December 16, 2013

Marleen Sleeuwits’ photographs redefine office spaces

Filed under: Architecture,Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 8:57 pm

interior-27-marleen-sleeuwitsAs I was leafing through last year’s talent issue of FOAM magazine, I must have been a little too literal minded because when I saw photos by Marleen Sleeuwits titled Interiors, I originally thought she had found interesting looking office spaces that she’d ‘merely’ photographed.

Then I looked a little closer at Interior #27 (shown here) and realised the brown lines were actually box-sealing tape. It turns out she builds these interiors herself and then photographs them.

Sleeuwits told FOAM Magazine about what initially attracted her to interiors as a photographic subject: “I began work [on a series about airports] after watching a documentary about a businessman who travelled the world for his job. […] One day he woke up in his hotel and had totally forgotten where he was. Looking out of the window didn’t give him any clues. He had to check his diary to find out. [Airports and suburban spaces] almost seem designed to disorientate.”

And on her website: “They are spaces that lack a connection with the outside world, so it is unclear what their function is, where they are and what time of day they were photographed. […] Here lies a paradox: the spaces that catch my attention are in some sense non-spaces. Lacking a clear function or any reference to the outside world, they are in the end nothing but spaces.”

Sleeuwits’ agent, the Liefhertje en de Grote Witte Reus gallery in The Hague, will be showing off her work at the Art Rotterdam art fair during the weekend of 6 – 9 February 2014.

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December 14, 2013

Poorest citizens Amsterdam made rich by accident, for now

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:18 am

About 9,000 citizens of Amsterdam received an unexpected Christmas bonus yesterday, Parool reports.

The municipal tax office accidentally floated a comma the wrong way and instead of paying out a housing benefit of 155 euro it transferred 15,500 euro and sometimes even 30,000 euro into its clients’ bank accounts.

The annual benefit is paid on top of a similar federal subsidy that is intended to help the poorest Dutch people make ends meet. The tax office is frantically trying to retrieve the money. Parool says the office fears “most recipients will be unwilling to see a mistake in this”. In total the city has paid out 188 million euro.

“We want to deal with this in a nice way”, a spokesperson told Telegraaf. But one of the accidental recipients who called the tax office was told that if he touched the money, he’d be in trouble, AT5 reports.

Although it is funny to think of the poorest of society being ‘rich’ for a few days, I fear that for some this mistake may only mean more problems in the end.

(Photo of unrelated costume jewellery by GlitzUK, some rights reserved)

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December 13, 2013

Doodstil prettiest place name of the Netherlands

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 12:08 pm

doodstil-gouwenaarIn 2005 a man called Ben Schattenberg organised a poll for the most beautiful town name in the Netherlands.

After a round of nominations voters could send an e-mail to say which one of four names was their favourite:

  • Doodstil (literally deathly silent, but in fact Doede’s bridge).
  • Muggenbeet (mosquito bite).
  • Waterlandkerkje (water land church).
  • ‘s-Hertogenbosch (the duke’s forest).

I am not sure how many people participated in the poll (half-way the voting period 5,447 votes had been counted) or how often the poll was held, but it did end up in this sign proclaiming the town’s pride (“de mooiste plaatsnaam van Nederland” means ‘the most beautiful town name of the Netherlands’). According to Doodstil.net the town with 100 inhabitants celebrated the election at the time with a barbecue in the garden of the Knol family.

(Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Gouwenaar who dedicated it to the public domain; link: Eamelje.net)

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December 9, 2013

Dutch banks invent rules to escape phishing damage claims

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 5:22 pm

Two weeks ago Emerce reported that the major Dutch banks had streamlined their terms and conditions with regards to theft resulting from phishing.

The new terms and conditions, which will come into effect on 1 January 2014, set out five conditions phishing victims must meet to be able to claim damages from their bank. Customers must:

  • Never give their passwords to anyone.
  • Never let others use their bank card.
  • Adequately protect the equipment they use for electronic banking (i.e. install virus scanners and so on).
  • Regularly check their bank statements.
  • Report incidents right away.

