Persoonlijke aantekeningen door Niek de Greef over cultuur, politiek, media en maatschappij. Doorleefde essays over het hedendaagse leven.
While searching for something completely different (The Cathedral Effect), I stumbled upon this blog by the Lauren B company. I has an incredible wealth of information in that blog about jewelry. It is very thoroughly done and nicely written. I have no interest whatsoever in jewelry, but this blog is really good.
How I stumbled upon this blog: there is a concept in jewelry for engagement rings called Cathedral Style Engagement Ring Setting. See this post. Geeky details, lovely
How to set an incentive to create/buy a simple solutions.
The problem is that complex solutions are perceived better than simple solutions.
“It can’t be that simple”.
And complex solution have more features.
And new technologies make complex solutions even more attractive (reverse grandmother and Lindy effect), and intellectually more interesting.
We can wrap a complex solution and new technology in newspeak. Status.
A solution based on existing technology can’t beat that.
But simpler solutions can beat on quality: fit-for-purpose. Simpler means cheaper, easier to design and develop, easier to use and maintain.
Mijn vriend P. vertelt dat hij niet kan werken, of zelfs lezen, tijdens het reizen. Zodra trein, bus of vliegtuig zich in beweging zet valt hij in slaap.
Ik heb last van een vergelijkbaar verschijnsel, maar niet zo heftig. Als een vliegtuig opstijgt lijkt mijn brein zijn functies voor de helft uit te schakelen, en ik zak weg in een halfbewuste toestand. Ik kan nog een film kijken, maar vraag me niet naar details. Ik kan wat eten en drinken, maar werken gaat niet. Ik kan lezen, maar neem weinig op. Werken gaat alleen met heel veel moeite.
P. mag zich gelukkig prijzen. Hij komt uitgerust aan, ik doodvermoeid.
On the plane I give myself time to watch a movie – at home almost never. But still I don’t watch all the pulp. Next to me, my neighbor is watching Red Sparrow, a movie that doesn’t make you happy, so I watch from a distance.
I pick out this Tim Burton film: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children from 2016 with Eva Green as the mysterious Miss Peregrine. Actually, because everything by Burton can be trusted. Also this movie is as pleasantly peculiar as Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Dark Shadows.
However, no Johnny Depp in the high profile role in this film. Asa Butterfield plays Jake, a boy from an ordinary family with an agonizingly unimaginative and unpatriotic father, who has found his life’s fulfillment in bird-watching. Asa is a skinny boy who fits the cartoon character role of Jake just fine.
Jake’s grandfather turns out to have led a hidden life as a hunter of evil creatures. Jake finds himself following in his grandfather’s footsteps. He must save Peculiar Children from devil-like creatures (Samuel L. Jackson) who are targeting their eyeballs. The story is difficult to retell, but is a fairy tale with the typical Burton horror character without becoming flat horror. Fantasy and reality are pleasantly blended into a Roald Dahl-like story based on Ransom Riggs’ novel.
The station is enormously crowded. Looking over heads as we descend the escalator. Maybe normal for a Saturday afternoon, maybe extra busy because of the beautiful weather.
We take the streetcar to avoid the crowds in Damrak. At the Keizersgracht, we leave the streetcar, and I walk the wrong way, as it is pre-programmed towards FOAM, but for Huis Marseille, we must of course go the other way.
At Huis Marseille we are overtaken by three people who are busily discussing their way into the museum before us. One of them turns out to be the speaker for a lecture at Huis Marseille that afternoon: Stefan Gronert. He wrote The Düsseldorf School of Photography.
But we haven’t come for the lecture (which is held in an overly warm room on the second floor of the House). In the halls hang the works of the Bechers’ students – in the room near the reception, several works by the Bechers themselves. The down-to-earth documentary style appeals to me very much, but I find the larger formats of students such as Gursky and Struth even more telling, with their overwhelming detail.
The Bechers’ new business acumen, with its almost scientific slant, has been an inspiration for the younger generation of photographers hanging here. The industrial landscapes of Gursky and the church interiors of Struth: vacation photo of church attendance on steroids, Ruff with experimental night shots, library landscapes of Candida Höfer, Hütte’s empty cityscapes and landscapes portraying a lonely civilization. I find the works of the younger (I think) generation Sasse, Nieweg and Clement less powerful.
We walk back through the city. At the Athenaeum, we go inside, but the excess is overwhelming, back along the Jordaan and another terrace.
