Vestiges of Creation

Slik ser en satelittskygge ut på kartet. #hurtigruten on Twitpic

2011-06-21T01:55:00.001+02:00

Slik ser en satelittskygge ut på kartet. #hurtigruten on Twitpic

Rediscovery of Hurtigruten: beautiful journey along Norway's coast

2011-06-20T15:59:00.003+02:00

Thanks to nrkbeta, youtube and creative commons.

Hurtigruten 5 days TV marathon June 2011

2011-06-20T15:48:00.006+02:00

SOME FACTS: 8040 minutes of sea and arctic nature - on TV channel nrk2 and the Internet (creative commons).

BACKGROUND. Hurtigruten, the Norwegian Express Line, has for well over 100 years been the backbone of coastal Norway, bringing people and goods up and down the weatherbeaten west coast towards the north of Norway. It has struggled to survive and be prosperous in a mixed economy of private and public support and investments.

COASTAL CULTURE. More than a pure enterprise it is no doubt about a broad interaction and transportation of people and things, in fact, even dead bodies. Hurtigruten thus encompasses both daily and extraordinary transportations, as well as people experiencing nature and how to cope with it in the living coastal cultures. This TV, realworld and social media event uncovers through creative use of multimedia the encounters and experienced beauty of a number of scattered places, regions, inhabitants and families, locals and visitors to Norway's coast.

FLEET. Currently, a fleet of 11 ships service 34 ports from Bergen to Kirkenes, covering a distance comparable to the distance Oslo – Tunisia. Daily, and all year round.

WHY. Why this TV marathon from a coastal sea cruise, although among the most beautiful ones? Why are they - over in nrkbeta - doing this? It has been prepared for some months (*cf. e.g., invitation to an open-source ideation in January 2011, maybe more info to be checked here later). The idea emerged after the minute by minute 7 hours realtime show on TV, nrk2, of the railway experience from Bergen to Oslo, which achieved a lot of media attention and many viewers. But why doing more of this?According to nrkbeta's website, an article by ANDERS HOFSETH, dated 16. June, 2011:

"Primarily because we’re a publicly funded Public Service Broadcaster with a responsibility towards Norwegian culture; a responsibility for covering things important to the inhabitants of a small country, a country that in spite of, or perhaps because of our significant oil wealth has a vulnerable culture. And programmes like this aren’t economically feasible for a commercial channel; to a large amount of the public it probably seems completely useless, but to some of our viewers it can have a very high value, be something they wouldn’t get in any other way, and in twenty or two hundred years, it will be a strange document of life at the edge of civilisation from a different time."

Also, there’s the NRKbeta Doctrine, stating: "The only way to control your content is to be the best provider of it."

EXPERIENCES SO FAR. Indeed, ample evidence suggests that nrkbeta and cocreators have done it again. Provided many with a triggering enduring experience. Because this is not merely about clock-time, it is about enduring time minute by minute. It encompasses both the subjective and intersubjective experiencing of something both locals and spectators may easily relate to, like hurtigruten.

Despite nrkbeta's relatively modest reasoning about it above, #hurtigruten in realtime and on TV, cell phone and twitter etc. has become a huge event and a success already in many ways including gaining hundreds of waving families and engaged or disengaged citizens along the coast and thousands (or sometimes millions) of participating viewers. In many ways, the current journey has become an umbrella and magnet for many kinds of encounters and performances. People are active with their experiencing including often their second screens whether it is a normal mobile, smart phone, iPad or lap top, camera etc. Several twitter reports have pinpointed that even shares in hurtigruten's shipping companies have gone up as well.

Just a wild thought: Maybe some of the key share owners could perhaps consider to give something back, for instance, to the further creative work in some ways?

