cym's blog

ISEA is known for its very full program. Such a full program is necessary and nice, but it forces you to make choices. It is impossible to see all the lectures at ISEA. During this afternoon however I am not able to choose. There are two lectures where I would like to go, but I am giving a lecture myself at the same time.

ISEA continues in Dortmund. I have driven back to the Netherlands from Essen, coming back to Dortmund on tuesday. I am amazed how close it is by car from Utrecht to Dortmund. It is just about the same as from Graz to Ljubljana. The car parking near the train station in Dortmund costs 9 euros per day. Very cheap compared to Utrecht.

You may wonder now, why do I drive all the way to Germany, to spend the whole morning listening to lectures of which I am not able to recall anything afterwards? And why do I drive all the way to a conference to spend half the day walking around the area?

The stairs went up about three stories. At that moment I wasn't even sure if I was allowed to go up there. But I wasn't the only one going around there taking photos, so I just continued following the metal structure. When I got to the top of the stairs, I realized that this was not just an emergency exit behind the restaurant. There were many people passing by, all coming from the other direction.

The symposium in Essen continued with a morning about nonhuman performativity, followed by a motion lab, which turned out to be a set of lectures just like the other days. ISEA is a symposium of lectures. That's what it is, that's what it is supposed to be and that's what it will always be.

I arrived at ISEA in the afternoon, nicely in time to attend the opening keynote by Brian Massumi. The keynote turned out to be a flow of thoughts, without a visual (powerpoint) presentation to back up the words. In general, without a visual presentation, it is extremely difficult for me to follow a lecture.

So I arrived at ISEA this weekend. The first location is Essen. Essen is one of those many cities in the Ruhr Area that I have passed by many times on the highway, but where I have never stopped to see the town. This is the first time that I am not just passing by, but that I will actually be seeing something of the town.

I'm invited to Ruhr2010 to do a lecture at ISEA2010. ISEA is the biggest International Symposium on Electronic Arts. The event will take place from August 20 until August 29 in several cities of Ruhr2010 in Germany. I've been invited to do a lecture presenting my recycling arts work, which I would like to show in connection with my work in the virtual space.

What keeps me less wondering, is the big success of Paul the Octopus. The small creature, only two years old, that became so famous foretelling the outcomes of Germany's soccer games at the world championship. Somehow it seems to make perfect sense to me, that a creature strange as an octopus, fascinates us so much.

All the way through Germany, we were listening to different German radio stations. On that certain day, each and every radio station had just one topic that needed to be discussed. In the morning the comments on the various radios were still a little sad. But as the day continued, the comments of the people on the different radio stations became more and more optimistic again. And almost all listeners who were calling in to the different radio shows agreed that it would at least be better to finish the tournament with winning the game for the third place than with loosing the game for the first place...