Financial news site Z24 believes that these new rules are bad news for bank customers—they will have to pay for the damages of phishing attacks themselves in a greater number of cases. The site quotes Jurgen Braspenning of Tilburg University who accuses some consumers of being lazy and careless. “It would seem that extremely unfair or dubious cases may still count on the kindness of banks in the future.”

A spokesperson for the Nederlandse Vereniging van Banken (Dutch association of banks) tries to downplay the effects of the new rules: “it is not our intention to make customers more often responsible for the costs and we don’t expect them to be.” According to Z24 the burden of proof is always with the bank.

See also: Dutch banks won’t employ anti-skimming hook.

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December 8, 2013

The Hoff sings Fresh Prince theme tune with a twist

Filed under: Art,Shows by Branko Collin @ 2:25 pm

the-rip-hoff-sc-matthijs-vlotRotterdam-based video artist Matthijs Vlot created this clip of David Hasselhoff singing the theme tune to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air by splicing together clips from several shows the actor was in, including Knight Rider and Bay Watch.

I’ve seen this format before, but Vlot adds a twist. What the twist is you will have to see for yourself.

Apparently Hasselhoff tweeted “Amazing clip!” upon watching the video. More videos from Vlot can be found on his website, mattatjeoorlog.nl (a pun on ‘pattatje oorlog’, fries with peanut sauce and mayonnaise). The name of the video, The Rip-Hoff pt. 1, suggests there’s another video involving The Hoff in the making.

Illustration: screen captures of Vlot’s video.

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December 7, 2013

Leo Jordaan’s haunting World War II cartoons

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 3:57 pm

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The Fool’s Gold episode of this quarter’s Zone 5300 pointed me to the work of Leo Jordaan, Dutch film critic and political cartoonist.

His Nachtmerrie over Nederland (‘nightmare over the Netherlands’) collects the cartoons he drew during the war (underground, one assumes). They have a stylized, haunting quality that makes one wonder—if for a moment—how real the war was to Jordaan. Fool’s Gold calls the collection an “infernal after image” of the war and recommends that if you want to own this book (which was published in 1945), you should be able to find copies at second hand book stores “for the price of a crate of pilsner”.

The cartoon of the robot with the hand grenade hands shown above depicts the blitzkrieg attack on the Netherlands in May 1940 by Hitler’s armoured and motorized troops against a Dutch defence that consisted of little more than guys with guns.

If you find the price too steep, or Dutch second hand book stores too inaccessible, Geheugen van Nederland scanned the entire book for your on-line perusal

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December 4, 2013

Finnish edition of Zone 5300

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 4:35 pm

zone_5300_103-1The Rotterdam-based comics zine Zone 5300 has dedicated its last issue of the year to comics from Finland.

Pretty much all of the larger comics in the issue are by Finnish authors. Tiitu Takalo (illustration) wrote and drew It’s a Wonderful Life, a feel good tale about an aspiring writer who is down in the dumps and who gets her spirits lifted by a friend.

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zone_5300_103-3-petteri-tikkanenOther comics are Microkosmos by Jenni Janatuinen and Petteri Tikkanen (illustration), Tea and Beer by Jarno Latva-Nikkola, Post Mortem by Emmi Valve and Toivo by Tommi Musturi. Terhi Ekebom produced a beautiful story called What If, in which every panel takes up an entire page.

Interestingly, it felt like I knew these artists. I have the feeling that Finnish and Dutch comics artists perhaps use a similar visual language or have a similar sense of humour, it’s hard to determine exactly what the likenesses are.

There are also interviews with painter Elina Merenmies and regular Zone 5300 contributor Maria Björklund.

Ville Pirinen tells the story of high school gym teacher (illustration) who seems to suffer from short circuits that lead to regular injuries for himself and the occasional injury of others.