CONTINUED ACCESS. The live stream is available at nrk.no/hurtigruten from Thursday June 16th 2011 until the ship lands in Kirkenes Wednesday June 22nd. Info on how to download etc. can be found there as well. You can reuse but need to acknowledge the cocreators and rights.
Content licensed under Creative Commons Source: NRKbeta.no http://nrkbeta.no/2011/06/16/hurtigruten-eng/ Norsk versjon av artikkel [...]

http://nrkbeta.no/2011/06/16/hurtigruten/

MOCA! New York Museum of Chinese in America

2011-02-05T23:49:00.012+01:00

Museum of Chinese in America's new home at 215 Centre Street in New York's Chinatown. Photo credit: Pentagram.

I like the new identity program of New York Museum of Chinese in America: MOCA.
It is designed by Pentagram with this Project Team: Michael Bierut, partner-in-charge and designer; Yve Ludwig, designer (identity and signage); Rion Byrd-Gumus, designer (signage).

NEW MUSEUM BUILDING. During the past year, MOCA celebrated its first anniversary in its new home designed by the architect Maya Lin. She's done remarkable things from sculpture to architecture to landscape design. This post however is about Pentagram's identity work, though we may need some background about the museum itself.

WHAT IS MOCA. I quote from Pentagram's web pres:
- Founded in 1980 as a project to commemorate the history of New York’s Chinatown, the museum has grown over the years and is now recognized as an important national institution. In 2009 the museum relocated to a space at 215 Centre Street, a 12,000 square-foot former industrial machine repair shop on the border of Chinatown and Soho. After many years at 70 Mulberry Street, a location it shared with other community groups (and where it still maintains a Collections and Research Center), the move to the new space marked the institution’s growing confidence and optimism.

NEW IDENTITY. Here is how the identity program is presented:
- Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Yve Ludwig designed an elegant new identity for MOCA that takes its cues from Lin’s architecture. The square logos—one the museum’s full name, the other the acronym—work in combination with their typical “chop” in Chinese characters, which the designers also modified. The word “Chinese” (or, in the acronym version, the letter C) is marked with a color shift to emphasize the museum’s focus. The same square motif recurs in other layout elements and the signage. Like the space itself, the identity and graphics avoid any overt references to the clichés of Chinese or Asian culture. Instead, the identity is meant to be a neutral frame, with the subject matter of the museum’s collections and exhibitions providing the specific and authentic content. The font Verlag is used throughout.

http://pentagram.com/en/new/2011/02/new-work-museum-of-chinese-in.php

Living without money - See it on TV and you tube

2011-01-20T20:11:00.007+01:00

Trailer. Credit filmmaker and YOU TUBE.

Here is more info about the creators and links.

THE FILM TEAM:
Line Halvorsen, director
Jan Dalchow, producer
Paolo Pallavidino, producer

FILM SCREENINGS:
info@livingwithoutmoney.org
FESTIVAL DISTRIBUTION:
The Norwegian Film Institute
int@nfi.no
WORLD SALES:
info@livingwithoutmoney.org

HEIDEMARIE SCHWERMER:
ivory@free.de
www.heidemarieschwermer.com

I have not yet seen the film but looking forward to see it hopefully soon. If you're impatient there is an option to see on tv.
See it on TV

Living without money film to Oslo soon

2011-01-20T20:01:00.007+01:00

(First photo: Tone Andersen, second photo: Daniel Mazza).

Living Without Money is selected for the Eurodok Festival in Oslo, 16.-20.mars

Excerpt from synopsis:
The documentary Living Without Money portraits the life of 68 year old Heidemarie Schwermer, a German woman who made a deliberate choice to stop using money 14 years ago. She cancelled her apartment, gave away all of her belongings and kept nothing but a suitcase full of clothes. This was a decision that changed the entire outlook on her life dramatically.

Today, after 14 years, she is still living almost without money and claims she is feeling more free and independent than ever. The film follows Heidemarie in her day to day life and shows the challenges she meets by living an alternative lifestyle.

http://t.co/Rylug0o

2010-12-29T17:00:00.004+01:00

Just discovered that National Gallery has bought a Peder Balke painting.

Enjoy photo of the painting and get more info on this Norwegian artist via link here:

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/peder-balke-the-tempest

Balke was an artist able to capture the special light and magic of coastal areas of Northern Norway.

