The fourth edition of  the Non-fiction week notes makes it a tradition. That is mainly because of the fact that the number four seems to be an important one: four members of Beatles, Olympic Games and World Championship is being held every four years, there are four terrestrial and four giant gas planets in the Solar System, mammals have four heart chambers, all insects with wings except flies have four wings and most importantly four is the atomic number of beryllium. We hope that this edition of Non-fiction week notes will be as interesting as the aforementioned facts about this great number. Enjoy the reading because we do it just 4 you.

Besides Juha, Boris and Adéla, Joske Koning, who collaborates with Boris, joined us too.

—

We are currently doing a mouthwatering research into food, food industry, sustainable farming and agriculture and much more of this interesting stuff (more info later), so I want to ask what was the best food you ate this week?

Juha: The truffle ravioli at Dauphine was my culinary highlight of the week. And in great company of our good friend Johnnie Lonsdale it tasted even better!

Adéla: During the first half of the week I was at my parents place in the Czech countryside being treated as a princess, eating seasonal food like grapes, plums, mushrooms, apples. It is a great feeling to pick plums or apples from the same tree you used to pick them 20 years ago. They are still as delicious as they used to be before.

Joske: I should say the gambas at Cafe Amsterdam, but it wasn’t the maincourse what was the best. It was the soft camembert. Although it was so young that it looked like sauce, the cheese tasted like mould cheese.

Boris: My friend Erik Spande, the owner of Chocolatl, has expanded his armada of chocolate with the addition of an amazing new chocolate bar.  The biologically-dynamic Zotter Scotch Whiskey “Highland Harvest” bar is an unbelievable marriage of fine scotch whiskey and chocolate, bringing together my two largest consumable obsessions.  I have a bar at the office, so if you’d like to try a bit… But op=op, or when its gone its gone.

As everyone knows from the last week notes, we have officially and definitely moved to a new office (Gabriël Metsustraat 8, see the picture above). Now, after some time spent here, use three words to describe it.

Juha: Quite a view.

Adéla: Red-grey-blue

Joske: Livingroom, not-finished-yet (I hope that won’t change), touchscreenwindow.

Boris: Home, Epicenter, Panorama

Besides trying to create/keep the tradition of the week notes we are also aiming for setting up regular Friday Non-fiction drinks. Why people should join us and what can they expect?

Juha: People should come for the view, the drinks, the food, the guests, the conversations, the music, the occasional YouTube video we force people to watch because it is so good, the balcony, and because it is going to be one of the rare buildings on Museumplein that will be open.

Adéla: The new office is great and we want to show it to everybody. As much as it is our working place it should also be a meeting place, because being in a company of nice people is one of the milestones of Non-fiction.

Joske: It’s my first time and I’m writing the weeknotes, so I don’t know yet. but I guess I will like it because I’ll meet people working in a complete different scene then I know.

Boris: Great people, great conversations, great ideas, great booze, great view.

Philosopher’s corner: Is keeping traditions reactionary? (This question comes in connection with setting up/keeping two new traditions of Non-fiction: the weeknotes and Friday drinks.)

Juha: No.

Adéla: I like keeping traditions and more than that I enjoy creating traditions.

Joske: Whenever you keep on giving it another shape, a tradition that already exist it’s a way reflection, which you could possibly forget.

Boris: Yes.  But this not mean that we should blindly throw away all traditions, but I would like to advocate being skeptical and fault-finding, and not blindly protecting all traditions.

Artist’s corner: One of the meetings we had this week was with the architect Lada Hrsak who was speaking about her fascination with maps. Choose one day of the last week and “draw” a “map” of the day.

Juha:

Adéla: I spent some time thinking about this question. I have a love-hate relationship with maps. Cannot read them at all, but like looking at them. This is mainly true after today visit to Het Scheepvaartmuseum. I have never thought ships, whales, globs and maps could be that interesting. I am sure that our fellow visitors must have thought that me and my friend we ironic while standing over an atlas from the 17^th century and scream enthusiastically “this is so cool”. Unfortunately, now I feel a bit overmapped to draw some, so I can only recommend you to go and see some masterpieces in the museum.

Joske: To be honest, I get frustrated and lost everyday. I live here since three weeks. When I’m on my my bike I forget to notice where I am, the good thing is that I cycle the wrong way and dicover strange places like Diemen. I’ll send you a picture of my bike. A big love and symbol for my exploration of Amsterdam.

Boris

Published 20 december 2010 - ARCHITECTURE, INTERNET, URBAN DESIGN

In a few years we will all navigate our way through the city with a smartphone. The Amsterdam version of the mobile architecture application from the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) leaves you in no doubt about that, despite the teething troubles and its limited possibilities. Soon you will be able to zap your way through the city using your telephone as a remote control device. But can this technology enhance the contact between people and their surroundings and, in the process, enhance the quality of the built environment?

