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New year day
One of the first things I did this year, was finishing my glass of beer. It
was a special beer called Donkere dagen (Dark Days in English)
made by Brouwerij
Eanske. It is a Imperial Schwarz beer with an alcohol percentage of 7.5%/vol% and a bitterness
of 23 IBU, a colour of 112 EBC, and 66 Kcal/100ml.
In the afternoon, I watched the reports about New Horizons to hear that it survived the flyby of
Ultima Thule
and probably performed all the science operations as instructed.
In the evening, I went to TkkrLab to meet
some of the regular attendees. We had some discussions about the problems
around software development in companies. Lately, I often think about going
away from software development. I notice that I even have problems working on
my own private projects.
Book
At 17:34, I bought the book Kunst op niveau written by Piet den Hertog
in Dutch and published by Lambo in 2002,
ISBN:9789074119818, from thrift store Het Goed
for € 1.95.
Most chaotic?
This afternoon, I thought about the colour
rubber straps sequence and decided to look for the most chaotic sequences.
I searched for the sequences of which the maximum of the distances of
reoccurences of certain combinations was the lowest. I found nine sequences
where the maximum is three, but all of them have two combinations that occur
with just one other combination in between. There is one sequence that does
not have this and has a maximum of five. These ten sequences are visualized
below:
Winter sale
Although I had little time, I went to the opening day of the winter sale at
bookshop Broekhuis. There were many books
with 50% off. I did pickupe one book (Waarschuwing: de schrijver van dit
boek is kunstenaar by Tinkerbell) and carried when looking at other books, but in the end I
decided not to buy it, realizing that I might not read it.
Going to China
This evening, I thought about our plan to go to China this summer to visit
some family in Wuhan and to visit Urumqi. I got the idea to travel by train.
There are a lot of high-speed train connections. My idea is to fly to Beijing,
stay there for some days, travel to Wuhan by train. Stay some time in Wuhan.
From there travel with a high-speed train to Xi'an. From Xi'an there is a
night train to Urumqi. When I search YouTube for some more information, I
found: Xinjiang's New
High Speed Train (Urumqi to Lanzhou). There is also a high-speed train
from Xi'an to Lanzhou, but the high-speed trains are only traveling during the
day and you have at to stay overnight in one of the cities along the route. I
searched for some more information and watched:
The Chinese Silk Road - Episode 1 - The Journey Begins and
The Chinese Silk Road -
Episode 2 - Into the Desert. It seems interesting to stop over at
Lanzhou and it the famous
noodles made in the city. When Li-Xia traveled
between Beijing and Urumqi, the trip would take three days and three nights.
The long distance night trains offer hard and soft sleepers. I found this
report of a woman taking the night train to Urumqi using a soft sleeper:
Soft Sleeper Overnight
Train in China |Silk Road|. I also watched (fragments of):
OVERNIGHT Train in China
(Nanning to Shanghai) 🚅 | It was AWESOME!👍 中国
培养 视频 about another soft sleeper trip,
OVERNIGHT SLEEPER TRAIN
IN CHINA about mother and son in hard sleeper, and
Chinese Bullet Train
BUSINESS CLASS & 1ST CLASS Review!. From Urumqi we could also fly back
to Beijing for our return flight back home.
Walk-in Worlds
I went to the opening of the exhibition
Walk-in Worlds at Tetem art space.
It is an exhibition by Abner Preis
and consists of six virtual-reality (VR) presentations, some of which are
recordings made with a 360° camera. Before entering, we were given balloons
and when we entered the exhibition, we were told to blow up a balloon while
'saying' the name of a deceased person and then put the balloon in the large
'dress' at the center of room. I watched (parts of) four of the VR
presentations with the idea to return on a later moment and take time to
watch them till the end. I talked with Bergje Lulofs about drawing and with Ole Nieling about modular synthesizers (amongst other things).
Thin layer of snow
This morning, there was a thin layer of snow only at
cold places such as cars and plants. While biking to work, I came across some
places where the snow was also on the road. We are at the start of a cold
period and some of the snow stay the whole day (and maybe also tomorrow).