Reading Eats and Reads...

2010-12-02T22:08:00.009+01:00

READING EATS. Inspired by Italian columnist Giacomo Papi, Ingrid D. Rowland in the NYR blog (NYR=NEW YORK REVIEW of Books) reflects on how contemporary society has been revealed once and for all in the way we eat and our reading eats. "The mouth has become the most important organ..." says Giacomo Papi. "...Because eating is the only sensory, and hence aesthetic, experience that is entirely fulfilled in consumption. By destroying the work of art."

hmmm, a due warning before Xmas?
To recall that before Christmas is making rather than purely consumption time I have put in a picture of Norwegian flatbread baking. However, this could be a vanishing craft... (own photo).

BACK to the columnist: As in Italy and elsewhere, reading eats are changing in America, reflects Ingrid Rowland:
- "No one could have imagined that polar bears or the countryside would ever end when my family arrived in Corona del Mar, California, in the mid-1960s. The prevailing fantasy of those years, in that idyllic place, depended in equal measure on Walt Disney and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki; apartments and bars bore names like Outrigger or Aloha Moku, and no one’s patio was complete without a series of flaming tiki torches to lend evening parties the allure of a luau. Since then, however, the collective imagination has turned Corona del Mar into an outpost of Tuscany; the cut of meat that used to be known as a “T-bone steak” is now a “Tuscan Angus"..."

ON READS. - "What would Machiavelli or Borges make of the fact that books, at least in the US, seem to be going the way of the countryside, butterflies, and polar bears? Asks Ingrid. "For more and more publishers no longer advertise “books”; they advertise, with hammering insistence, “reads”—and reads, abetted by the very brevity of that Anglo-Saxon syllable, are acts of consumption as voracious as the meta-culinary gobble that has turned dinner into an analytical ordeal for Giacomo Papi. A read, of course, can be consummated on a Kindle, on a tablet, or on a computer, as well as between the pages of a book—perhaps that is the point of emphasizing the sale of reads rather than evoking that archaic form in which texts have so long been embodied."

OLD WORLD ACTS. "In one respect, at least, the Italians still live in the Old World," Ingrid remarks. - "An Italian lettura is not a “read” but a “reading,” a word that, apart from its long history of liturgical use among the Peoples of the Book, suggests an experience through time—like its English cognate, lecture. A lettura is a feast on slow food, an act that still retains a hint of ceremony..."

Maybe some of us Norwegians appreciate this as well when making flatbread or special gift readings such as handwritten cards for Christmas. We make it into an annual passage ceremony. Though we tend to save time by putting a few handwritten words on the cards or on preprinted letters that are put into envelopes with pictures and colourful old postcards. Any way, it needs to go quickly by slow post. Mass wired letters won't do the same job since they are less able to become family treasure readings.

SV faculty of University in Bergen 40 y 2010

2010-11-30T22:25:00.003+01:00

Here is a film in Norwegian grounded in interviews with some key figures.

https://www.uib.no/svf/artikler/2010/10/jubileumsfilmen

Design in Practice/"Design i praksis" new book

2010-10-31T10:17:00.024+01:00

"Design i praksis: designledelse og innovasjon" (in Norw.), exhibited in Norli bookstore, Oslo, October 2010. Photo: Birgit Helene Jevnaker.

31.10.2010
This autumn, we, Per Farstad and myself, have finished our new book with Universitetsforlaget.

APPROACHES FOR DESIGN AND INNOVATION. The book is dealing with creative challenges and opportunities for designing and innovating in projects with others in realworld situations. Ten transdisciplinary work approaches are introduced for projects of many kinds - in service or product development, concept development, innovation and design. We suggest the work approaches are potentially relevant across several design disciplines and other making and planning disciplines including management, and especially in the current situation where both design and management fields seem to be under scrutiny and transformation.