Screenshot of the UAR op the iPhone with a 3D animation of the future Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Much has already been said and written about UAR, the interactive mobile architecture application from the NAi. In short, UAR enables architecture fans to obtain local information about existing, vanished or planned buildings through their smartphone, such as the iPhone. It works very simply: imagine you are walking through Amsterdam or Rotterdam and you see an interesting building; you point the lens of your smartphone at it and a layer of information about the building in question appears on your screen.

The letters UAR are an abbreviation for ‘Urban Augmented Reality’, a reference to the technology that makes it possible to look at text and (moving) images on a screen as an extra layer over the physical world around you. Currently, that is only possible using a smartphone fitted with a camera, compass, GPS and the right application, or ‘app’ as it is called. Some people attending the launch in ARCAM seemed unwilling to leave behind the recent past in which we were dependent on our sense of direction, the printed city plan and travel guides to prevent us from losing our way in the city. Just as was the case with the introduction of text messaging and email, some time will be needed before everyone recognises the usefulness of UAR. In the end, though, everyone get accustomed to the idea and accept it.

The first reports stressed the revolutionary and playful character of UAR, and rightly so. But since this new technology is still under development, it is still getting over all sorts of teething problems. If a tram passes by, for example, the magnetic compass is disrupted and the information literally flies off the screen. The additional heavy usage means your phone overheats and runs out of energy more quickly. The images are awkward looking, the shadow effects are often incorrect, and the available information is usually limited to the (building) history, official press and archive photos, and a dry list of names and dates. And then there is the drawback of the small screen and the fact that the GPS data contains inaccuracies, which means that the information is often projected just next to the desired place.

UAR (pronounced ‘you are’) also evokes associations with other online media like MySpace and YouTube that emphasise the user (you) and stimulate individual creativity, or at least suggest it. During the launch in Amsterdam, the director of the NAi Ole Bouman said that UAR enables you to give yourself (back) to the city, and vice versa, to bring the city to yourself. That sounds great, but unfortunately it is not quite true yet.

Your touchscreen does indeed put you in direct contact with your surroundings so to speak. But up to now the supply of information through UAR has been in one direction only: information is uploaded by experts and can be accessed by users, but the latter cannot add anything themselves. It is as though the city has become a television programme and your telephone is some sort of remote control device with which you can switch channel or information layer.

The city as a TV that you can zap your way through is of course exciting and educational. UAR would not have been out of place in a sci-fi movie from the 1980s or ’90s like Blade Runner, Artificial Intelligence and The Matrix, in which technology held man firmly in its grasp. But now it’s 2010 and the past decade has brought forth more flexible and social forms of technology, from open source software to social media. It is the era of such films as The Social Network and experiments with names like Wikicity and Micropolis in which interactivity, collective knowledge and the free availability of information (open source) are key. The UAR app does have the potential to respond to such developments, but so far it is not much more than a futuristic architecture guide.

Despite all its limitations, UAR is an important step in the development of a transparent and interactive city. What could be the next steps?

First, it can connect with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter so that UAR users can tell friends and acquaintances where they are and what they think of it. Internet giant Google is also moving in this direction with Google Places, which enables you to indicate where you are and leave behind tips and information for other visitors to that place. Other mobile applications like Facebook Places, foursquare and the Dutch apps Feest.je and Nulaz allow you to share your location with others, upload photos and at the same time see where your friends are and what they are doing. That will allow UAR to strengthen social interaction among users and stimulate people to offer comments and visit unknown places.

A possible next step is the addition of playful gaming elements to UAR, which will encourage users to answer questions of knowledge and take up other challenges with the prospect of a reward. The American firm SCVNGR (from ‘scavenger hunt’) is developing mobile social games such as the National Geographic Trek in which users visit and photograph the head office of National Geographic in Washington and earn a nice prize in the process. Or think of Shadow Cities, a new game in which you can conquer your own neighbourhood.

Finally, within the limits of what is now known and possible, UAR can be expanded to enable users to propose changes to the city, from the hardware (architecture) to the software (upgrading the public space). In this respect one can think of the website Verbeterdebuurt.nl and Architect-toon! from the Waag Society. The smartphone in your hand will thus become a powerful instrument with which you can not only zap between particular layers of information but also vote for architectural and urban projects. What’s more, you could project alternative proposals onto a particular site. Remote control, game console and drawing table all rolled into one.

