April 22, 2013

Girl knits boy

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 2:04 pm

My Knitted Boyfriend was Noortje de Keijzer’s 2012 graduate project at the Eindhoven Design Academy.

That is basically all there is to it. His name is Arthur, he is machine washable, he has accessories like moustaches, glasses and a tattoo, and sometimes he comes to life.

De Keijzer created this man as part of a study into loneliness. He is currently on display as part of the We Love Fashion! exhibition at NN DE Café in Rotterdam. You need not worry that De Keijzer gets too lonely with her boyfriend on the road, because in the meantime she has knitted Steve.

(Video: Vimeo / Noortje de Keijzer. Photo: crop of a screenshot of the video.)

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April 21, 2013

Groningen researchers want to exterminate the housefly

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 11:03 pm

I have here before me what may be one of the dumbest press releases of the year from the University of Groningen.

A team of evolutionary biologists led by Leo Beukeboom is “well on the way to pinpointing [the gene that determines the male gender] in houseflies.”

According to the press release, the biologists are considering to use this knowledge for “developing ecofriendly methods of controlling this pestilential insect. The partner university in Göttingen, Germany has already bred sterile male specimens of the harmful Mediterranean fruit fly. Breeding sterile male houseflies may constitute an effective method for controlling these pathogenic insects in the future.”

Or, as the writer of the press release puts it in big, bold type, “evolutionary genetic research makes fly swatters superfluous”.

Maybe I don’t understand what they are saying and maybe they’re not saying it right, but it seems to me that disrupting an ecosystem is the exact opposite of ‘ecofriendly’. A fly swatter kills just the flies you can reach, and after half an hour of chasing flies through the house you might just consider doing a better cleaning job next time, but spraying pesticides or even eradicating an entire species (it is not clear to me what exactly the University of Groningen wants) seems to be a lot more invasive.

Do any of you have an explanation?

(Photo by Bbski, some rights reserved)

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April 20, 2013

Zone 5300 turns 100

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 4:07 pm

Comics magazine Zone 5300 celebrates its hundredth issue with 40 extra pages, although half of those are taken up by a long article looking back at all those issues.

The Lamelos collective join in the festivities with four birthday stories (illustration), but the rest of the issue is, luckily, business as usual. Here you can see Mr Doody Head looking to turn his friend Mr Cheese Head into a collection of party snacks (“look behind you…”).

Other longs stories are Cool Jazz by Paolo Vicenzi (about how different generations of musicians see their craft), Alone in the Crowd by Nina Bunjevac (love = sex, sometimes, in the bathroom of run-down bar), Papa Zoglu by Simon Spruyt (a twisted fairy tale), a Ray Murphy story by Fufu Frauenwahl and Bartje (illustration) by Belgian writer and artist Frederik van den Stok. In the last story a lonely young student tries to see if a one night stand can be turned into something more, against all odds. The art looks like it is still a draft but is surprisingly effective, and the story is tight and shows great insight. The scene where the alpha male leaves a city bench and the betas size each other up is brilliant.

There are also interviews with comics artists Brecht Vandenbroucke (Belgium) and Fufu Frauenwahl (Germany) and singer/songwriter Mark Lotterman (Rotterdam). A short story by Murat Isik tells of the career of a comics collector cut short. Vic’s Dip Parade consists of a compilation of ten songs that do not fit into any compilation, including a sing-along in which De Zangeres Zonder Naam takes on American hate monger Anita Bryan.

In a two-pager Kenny Rubenis looks at some of the problems those of us experience who just don’t care that much for music. It’s got a nice twist at the end, and you can read it all because Rubenis put the comic up on his website (Dutch). (“[You miss out on] making a mix tape for that cool girl from 8th grade to let her know that I like her. She never knew.”)

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April 19, 2013

Searching and capturing that elusive horse wind

Filed under: Animals,Nature by Orangemaster @ 10:25 am

Dutch documentary filmmaker Henk Meeuwsen is looking for an assistant sound recordist (sign up through the link) to capture the sound of horse farts in the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve, lodged in between the cities of Almere and Lelystad, Flevoland and home to the biggest herd of wild horses in all of Europe. You can see the horses and deers from the train when you travel from Amsterdam to Zwolle going North and it is indeed a beautiful sight.

Meeuwsen has managed to record horse farts, but unfortunately there has been either too much noise from passing trains and planes or from other nature sounds to be used in his latest nature film, due out this September. This job sounds like a fun challenge if ever there was one.