PERSPECTIVES ON CREATING SOMETHING. No doubt, there are currently many new or latent problems surfacing in and across projects and organizations. From many years of work practice, studies and teaching, we have learned how students as well as scholars and practitioners are often striving with both innovation and developmental work including the conception of something new and different. Or how to actually renew and strenghten something already proven to sustain its actual or potential values? These are among the questions we explore throughout the book, drawing on research and experiential insights from realworld examples.

DESIGN ISSUES AND COLLABORATIONS. The book builds on the premises that platforms and collaborations for good designing are something that is constructed and unfold in practice. It thus delineates and discusses a number of design and developmental issues and seeks to provide new or synthetized perspectives, work methods/tools, and knowledge that we suggest can help something new or existing to become attractive as well as viable in practice. This is however a continuous and often complex challenge but one that we as humans can work on - with and for others.
Any experience, comment and suggestion that can help us to improve this, is welcome. birgit.h.jevnaker@bi.no

See more on Universitetsforlaget

Live Opera in cinema / Boris Godunov

2010-10-24T12:01:00.037+02:00

LIVE OPERA IN CINEMA. Interestingly, live operas from some of the top opera houses such as The Metropolitan (the Met) are now sometimes available in a cinema theatre "near you", here in Oslo. The Met, established in 1883, now regularly transmits a number of their performances to other regions via a HD service thanks to certain sponsors. The calendar is available on the link here..

The Met's BORIS GODUNOV. Yesterday (23.10.10), I saw an excellent performance of Modest Musorgskij's opera Boris Godunov . It was broadcasted from the Met in New York to Oslo cinemas Ringen and Gimle. With a reputation for such cultural events, Gimle was sold out but Ringen could take more people. (In fact, all opera performances scheduled currently at Gimle seem easily sold out, at least it was when I booked my tickets for Boris Godunov on 25 September (for 300 NOK per ticket), whereas Ringen, a larger theatre East in Oslo still had vacant seats). Anyway, quite a large group of people still came to see and listen to this particular live opera performance also at Ringen, as did many people in other local theatres elsewhere, I presume. It was a great experience, because the singing and music by great artists and excellent performers were also dramatized with unifying aesthetic and ethical content, form and deeper meaning.
Here is a video from the initial work by Peter Stein (who later left but the work was continued by Stephen Wadsworth, see cast and production details below).

BORIS GODUNOV is a Russian epic opera - partly realistic in its drawing on Russian history and partly drawing on classical/experimental as well as folk music sources. Both music and libretto was written by Modest Musorgskij, or in English Mussorgsky (1839-1881). It is worth noting that he was inspired by Aleksandr Pusjkin's novel with the same name Boris Godunov (from 1830, though not allowed shown before 1870). Also much of Musorgskij's music were met with skepticism. It was not before his friend Rimskij-Korsakov rearranged the opera into a shorter piece and it later became performed with the brilliant singer Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin it became an international success. Later, the full complexities of Musorgskij's Boris have been rediscovered, one might say. The new Met version was, to our luck, performed with a mix of the first and second version of Musorgskij's original opera.

THE STORY in brief is zooming in on the ascendance of a new zar (tsar) and his relationship with the people or Russia at large. Boris Godunov, a bojar - who may have come to power by plotting or ordering the killing of Dimitri, the son of the former zar - has increasing doubts about his own role. Musorgskij shows us what this possibly criminal background does to the zar (he becomes haunted by a strange foreboding) and it influences his ethical relationship with the Russian people. He delivers out bread in the hope that people will forget the rumours. The people is however no unified heroic entity but rather expressed in nuanced and subtle ways by the choir as well as some noteworthy figures, for example, a couple of wandering monks (a new kind of character not common in operas at the time). In addition, the opera has a symbolic character, a fool, that tells the truth to the emperor.