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Fool’s Gold tells the story of black Amsterdam-based singer Big John Russell and his 1960’s band The Clan, which featured instrumentalists in Ku Klux Klan outfits.

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December 3, 2013

Google breaks privacy laws, Dutch watchdog says

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:26 pm

privacy-jeff-schulerBy not informing its users about what data it collects and by not asking for permission, Google is breaking the Dutch data protection act, privacy watchdog CBP said in a press release last Thursday.

In 2012 Google changed its privacy policy. The American Internet giant started combining the private data it collects from its users across all its services.

The investigation shows that Google combines personal data relating to Internet users that the company obtains from different services. Google does this, amongst others, for the purposes of displaying personalised ads and to personalise services such as YouTube and Search. Some of these data are of a sensitive nature, such as payment information, location data and information on surfing behaviour across multiple websites. Data about search queries, location data and video’s watched can be combined, while the different services serve entirely different purposes from the point of view of users.

Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet points to a peculiarity of Dutch privacy law that says you have to ask users for informed consent. It’s not enough to say ‘this is how we deal with your privacy’, users should be able to understand what is going to happen and say ‘no’ before it happens. Also, Google shouldn’t say what they could do with your data, they are obliged to say what they will do with your data.

Apparently Google tried to defend themselves by claiming they do not collect personal data, they merely create profiles. CBP quotes Google’s own CEO Eric Schmidt back at them who once stated: “We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.” Google’s chief Internet evangelist (and Internet co-inventor) Vint Cerf said two weeks ago at a privacy and security workshop of (of all people) the US Trade Commission (40 minutes into the video): “I would not go as far as to simply, baldy assert that privacy is dead. […] But let me tell you that it would be increasingly difficult for us to achieve privacy. I want you to think for just a minute about the fact that privacy may actually be an anomaly.”

Engelfriet concludes: “Google of course believes the criticism is invalid and uses a barrage of marketing language […] to keep dancing around the issue. And that is all that will happen. I don’t see what kind of effective measures CBP can take to make Google fundamentally change its ways—which is a pity, because this is one of the most substantial reports CBP has issued in a long time.”

(Link: the Register; photo by Jeff Schuler, some rights reserved)

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December 1, 2013

Tropical parakeets thrive in cold Amsterdam, Brussels, London

Filed under: Nature by Branko Collin @ 1:40 pm

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If you look at the places from where the rose-ringed parakeet originates, you’ll note that these are some of the hottest spots on the planet. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that large groups of these birds thrive in much colder climes.

Certainly the gardens behind my apartment aren’t part of the tropics, at least not last time I checked, which is when I took this photo.

Wikipedia claims the four largest cities in the country—Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and especially The Hague—are home to about 10,000 of these parakeets. It is assumed the birds are the descendants of parakeets once kept as pets. The male bird sports a red ring around its neck, hence the name rose-ringed parakeet.

A statue of philosopher Baruch Spinoza unveiled in Amsterdam in 2008 contains images of roses, rose-ringed parakeets and sparrows, representing Spinoza himself, immigrants and native citizens.

Other cities north of the Mediterranean with large rose-ringed parakeet populations are Brussels and London.

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November 24, 2013

Artists photograph grandparents the way grandchildren draw them

Filed under: Photography by Branko Collin @ 1:20 pm

Two artists from Eindhoven, photographer Nick Bookelaar and designer Yoni Lefévre, teamed up to create Grey Power, a photo series in which grandparents act out scenes thought up by their grandchildren.

The children made drawings of their grandparents going about their daily activities. Props and outfits from the drawings were then transplanted to real life and used for a photographic portrait of the grandparents. Lefévre explains that modern society considers old people to be sidelined, but “children do not regard their grandparents as grey and withered, but as active human beings who add colour to their lives”.

A Petapixel commenter pointed out that Korean photographer Yendoo Jung had a similar project called Wonderland five years ago, although Jung’s intention seems to be almost the opposite of that of the two Dutch artists. Instead of viewing reality from a different perspective his aim seems to be to recreate fantasy worlds.

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