Sparkle party
In the evening, I went to the sparkle party that was organized for all
volunteers of the Overkill Festival. I
watch several people playing the Superhot VR shooter game, but did not try it myself. I spend some time
in the 'ball pit' room working on some program and listening to the music
played by someone who was DJing with a Pokket Mixer (or clone) and two MP3
players. Next I spend some time sitting in the small movie theater were people
were playing Ultimate Chicken Horse on the screen. I continued doing some programming
on my notebook. At the end, I danced a little in the 'ball pit' room with some
other people. When I left around a quarter to midnight, some people were just
arriving.
Red moon on a Blue Monday
I got up early to take some pictures of the moon eclips during this years Blue Monday. I did not have to go far, because it was visible right at
the door in my back garden. I had prepared a tripod and used the self-timer to
avoid any motion blur due to pressing the shutter button. At first I thought I
had the time wrong, because it was not as dark as the eclips from last July.
Snow
At the end of the afternoon, it started to snow. The
snow started in the West of the country and slowly moved to the East. This
resulted in a record of 2287 Km of traffic jams, mostly people driving
slowly. It is probably mostly a sign that people are no longer used to snow.
Less of 1 cm of snow has fallen around here and it is even not staying at
all places. I have not seen any real snow flakes yet. This morning, there was
still some snow left from last Friday, especially at
places that did not get much sun light.
In the past days, I have been thinking about the colour rubber straps sequences. In the sequence that I am using now, it
there are combinations that repeat after six days. I wondered if there are
also sequences where all combinations occur only after seven or more days.
Yesterday evening, I already found some solution to the problem. First of all,
it is interesing to note the length of cycles that can occur in the Peterson graph are limited to: 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9. It is easy to see that
the shortest sequence where a combination appears after two days, is equal to
the shortest sequence that contains each combination at least once. It is
impossible to create a sequence where each combination appears after then or
more days. One can also easily see that a sequence where each combination
appears after nine days, cannot contain all combinations. By combining a
cycle of length eight and a cycle of length nine, you can create a cycle of
length 17 where all combinations appear after eight or more days. I also
found a shortest sequence of length twelve where each combination occurs after
five or more days. And because twelve is one more than eleven, I presumed that
it must also be the shortest. I did not find a shortest sequence where each
combination occurs after six or more days. I played with the program I used
before and after some time, came up with following results:
2 11: YG,PR,YG,PO,YR,GO,YP,GR,YO,GP,RO
5 12: YG,PR,YO,GP,YR,GO,YP,GR,PO,YR,GP,RO
6 16: YG,PR,YO,GP,YR,GO,YP,GR,YO,PR,YG,PO,YR,GO,YP,RO
8 17: YG,PR,YO,GP,YR,GO,YP,GR,PO,YG,PR,YO,GP,YR,GO,YP,RO
These match with the solutions I had already found and gave a solution for
the last unsolved sequence.
Snow
This morning, I measured that there was 2 cm snow
on the table outside. It looks like a little snow fell during the night. If you
would divide the country in four from West to East, then most of the snow fell
in the third quarter from the West, with largest amount being 10 cm.
This afternoon, I went to bookshop Broekhuis.
I first looked with the second hand books and the cheap English books at the
second floor. Then I had a last look at the 50%-off sale at the ground floor,
not expecting anything. But to my surprise, I found a little book with
polaroids by the Dutch artist Aat
Veldhoen. At 17:53:38, I bought the book Aat Veldhoen, polaroids
edited by Ed de Heer written in English, translated from Dutch by Lynne
Richards, published by Lecturis in May 2015,
ISBN:9789462261235, for € 9.75.