THE PLOT. The opera shows the increasing self-doubts of the tsar on an enlarged background of hunger, mistrust, continued oppression of the people by the rich bojars (members of the highest ranks of the aristocracies), and political rivalry and plotting in and around Russia. This includes the false Dimitri, the Pretender, who is actually Grigorij, a former monk novice who hears about the previous political/criminal plot from his teacher, a chronicle writing old monk, Pimen. However, the young Grigorij - of the same age as would be the former tsar's son Dimitri - no more wants to become a humble monk continuing the chronicle writing. Very effectively, the book lies open on the stage floor throughout the opera and in some passages the key actors are literally in or playing on the book pages. Gregorij who reads the chronicle about the child killing, becomes filled with thoughts that he is the same age as Dimitri. Rather than justice or chronicle-writing, he wants to seize the throne for himself. When rumours begin to build up about this renegade "Dimitri", he escapes over the border to Lithunia. Later, pretending to be the next tsar, he engages in a loving relationship with Marina, a princess of Poland, who has her own ambitions for the Russian zarina throne and also is under influence of a Jesuit priest with ambitions for Russia - on behalf of the Roman-Catholic church.
It can be noted that this politically embedded love affair and Polish part of the opera was not in Musorgskij's imagination originally, it was actually inscribed into the opera by suggestion from Musorgskij's friend Rimskij-Korsakov. This latter composer also later made other, shorter versions of Musorgskij's Boris Godunov.

TOP TALENTS. Many top talents are listed in the Met's new compelling long version of Boris Godunov, among these are many excellent Russian singers such as Ekaterina Semenchuk and the German Rene Pape. The opera is sung in Russian, which is a challenge for non-Russians, of course. Rene Pape told the audience in an interview during one of the two breaks that he was "adopted" by all the Russian singers who each and all helped him express the words rightly. The conductor of this new performance is not to forget the highly creative Valery Gergiev from Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, home to the Kirov Opera and Ballet. Gergiev is also connected creatively to the Met as this opera shows.

CAST
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
Marina: Ekaterina Semenchuk
Dimitri: Aleksandrs Antonenko
Shuisky: Oleg Balashov
Rangoni: Evgeny Nikitin
Boris Godunov: René Pape
Pimen: Mikhail Petrenko
Varlaam: Vladimir Ognovenko

THE PRODUCTION TEAM
Production: Stephen Wadsworth
Set Designer: Ferdinand Wögerbauer
Costume Designer: Moidele Bickel
Lighting Designer: Duane Schuler
Choreographer: Apostolia Tsolaki

OWN BRIEF REFLECTIONS ON PARTS OF THE MET PERFORMANCE. There is much to reflect upon in this magic opera. The music and epic story are accumulating into a unifying experience in its deeper-ethical layers and original complex music style as Mussorgsky had it composed. The scene shifts are however done swiftly, without much disturbance in this "new" Boris Godunov, and the costumes are traditionally rich, even against a background on a relatively stripped down modern stage design, which may help us focus on the main drama rather than exotic detailing. We still sense the fundamental consequences of human actions and the evolving gaps between the power elites and the people. Although a relatively clean or simple, stripped down stage can help focus on the inner tensions and outer troubling times, I am not sure whether we actually hear the bells or clocks of the cathedral in the death scene. A few destiny-ringing bells or some other suggestive sounds might perhaps have helped our imagination regarding the sounds of ghosts that Boris seems to hear. But the personal drama of Boris in Rene Pape's physical gestalting comes forward clear enough any way - whether the bells actually toll or not.

If I shall dare to point to something more suffusing that could be improved, it is one aspect that comes to my mind. In Yesterday's performance, I found the Dimitri character perhaps the most "weak" one ("weak" in relative terms because they are all high-performers in terms of singing!). Nonetheless, the dramatic acting of this and a few other key roles (also prince Shuisky) could be somewhat improved, e.g., the novice monk part by the Dimitri character was not so credible. For example, he did not seem to have been spending his time in a cell as a novice with the old monk Pimen, nor did he act particularly well as a thirsty wannabe ruler. He was more credible as a man longing for love though. As to the Polish acts, however, I really enjoyed the highly seductive song and tight interplay of Marina and the Jesuit priest Rangoni, both ridden by power ambitions and sexual undertones in a credible and memorable way.