(Link: opmerkelijk.nieuws.nl, Photo of Oostvaardersplassen horses by fransdewit, some rights reserved)

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April 18, 2013

Funny and beautiful interior design by Koudenburg & Elsinga for JWT Amsterdam

Filed under: Architecture,Art,Design by Branko Collin @ 4:02 pm

Last year international ad agency JWT moved into a new office in Amsterdam, the famous Hirsch & Cie building on Leidseplein right above the Apple store. They asked interior designer RJW Elsinga and brand experience designer Alrik Koudenberg to come up with an interior design, and that they did.

The two came up with chairs shaped like faces, a trophy case shaped like a rabbit, a reception area with upside down photography (check the desktop background on the computer in the illustration below), robots that double as cupboards, the word ‘wow’ spelled backwards, workplace dividers looking like local gables and much more.

Web magazine Fontanel asked Alrik Koudenburg to explain a bit about the project:

We had to create 78 desks with room to grow to 100 and three meeting rooms. There were no strict requirements except that our design had to be ‘seriously surprising’, the slogan of the agency. […]

January 2012 we started the first phase which would amount to approximately 70% of the entire contract and four months later JWT moved in. To think that we had to get almost everything custom-made.

See also: Illustrious and tragic history of the Hirsch Building where Apple Amsterdam store has opened (external link)

(Photos: Koudenburg & Elsinga / Kasia Gatkowska, used with permission)

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April 17, 2013

Vincent van Gogh dominates Google Art

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 1:14 pm

Google has published a bunch of statistics on its online art gallery Google Art, which is a collaboration between Google and 200 art collections worldwide.

Let’s start with some numbers. The most popular paintings in its collection are:

  1. Van Gogh: The Starry Night
  2. Botticelli: The Birth of Venus
  3. Rembrandt: Self Portrait Drawing at a Window
  4. Van Gogh: The Bedroom
  5. Manet: In the Conservatory
  6. Bruegel (the Elder): The Harvesters
  7. Van Gogh: Sunflowers
  8. Holbein (the Younger): The Ambassadors
  9. Van Gogh: Field with Flowers near Arles
  10. Böcklin: The Isle of the Dead

In fact, Dutch painters make up 50% of that list (60% if you include Pieter Bruegel the Elder who lived in the Habsburg Netherlands before circumstances split the country into Spanish Netherlands, later Belgium, and the Dutch Republic).

Google adds:

While nothing beats seeing a painting in real life, the ability to examine a work of art in this level of detail seems to be encouraging viewers to linger. One minute is the average time spent looking at any given painting on the Art Project website, compared to under 20 seconds (according to several studies) in a museum.

The Starry Night is also the most frequently included painting in user galleries, where individuals create and share their own virtual art collections.

(Link: NRC)

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April 16, 2013

Thom Roep quits as Donald Duck editor after 39 years

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 2:14 pm

Comics writer Thom Roep (61) has announced in an interview with nu.nl that he will quit as Editor-in-Chief of one of the country’s most successful magazines of the past 50 years, Donald Duck.

Roep said the growing importance of the Internet for the franchise was his reason for leaving. All the major Disney characters have Dutch Twitter accounts and Roep feels that “it is no longer credible that I lead a team that is concerned with, and enthusiastic about, things that just do not mean as much to me. I am so old-fashioned that I read tweets from paper. I am a paper man. That is why it is time for a younger person to take over, somebody who is interested in the digital side of things. I do not want to be a pretender.”

Donald Duck was founded in 1952 as a weekly when other countries already had Disney magazines. The magazine managed to sell at least 300,000 issues each week until recently, mainly because it relies on subscriptions. Roep thinks its success stems from the fact that “[the magazine] is passed from generation to generation. Parents want to give their children the same pleasant childhood memories as they had. Let’s be honest though: if the magazine did not exist and it was started now, it would not manage to sell 10% of what we sell now. Would a white duck in a sailor suit be successful?”

Sales figures have been dropping—currently they are at 278,000 issues—and publisher Sanoma have been producing themed issues to get more advertisers on board. Today a special issue about the inauguration of the new king was released (see illustration). It contains a story, Abduckation, that according to Roep refers to a famous saying that was popular around the time Beatrix became queen. I am guessing this refers to ‘geen woning, geen kroning’ (no coronation when there is a shortage of houses), the slogan under which squatters disrupted Beatrix’s inauguration.