Continuing from yesterday, I wondered what would be
the shortest sequence where all the combinations occur the same number of times
in the sequence. I had some how hoped that this would result in a long
sequence with interesting properties, however, it turned out to be rather
boring, there is a unique sequence with length 20 where all the combinations
are at least eight days apart:
YG,PR,YO,GP,YR,GO,YP,RO,YG,PO,GR,YO,PR,GO,YR,GP,RO,YP,GR,PO
Snow
Yesterday afternoon, I saw some big snow flakes, but because the temperature
was rising, it looked like the snow did not stay,
expect maybe on the patches of snow that were left from Wednesday. In the
evening it started to rain and this morning all the snow was gone (except for
some very small spots where people had piled up snow).
At 13:37:45, I bought the book aki akademie voor beeldende kunst
1998-1999 (actually, a schoolyear diary for students) edited by
Sipke Huisman, Bas Könning, and Regina Kroeders, with illustrations by
Joost Roelofsz and Sipke Huismand, written in Dutch and published by AKI in
1998, from thrift store Het Goed for
€ 0.95.
Snow
This afternoon, around a quarter to four, it started to snow. At first the snow did not stay. I had to bike how through the snow,
which took longer than normal. When I arrived home, just before seven, I
measured a little more than 3 cm of snow on table in the back garden. But
there were still some spots on the ground that were not covered. More snow is
expected to fall this evening and night.
Artist talk Laurence Malstaf
This evening, I went to the artist talk by Lawrence Malstaf and the opening of the exhibition Double Compass at Tetem art space.
Just right befor the talk, I was invited to try one of the Compass devices. It
was an interesting experience, but a little too intrusive for me. I also did
not understand the meaning until after the talk, and than thought about a
simpler device to implement the same idea.
Before the start of the talk he showed a loop of a short clip from a movie.
He told that he wanted to go to an art academy, but his parents wanted him to
do something more practical, thus he went into industrial design, which in the
end, he thought was a better choice, because he discovered that he likes to
work with industrial materials rather than with paint. He showed clip of
Der Lauf der
Dinge from 1987, an industrial Rube Goldberg machine, which, to him, is
like a theather of things. Next he talked about some of his projects. He
started as a volunteer at a theater, but got more and more involded in theater
and dance. This also raised his interest in the human body. People are
attracted by motion. If there is a dancer in the room, people will follow him.
If there is some video documentary besides a work of art, people will look at
the video instead of at the work. Hs project Shrink (1995) is about putting people in vacuum bags. It about putting
people in a stricted environment. This idea also returns in Compass. The question is whether you adapt to the environment or whether
you resist it. The project Nemo Observatorium
2002 only gets meaning when you get inside it. Transporter (2008) invites you to become part of the project by laying
down on it. Nevel is about a shape changing labyrith, where vistors become actors
for the visitors that arrive after you. He show a slide with four themes in
his projects. These are:
- Being in the middle
- Exhibitioning the visitor
- performing objects and spaces.
- presence and representation.
Being in the middle is also the title of his first exhibition. You are
always in the middle of the complex reality that we are in. There is no way to
escape it, to look at it from the outside. As an artist you also experience
this when working on a project. Working on a project is like a scientific
research project. It is a process. He said that art is about representing the
reality. For him his projects are very abstract. Things that are not taken
from reality, but have their own reality. It is something that happens, which
you cannot control. He showed clips of Tollen projects (2016 and 2017) explaining that it does not feel really
ready as a project. Pavilion (2011) is about flags filling a space. The sound that the flags
made was something he had not anticipated and made it an interesting aspect.
The flagpoles were controlled by a computer and although both arms moved
synchrone, the movement of the flags was visually different and unpredictable.
He also began to focus on minimalizing the materials used in his projects. An
example of this is Event Horizon (2015), which just makes use of dust and light. The Compass
project is the negative of the Nevel project: to make you feel walls that are
not there. Utopia (2018) is not finished yet. It is part of a performance. It is
about the nature of the future. Polygon is another project with minimal materials. Solid state (2012) is about a vibrating table. Tipping point (2013) is about water and some air moving between two
glass plates. The first version was made from real glass. A second version
used a (much lighter) transparent polymer. Conversations (2012) is about chairs that move around, due to a vibrating
motor installed under the seat. After the talk, he answered some questions.
This months interesting links
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