Most moving for me was, nonetheless, the whole complex of music going on and on including the expressive singing and excellent acting of the self-doubting Boris (performed by Rene Pape), such as his dying act with his children present and also the various symbolic scenes with the fool.
The last Kromy scene in the woods - when people take violently revenge over bojars and their soldiers and a woman in vain try to stop the mob's cruelties and is slaughtered while finally the fool expresses all the sorrows - shows that this scene was not meant as a simplified "revolutionary" or heroic tale of the people, it rather shows a mob seduced - in-between rival oppressors.

MORE ON THE MUSIC BACKGROUND. How could Musorgskij at a relatively young age come up with this moving, complex music? His opera Boris Godunov was first allowed to be performed in 1874 (and Musorgskij died already in 1881, at age 42). The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece.

Some enabling aspects may be his own dedicated creating and his particular teacher in a creative milieu with a handful of composing friends. As far as I have read, Musorgskij did not travel much but devoted himself to music composition (and alcohol), perhaps not surprising because his family went bankrupt and he also met much skepticism among his music contemporaries. See for example, Andras Batta (2001) Opera, p. 404.

Musorgskij's TEACHER. Although taking piano lessons from his early boyhood, Musorgskij had no full classical education. However, he was regarded as an eminent pianist, and eventually (from 1857), he started to study composition with his friend Mily Balakhirev (or Balakirev), who is regarded as the founder of the Five, a handful of composers, and its new Russian music school.

According to a Wikipedia article, I found this passage (courtesy to Wikipedia, link here):

In conjunction with critic and fellow nationalist Vladimir Stasov, in the late-1850s and early 1860s Balakirev brought together the composers now known as The Five—the others were Alexander Borodin, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. For several years, Balakirev was the only professional musician of the group; the others were amateurs limited in musical education but possessing enormous potential. He imparted to them his musical beliefs, which continued to underlie their thinking long after he left the group in 1871, and encouraged their compositional efforts. While his methods could be dictatorial, the results of his influence were several works which established these composers' reputations individually and as a group. He performed a similar function for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at two points in the latter's career—in 1868-9 with the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet and in 1882-5 with the Manfred Symphony.
As a composer, Balakirev finished major works many years after he had started them; he began his First Symphony in 1864 but completed it in 1897. The exception to this was his oriental fantasy Islamey for solo piano, which he composed quickly and remains popular among virtuosos. Often, the musical ideas normally associated with Rimsky-Korsakov or Borodin originated in Balakirev's compositions, which Balakirev played at informal gatherings of The Five. However, his slowness in completing works for the public robbed him of credit for his inventiveness, and pieces that would have enjoyed success had they been completed in the 1860s and 70s made a much smaller impact.

COMPLEX CREATIONS. According to several sources, Boris Godunov, among major operas, shares with Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos (1867) the distinction of having a complex creative history and the greatest wealth of alternative material. The composer created two versions—the Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imperial Theatres, and the Revised Version of 1872, which received its first performance in 1874 in Saint Petersburg, according to Wikipedia. These versions constitute two distinct conceptions, not two variations of a single plan. It is noteworthy that the Met version seeks back to much of the original version while also including scenes from the second one. Thus, it became an approximately 4,5 hours opera but I really enjoyed also the length - of a magic evening. Many seems to agree with this rich experience of "original Boris".

a photographer's constant creation - Anton Corbijn

2010-09-16T22:38:00.004+02:00

"i think i live in a dreamlike state and the only way to function is to create something"

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Courtesy Anton Corbijn, You Tube etc.

Ibsenmaskin / ball rolls out in the audience

2010-09-10T23:24:00.005+02:00

Ibsenmaskin: A new play based on 12 of Ibsen's contemporary plays and written for the 20th year celebration of the Ibsenfestival at the Nationaltheatret, Oslo. Direction Sebastian Hartmann, Leipzig.

Kjersti Botn Sandal tries the Zorb-ball for the first time! Music: Steve Binetti.

