Beautiful film props from the surreal cinema of Jan Švankmajer, on display in EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam. This one is from one of my favourites: Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
“I choose for my family. Maybe others are capable of doing it, but I can’t go on tour and be a good dad at the same time.”
Mark Hollis, explaining his decision to leave music in 1998 (but only after releasing possibly one of the most quiet and intimate records ever made.)
Dirk, the vagabond robot, Electric Circus, 2014. On display at Robots Love Music exhibition, Museum Speelklok, Utrecht.
The Android Clarinetist, Cornelis Jacob van Oeckelen, Breda, the Netherlands, 1838. On display at Robots Love Music exhibition, Museum Speelklok, Utrecht 
Of course the Dutch couldn’t rule the seas without some migrant workers from pretty much all over the world.
Dutch Golden Age wasn’t all that Dutch
Eric Kandel on neuroaesthetics:
”The purpose of a scientific approach to art is not to take the mystery out of the art. It’s to give you new insight into why you think it’s so wonderful and mysterious.”
Gustav Klimt in the Brain Lab - What is neuroscience doing to art?
Moving Image Course at HKU
This week I started a new Moving Image course at the HKU Brede Basisopleiding (University of the Arts Utrecht). Here you can see the students creating a Light Modulator. It's so nice to see young students getting enthusiastic by an art excercise developed almost 80 years ago at Moholy-Nagy's New Bauhaus.
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Capitalism at its finest…
The article is in Dutch, but a picture is worth a thousand words... If no action is taken, this will be the Netherlands in 2300... (Image by phys. geographer Kim Cohen, Utrecht University)
De zeespiegelstijging is een groter probleem dan we denken. En Nederland heeft geen plan B
Finally, a great new album by Belgium’s best kept secret: Dez Mona - Book of Many
This morning, I crossed paths with my 139 millionth cousin.
That we end up being misled by our senses is a widely-accepted truism, as most humans mistake the limits of their perception for the limits of the world itself.
How did Chopin’s physical frailty shape his creative choices?
Paths of Glory (1957) ★ ★ ★ ★. Another Stanley Kubrick masterpiece. Hard to believe he only was 28 years old at the time. You would expect this kind of craftsmanship only of very experienced and more senior directors.
“Socrates Wants You to Tidy Up, Too”
“Finally, couture that gets us”
Viktor & Rolf Just Sent Out The Snarkiest Haute Couture Collection Of All Time
“The headline story is that it’s not so much about the nature of digital technology as about a new mutant form of capitalism that has found a way to use tech for its purposes.” 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
Very interesting read. All great art is prophetic.
Michel Houellebecq Hated Europe Before You Did
The Deer Hunter (1978) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
‘Brexit refugee’ European Robin given warm reception in Beijing
This is such a simple yet powerful idea: an AR app "AR Sensor" to measure and visualize various spatial data, such as Wifi signal strength. (via hackaday.com)
I still find all this very difficult to grasp, but it’s always fascinating to see how art can help explain a scientific theory: How Space and Time Could Be a Quantum Error-Correcting Code
A must read, if you ask me: Childhood's End, by George Dyson.
‘Most of us, most of the time, are following instructions delivered to us by computers rather than the other way around. The digital revolution has come full circle and the next revolution, an analog revolution, has begun. None dare speak its name.’
Some hits, some misses...
35 years ago, Isaac Asimov was asked by the Star to predict the world of 2019. Here is what he wrote