randform

(more…)

Hospitals are often white in white. This doesn’t help to increase visibility for viruses and bacterias, but white has (at least in some cultures) the symbolic character of purity. However the traces of visitors on white walls need not necessarily be stain, they could be graffiti or art. A famous art example are the works of Robert Rauschenberg. (-> Link for some white Rauschenberg). From Wikipedia:

The “white paintings” produced by Rauschenberg at Black Mountain in 1951, while they contain no image at all, are said to be so exceptionally blank and reflective that their surfaces respond and change in sympathy with the ambient conditions in which they are shown, “so you could almost tell how many people are in the room,” as Rauschenberg once commented.

It is a plain observation that stylish western blogs (as seen from easteastBerlin) are currently often – very white. Concerned about our statistics and some critics about our oriental webdesign, we will follow this white trend for some days and make the vest or theme of our blog purely white and observe our statistics. We take this as a kind of miniblogdesignpoll analog with this poll. Be aware that if a suburbiablog picks up a trend then this may be mainstream.

But coming to the point – todays randform suggestion for web2.0 is a tool, which allows visitors to scribble onto the pages of a blog (a blog graffiti – poesiealbum-tool) – which would make the metaphor of the blog as a white space for communication etc. maybe more tangible. It is of course possible to scribble on Flash or processing applets but these need to be embedded.

In this context one should also mention that Tims jDvi (a viewer for dvi – the output of LaTex) has the option to scribble on the dvi file, which makes e.g. collaboration on a math paper easier.

Berlin Potsdamer Platz

If it comes to 3D in google earth most cities are still more or less little grey bricks. Berlin however has lately provided a quite detailed view of itself. The software based on the LandXplorer technology was developped by the Potsdam Company 3D Geo GmBH together with the Hasso-Plattner Institute. It was produced by Berlin Partner GmBH and works with the newest version of google earth together with a link to www.3d-stadtmodell-berlin.de.

via Berliner Zeitung

(more…)

An image from last weekend in Berlin at one of its beautiful lakes.

signpost at FEZ
The FEZ Berlin a children, youth and family centre (actually the largest in Europe) is one of the jewels of Berlin. FEZ-Berlin is run as a non-profit organisation of the Land Berlin and is divided into three main components: the educational work with children, youth and families, the Berlin State Music Academy and the indoor and open air pools.
It was originally founded in 1950 as the Pionierrepublik „Ernst Thälmann“.

For the educational work it hosts among others an ecology garden, a kids museum, a real kids train, which dates back to 1956 and the Orbitall -a space exploration centre for kids dating back to 1979. With various activities like e.g. the space camp mission kids get prepared for the future.

(more…)

(more…)

Avalokitesvara from Wikipedia

There is currently (german nun =now) a big exibition in Berlin about the art of Tibet. The objects in this exhibition are mostly from tibetan monasteries. Unfortunately the exhibition ends in around the 1940’s so that one cannot see much of the further development of this fascinating culture like in particular the multicultural influences from China and India.

-> A youtube video (for which the Berlin Anti-Kitsch police will kill me) of the 1000 armed Kwan-yin (note: I don’t know wether the performance is related to the tibetan Chenrezig/Avalokitesvara it just looks similar)

stelarc is an australian artist who investigates the man-machine evolutionary step with his own body. He was giving a lecture yesterday at the transmediale.

Since nobody was responding on the ticketphone for transmediale I just went there. Luckily I guessed right that the location “@studio” on the transmediale website meant the west berlin academy of art and not the east berlin academy of art. However the lecture was apparently already sold out at noon. There were quite a bit of people which came from foreign countries and who like me didn’t manage to extract the right information from the transmediale website.

So I looked at the closing doors and how people were talking to each other in the lounge and went.

->stelarc’s fractal flesh

As I tried to explain in my previous posts it is not so sure, wether mankind will ever reach the posthuman state or any other condition at all. And yes it is hard to comunicate why scientists see so much evidence for not reaching that state due to the climate change , if they fail to do a good weather forecast for more than 3 days. However the two things are different and may be it is at the moment more convincing to look at the number of scientists who warn TODAY.