but the tourists are spending money locally, which probably makes up for it. The local tourist board is offering special hotel deals boasting a bike tour along the places the New Kids hang out: filling station and the snack bar.

The video above is the official German trailer and some of you will recognise the Dutch accent the kids have when they speak German.

I for one am enjoying the irony of two recent postings about how cool the Dutch are in Germany.

(Link: depers.nl)

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April 28, 2011

Dutchman to become mayor of German town

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 1:12 pm

The way it’s going, Frans Willeme, 58 and Dutch, is gearing up to become Germany’s first-ever elected Dutch mayor. He speaks fluent German with a Dutch accent, like famous Dutch entertainer Rudi Carrell whose career was pretty much in Germany.

Some people in the town of Nordhorn, very close to the Dutch border, where he is running are against the idea of having a foreigner run, but then the elections are open to any member of the EU, so too bad. Those who think further than their prejudices see the town of Nordhorn as going international and writing German history.

(Link: depers.nl, Photo of train station in Tegernsee, nowhere near Nordhorn)

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April 26, 2011

Toddler kicks a mean football

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 7:48 pm

The VVV Venlo football club in Limburg has signed a symbolic professional contract of 10 years for this wee boy of 1.5 years who has a good shot. Sure, it’s a YouTube thing, but 900,000 people if not more around the world have seen this video and now you can too. The little boy, Baerke, even tried out on the field with a VVV Venlo midfielder and apparently the toddler’s grandfather used to play with this team way back.

(Link: telegraaf)

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April 22, 2011

Elephant parade in Heerlen for a good cause

Filed under: Animals,Art,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 12:25 pm

Until 25 May these elephants will be adorning the city of Heerlen, Limburg, which can proudly be listed as a host of these works of art alongside big cities such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and London. The Elephant Parade can be admired in and around the city centre — have fun finding all 30 elephants, I found about 10. The elephants were designed by local, regional and Thai artists, as the goal is to eventually raise money with an auction for the Asian Elephant Foundation to help protect the Asian elephant. Convincing the foundation to set up the Elephant Parade in a small, lesser-known Dutch city was done by a group of local women who come up with ways to let their ‘problematic’ old mining city smile again. It worked for me.

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April 21, 2011

Small town neighbourhood wins 2,000 bikes

Filed under: Bicycles,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:08 am
Pink bike

A neighbourhood in the town of Schagen, North Holland won 2,000 bicycles from a national lottery that picks its winners using their postal codes. Normally a few streets win prizes, usually money, but this time it was a bigazz pile of bicycles. That’s all really nice, but some man ended up with 14 bikes, which is a bit much.

The bike shops in the small town have told local telly station they were not happy with the possibility of losing business, but in good entrepreneurial spirit, they have stepped up advertising accessories and theft insurance.

Quikc idea: give your 10 extra bikes to the poor? Of course you can also sell them, but obviously not to your neighbours.

(Link: waarmaarraar)

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April 20, 2011

Ice Man controls some of his body’s systems

Filed under: Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:54 am

Ice Man Wim Hof holds many ice-related records, including one he broke just last week in Lapland, Finland: he walked 10 kilometers uphill in his bare feet and shorts in -10 degrees celsius in 56 minutes without having trained for it.

A while back we told about Dutch scientists who wanted to poke and prod him to find out what makes him so special, although Hof himself attributes his feats to Tummo meditaion.

The quick and dirty version is that Hof can control his central nervous system through his meditation, blocking out feelings of cold and also in the process his immune system, so that he doesn’t get sick. The boffins experimented on 240 people and Hof’s results were remarkably different.

A big Happy Birdthday to Wim Hof who turned 52 today, and who is now certified a really cool freak of nature. And even if you do this kind of meditation, chances are you won’t achieve any of the same results.

(Link: gelderlander)

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April 15, 2011

Dutch student loses appeal to write thesis in Dutch

Filed under: Science,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:56 am

A student had to write her thesis based on applied scientific research done in a company or institution, in this case, a hospital. The hospital demanded that her thesis be written in Dutch. The exam commission who will judge her thesis at the Radboud Univesity in Nijmegen demanded that her thesis be written in English.

The student couldn’t fulfil the requirements of her studies and decided to appeal the decision to be able to write her thesis in Dutch, which sounds weird. Exceptions have been made in the past to the English only rule, but that was then and those days are over: it’s English or nothing, which still sounds weird.

Her mentor also supported her appeal. It’s all fine that English be encouraged for the Dutch to be internationally recognised, but sabotaging someone’s studies to uphold a principle seems ludicrous. The University then blamed companies and institutions for not allowing students to do their thesis in English, but that doesn’t help this student at all.

Can’t it just be translated? In any case, if anything shows how English has became more important than Dutch (not that that is a good thing), this is a scary example of how things can go too far.

(Link: ru.nl)

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