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COURTESY, dybwadsplass1's channel and YouTube.

Ibsenmaskin, Oslo Ibsenfestival 2010

2010-09-10T22:46:00.007+02:00

Magic moments during Sebastian Hartmann's Ibsenmaskin, premiere 26 Aug 2010, on Nationaltheatret, Oslo.
It is a thematic journey into several of Ibsen's late plays, such as Ghosts, Lady from the Sea, The Masterbuilder, Hedda Gabler.

I'd like to share with you the Love song by young actress Kjersti Botn Sandal who plays Osvald *from Ghosts.
Since I happen to know Kjersti from many summer hiking tours when she was a child, it is especially moving to listen to her song.

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Odd Nerdrum online

2010-06-18T21:46:00.012+02:00

ODD NERDRUM'S AMAZING PAINTINGS. I'd like to look more in his books, too... But this entry is about Odd Nerdrum works online. He is both on Facebook with interesting photo albums (also of other painters) and he expresses in multiple media via several webpages. Discovered this today, so now I will visit him online, a good opportunity to enjoy his highly moving paintings. For example this new one.

You see we are blind, 2010 CREDIT PHOTO & PAINTING ODD NERDRUM

Interestingly, he is now using FB to interact and communicate.
For example, suggestions for a painting's title (See above: You see we are blind).
In March, he added this invitation on FB: Unfinished painting.Can you help me with the title?
First proposal is: "You se we are blind " - Thor Kristiansen
the picture: (260x188)

Here is more on Nerdrum's works: http://www.nerdruminstitute.com/main.php

a 5,500-year-old leather shoe found 2010

2010-06-13T23:08:00.006+02:00

Courtesy for photo and text: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areni-1_shoe

The oldest piece of leather footwear in the world

FOUND IN CAVE BY POST-GRAD STUDENT. The Areni-1 shoe is a 5,500-year-old leather shoe found in good shape in 2010. It was found in the "Areni-1" cave located in the Vayots Dzor province of Armenia. According to Wikipedia, the shoe was discovered by Diana Zardaryan, an Armenian post-graduate student, in the course of excavations by a team of archeologists of Armenia’s Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography as well as from Ireland and the United States.

The team's findings were published on June 9, 2010 in the journal PLoS ONE. Interestingly, this is an open access online scientific journal. See their article "First Direct Evidence of Chalcolithic Footwear from the Near Eastern Highlands" here

Plos ONE Output
In 2006 the journal was launched in beta version and published 138 articles; in 2007 it published just over 1,200 articles; and in 2008 it published almost 2,800 articles, making it the largest open access journal in the world. This was also the year when the journal started to publish on a daily basis. In 2009, 4,406 articles were published, making PLoS ONE the third largest scientific journal in the world (by volume), tells Wikipedia. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLoS_ONE

Interesting! I learned all this navigating from an old shoe rediscovery!

Glow by Madcon and mob dancing in MGP interval

2010-05-30T01:04:00.005+02:00

In the Eurovision Song Contest 29 May 2010, "Glow" with Madcon and many people dancing in the interval were great fun! Here is some background from how the mob flashdance was orchestrated. Meet Karene Lyngholm and others, from training ground in Dusseldorf.

Stek eller bli stekt: Strid om en singlet (in Norwegian)

2010-05-26T00:22:00.008+02:00

Foto: Håvard Prestegården

Kan "kjendisbruk" av en singlet gi noen åndsverkrettigheter for kommersielle formål? Eller en god læringsmulighet for å sette igang noe. Vi snakker om en STEKEsinglet for salg, et mulig hett objekt denne sommeren!