Roep wants to return to writing comics. In the past he has written the Douwe Dabbert series which was drawn by Piet Wijn.

See also: Students prefer Donald Duck magazine over serious newspaper.

Disclaimer: I have written stories for Donald Duck magazine.

(Image: Donald Duck)

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April 15, 2013

Pensioner needs to make do with 4000+ euro a month

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 1:17 pm

A pensioner named Gijs Koekenbier (69) has become the butt of jokes after NRC Handelsblad published the story of his financial ‘woes’.

Mr Koekenbier has had to cut back from 4430 euro a month to 4260 euro (after taxes!), which started a litany of complaints. “We used to visit the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam five times a year, but now we have to limit this to twice a year. We have had to cancel the NS Voordeelurenkaart [Dutch rail discount card—ed.]. We’ve also decided to drink less wine. Two glasses a night instead of half a bottle is nice too.”

People who are not as well off as Mr Koekenbier reacted furiously. They saw his attitude as exemplary of the ills caused by neo-liberalism, the babyboomers (Retecool) and by the party of the elderly, 50PLUS (Volkskrant).

50PLUS is a party that tries to improve the position of the elderly, run by Henk Krol, former publisher of Gay Krant, and Jan Nagel. The Dutch elderly are relatively affluent, with an average household net worth of 245,000 euro. This is largely due to the fact that when the 50+ crowd bought their houses, they got the type of mortgage that one pays off, while young people do not repay their mortgage loans and are on the whole in the hole.

Meanwhile, there is such a thing as poor pensioners and they are being hounded by the government for benefit fraud. The number of pensioners that fraudulently claim singles’ benefits instead of couples’ benefits has almost doubled in the past five years, or so Sociale Verzekeringsbank claims. NRC quotes the Ouderenombudsman as saying, “People who see each other regularly do not know whether that counts as being a couple or not. We feel fines should not be given as long as the rules are unclear.” Fines for benefit fraud used to be 10% of the amount received in error, but have been upped this year to the full amount. In other words, one has to pay back the balance twice!

The minimum wage in the Netherlands is currently 1469 euro per month after taxes. A state pension for a couple is 1414 euro (707 euro per partner).

(Photo by Derek Gavey, some rights reserved)

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April 13, 2013

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam is back in business

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 4:04 pm

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands opened the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam today.

The museum had been closed for a decade for renovations by Spanish architectural firm Cruz y Ortiz, Miami Herald writes. The Queen was wearing a simple brown outfit and one of her trademark hats in what must have been one of her last public performances. I thought she looked lively yet old.

The Queen symbolically opened the museum by twisting a giant key in a giant lock, after which fireworks were lit.

A lot more people than I had expected had shown up, thousands drawn perhaps by the promise of a free visit to the museum, which will be open to anyone until midnight, France 24 reports. It was so busy it almost seemed like young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber had arrived in the city… oh wait.

The opening was accompanied by the musical performances of 13 marching bands from all over the kingdom. The bands marched up and down a wide orange ramp that would later be used to let the general public enter the museum. After the opening, the bands spread out over Museum Plein. The Caribbean band was especially very popular and completely locked in by onlookers.

As The Independent writes, the Rijksmuseum was originally intended as the home of classic Dutch masters. “But what were they smoking when the management of the foremost Dutch museum and the Government Building Agency predicted the task would take just three years?” Part of the problem, the paper writes, was the way the government looked at requests for tenders, which was that everything should be done on the cheap. The underlying idea, not to be frivolous with public money, was good, but the result was decades of cost overruns and sometimes plain shoddy work. (The Rijksmuseum does look good though.)

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April 12, 2013

Fungi named after the Dutch Royal family

Filed under: Science by Orangemaster @ 3:14 pm
Kdag2010-2

Researchers have discovered and recently presented five types of penicillium that are bright orange, reminding them of the main colour of the Dutch Royal family, aka the House of Orange-Nassau.

They call them ‘Penicillium vanoranjei’ (family) and fourth other kinds that belong to this family, named after Crown-Prince Willem-Alexander’s three daughters (Amalia, Alexia and Ariane) and wife and future Queen consort Máxima: Penicillium maximae, Penicillium amaliae, Penicillium alexiae and Penicillium arianeae.

(Link: www.knaw.nl)

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