The story goes that the bike path used to be a foot path, so it made sense to have a lamppost there. However, now the lamppost is waiting for a cyclist to crash into it. “Something went wrong in the planning”, said a spokesperson – well duh. Apparently the lamppost has a fence around it and will be moved, so that’s good news.
It just goes to show you that even in our ‘bicycle monarchy’, things sometimes go wrong.
The work runs a wide gamut of early multimedia computer art, such as his Then and Now created in the BASIC programming language on the Commodore Amiga (see this video at 1:19), to 2015’s Natureally (illustration), which shows a transparent photo of a tree illuminated from behind in ever changing colours.
Mul’s oeuvre is rich and the selection for the exhibition is eclectic. The rooms are full with works from different time periods. […] The sounds sometimes bleed into each other, on purpose. […]
What is pleasant about Mul’s work is that there is room for the audience, both because some works require physical interaction and because there is a lot of room for interpretation.
The problem with writing about interactive and video art is of course that these are works that need to be experienced, so even if you do not have the time to visit the exhibition, which runs until 12 February 2017, be sure to visit the links to the videos and to Mul’s website.
First you follow the link to the cute little Delft blue houses, and then you can click on any of the 91 bottles and find out what house it is and where. Most of them can be found in Amsterdam, but a few of them are from towns like Amersfoort, Delft, Breda and Schiedam.
I spontaneously clicked on number 81 and got ‘proeflokaal’ (roughly ‘tasting pub’) De Drie Fleschjes (The Three Bottles) in Amsterdam pictured above (here is what it looks like today). Ironically, it is a place to sample gin and have a drink.
What I thought was odd though is that there is the same house twice (11 and 23), another ‘proeflokaal’ in Amsterdam, Wijnand Fockink. I think the makers of the site made a mistake, as 90 is a much nicer number.
I love a good troika: First, we had Guus Hiddink vodka, then Trump vodka made in The Netherlands and now, hi-tech Medea vodka from Schiedam, the birth place of genever (gin).
Medea vodka has a programmable LED label. It can be up to 225 characters, which is more than a Twitter ‘tweet’ (140 characters) or a text message (160 characters). You can turn off the text to save batteries, if so inclined and a bottle costs 30 euro. Being a regular buyer of vodka, Dutch vodka is often pricy at 30 euro a bottle, as compared to Polish and Russian vodka at 15-20 euro a bottle. But hey, this time you get a gadget with your booze.
Oh and by the way, the music in the video is Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 in E minor (Op. 28), which is the work that French composer and artist Serge Gainsbourg’s song ‘Jane B.’ is based on. You get that tidbit extra, as Serge drank more vodka and other alcohol than you drink water.
Little over a year ago, we reported on a driver in Schiedam who was fined EUR 75 for not driving over a cat, or technically, ignoring a green light. The man was trying to avoid running over the cat by waiting until it got out of the way.
The story goes on telly that after going to court over the matter, the driver got his money back, as he was given the benefit of the doubt. The police’s argument is that they did not see a cat crossing the road.
I can’t imagine someone making that up and purposely stopping at a green light. Good news.
Filed under: Animals,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:02 pm
A driver in Schiedam was fined EUR 75 for not driving over a cat, or basically, ignoring a green light. The man was trying to avoid running over the cat by waiting until it got out of the way.
“If I had hit the gas, I would have killed the cat and gotten a fine for ‘destruction of property’. So I waited and because I did, I got a fine for ignoring a green light.” The driver says he’s usually calm, but this got him pissed off. “I wrote to the the mayor and told her that her fining policy makes me sick and then I wrote to every member of parliament.”
It’s called jenever in Dutch, referred to as ‘genever’ in English and the rest of the world calls it ‘gin’.
Jenever can only be made in the Netherlands, Belgium and a few German and French provinces. The ministers of agriculture granted jenever the status of protected geographic indication last Monday.
The Netherlands traditionally has a number of large jenever distilleries, in Schiedam (shown here), Amsterdam and Groningen, to name a few. In Belgium, Hasselt is the best known city for this strong alcoholic drink.
Read more about this underrated drink and if you want to visit Schiedam, the town with the five biggest windmills in the world, check out Ontdekschiedam.nu, a site I did some work on.
I read a few articles that said that the Dutch introduced gevener (gin) to Ghana through the slave trade some 150 years ago. It is still used for special occasions, but then the real Dutch variety, not the local moonshine.
A glass of jenever is at least 35% alcohol. Young jenever is the most commonly drunk spirit in the Netherlands: 170,000 hectolitres in 2005, according to figures from the Commodity Board for Alcoholic Drinks.
‘Jenever’ was discovered in the Middle Ages during the search for medicines: the medicinal juniper berry was added to brandy wine. These days grain or treacle from the sugar industry is the basis for the alcohol in ‘jenever’.
Agriculture minister at the time Cees Veerman suggested to his EU colleagues last year that ‘jenever’ be declared a protected product. There were no objections.
In the windmill-clad village of Schiedam, South Holland, the police have been recently handing out chocolate bars to adolescents at the end of their party evenings. Apparently, some British research has proven that chocolate has a soothing effect and calms the kids down so they don’t vandalise things. The police have been trying this out for four weeks now and only hand out goodies on weekends. They have not yet published their findings, but we’re all dying to find out, right?