The use of smartphones and apps is growing enormously. Just like other recent experiments with augmented reality browsers like the ARtours from the Stedelijk Museum (with augmented reality artworks that are only visible with your smartphone), the NAi must now take the next steps to enable the UAR app to grow. While the app is now essentially an interactive architecture guide that works like a remote control device for information about the city, most of the new possibilities lie in the area of social interaction, gaming, and do-it-yourself creativity. And given the impressive list of partners, from architecture centres to local authorities and architecture firms, there appears to be a lot of eagerness for this new way of supplying information.

Nonetheless, it is debatable whether an institute like the NAi is the right party to develop UAR further and take it beyond the small group of early adopters. Layar, the software supplier for the UAR app, only became successful when other commercial parties started to deploy the technology. In the Netherlands that was the Funda real estate website, which displayed all available houses for sale in one layer so that you could find your dream home as you walked through your favourite neighbourhood. It is also very well possible that property developers and estate agents will deploy the application to promote future new-build projects through a virtual layer.

The new applications explore beyond the borders of architecture. They offer more scope for the desires and personal preferences of users and place different demands on the presentation of building projects and design ideas. The combination of assertive consumers and interactive media is altering the role of the architect and setting the notion of quality on edge. It is for the NAi to decide whether it literally wants to enable UAR users to take power into their own hands.

More info
For further information about how UAR works on your smartphone, you can visit the website of the Dutch company Layar. The website architectuur.org (in Dutch) features a description of how the application was developed. The website of Amsterdam newspaper het Parool (in Dutch) also features a good report of the launch of the Amsterdam version of UAR, and the websites of the NAi and ARCAM contain special pages about the UAR app.

iPhone screenshot of Shadow Cities (“your city is a game”)

Translation: Billy Nolan

After the recent success of the sold out Viral Radio Festival 2010, Bimhuis and Viral Radio present Hyperrhythm, a programme with more innovative electronic music. The first edition of Hyperrhythm took place at this year’s North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam. Then, Dimlite, Dorian Concept, Hudson Mohawke and Mike Slott played impeccable sets.

This Thursday, Oval (Thrilljockey, Berlin), Phonophani (Rune Grammofon, Tromsø) and Mike Slott (LuckyMe, New York) will play new work. Markus ‘Oval’ Popp is one of the main artists of the glitch movement, in which technical hitches and glitches are used as musical building blocks. Sound artist Espen Sommer Eide makes his solo debut in the Netherlands as Phonophani. Previously he has performed with Alog and he has collaborated with Biosphere and Pierre Bastien. Read an interview with him by Juha. Mike Slott made his debut at the Bimhuis alongside Dimlite and Take during Beat Dimensions at the Amsterdam Dance Event in 2008. He is the musical sibling of Hudson Mohawke, Rustie and American Men. Non-fiction’s Juha will set the perimeters with rhythmic abstractions.

The programme starts at 9 pm sharp, and tickets are still available at the door. We look forward to seeing you here tonight.

Oval – Ah! from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Already after the first time I give up writing a weekly update. I admit, I’m not disciplined enough. I will now rename it “randomly timed update of current affairs.” See, much better.

What happened this time? Apart from discovering that it is possible to garden on a balcony on the 4th floor, and by doing so becoming a Foursquare mayor of my local garden supply store, I have spent most of my time on finishing my proposal for this year’s North Sea Jazz Festival. Although I have a background mostly in beat driven electronic music, playing jungle, dubstep and other asymmetric electronic music as DJ at festivals and club nights, in the years of working for Kadir Selçuk and Huub van Riel in Lantaren/Venster and the Bimhuis since 2005, I have developed an interest in electroacoustic improvised music. Early concerts I did were with Jacob Kirkegaard, Christian Fennesz, Philip Jeck and BJ Nilsen, who are all part of the unsurpassed London music label Touch. Later on I collaborated with Yuri Boselie on inviting abstract beat  producers like Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke to the Bimhuis on the Beat Dimensions nights. And in between I worked with Alog, Stephen O’Malley and Icarus.

These experiences have led to the invitation by the North Sea Jazz Festival, to programme two stages: one with beat-driven music (Yukon), and one with electroacoustic improvisation (Volga). It’s a great honour to bring my favourite musicians to my old hometown, and I find it incredibly encouraging that such a big and respected festival is open to new developments, and reserves an important part of its line up to these cutting-edge musics. We are in the midst of booking the musicians, and hopefully within a few weeks we can present an allstar line up of stellar artists. The Yukon stage on Friday 9 July will present a new generation of beat makers, the Volga on Sunday 11 July multiple generations of electronically aided improvisors.

As for the garden, it looks stunning. I just hope the grass and bamboo will survive the heavy winds. At least there’s a Moomin looking after them.