Jeg stiller spørsmålet fordi Håvard Prestegården i Bergens Tidende (24.mai) forteller denne historien:
- Carl Eliassen (22) vant årets utgave av realityserien «Paradise Hotel».
På TV gikk han ofte rundt i en singlet med påskriften «stek! stek! stek!» og omtalte seg som en «stekare» (se annen bloggpost, min anmerkn).
Nå har Eliassen startet nettbutikk hvor han selger kopier av signaturtrøyen.
I Bergen sitter tre økonomistudenter og føler seg snytt. De sier TV-kjendisen har stjålet ideen deres. Egentlig skulle de starte et samarbeid med Eliassen. Men nå opererer Paradise-vinneren på egen hånd.

Møttes på ferie
- Denne skjorten har jeg designet, forteller Sondre Holvik (21).
- For moro skyld lagde vi fire sånne singleter da vi skulle på ferie til Magaluf sist sommer. Der møtte vi Carl. Han la merke til singletene og syntes de var kule. Han spurte derfor om han kunne kjøpe en for noen shots i baren hvor han jobbet den sommeren, forteller Holvik.

Ifølge Prestegårdens reportasje i Bergens Tidende benekter Carl Eliassen at han har stjålet noen forretningsidé.
- Dette stemmer ikke i det hele tatt. Hvem er det som har brukt denne t-skjorten? Det er det jeg som har gjort. Uten meg ville den ikke hatt noen verdi. Jeg har rettighetene. Det de sier er fake, sier han.
- Hvordan skaffet du t-skjorten som ble brukt i Paradise Hotel?
- Jeg husker ikke helt. Eller jeg tror jeg fikk den av en jeg kjenner. Men jeg husker ikke navnet hans.

RESTEN av BT-artikkelen kan du lese via link under.

Sondre Holvik er forøvrig student ved BI Bergen. Og Sondres versjon av historien kan etter sigende bekreftes av flere kilder. (Har sjekket via egen kilde. Skylder å gjøre oppmerksom på at jeg kjenner gutta littegrann via familie).
Få derfor vite mer om denne historien bl.a. her:
http://www.bt.no/kultur/media/Full-krangel-med-Paradise-vinner-1089569.html

OPPDUKKENDE MULIGHET. Denne historien viser at ting som oppstår spontant og morsomt i en liten kompisgjeng faktisk kan slå an og bli til noe. Det kan vise seg å bli en oppdukkende forretningsmulighet. Eller en god læringsmulighet for videre entreprenørskap med venner på laget.

Vil du sjekke ut mer om den opprinnelige STEKsingleten, så finner du den på www.stek.no

Stekare before and now (in Swedish)

2010-05-25T23:14:00.002+02:00

Courtesy to You Tube and user122aa — October 31, 2008 — Exempel på stekare på 00-talet och 50-talet
Category:
Comedy
Tags:
stekare bergman Sommarnattens Leende Packat och Klart

Relevance: Will Diaspora need to SCALE to "hundreds of millions"?

2010-05-16T12:14:00.002+02:00

Today I posted this comment following up Jonathan Higgins comment regarding Diaspora (see a recent post for intro):

Will Diaspora or other alternative distributed friendsfeeds solutions need to SCALE to "hundreds of millions" to be relevant? Good Q Jonathan!

On the one hand, I guess perhaps not (though I do not know the technical details).

Because I guess socially, Friendsfeeds can still become very relevant IF it can attract many cliques of friends and thus gain some critical mass also among smaller networks of friends. If it becomes popular, the new practices can then become endemic spreading further.

On the other hand, "users" have actually got new habits through FB and its huge scaling. Some might enjoy to continue friendsfeeding and group connecting through the possibilities of a huge mass social medium. While others may rather wish to move on to more free and "true" friendfeed networks. Thus it might differ among us where and how we may wish to continue. This is only some preliminary thoughts... wish to learn more!

Posted on the website ReadWriteStart by: Birgit | May 16, 2010 3:13 AM

Bad Design: destructive combinations

2010-05-15T13:15:00.004+02:00

Bad design of the week:

mobile phone cases with magnet locker. It demagnitizes your credit cards.

This is an example of destructive combinations that can emerge, Do not know whether effects are possibly thought about in advance.

Source: own recent experience in our family.

Visuelt business award 2010 to Halvors

2010-05-14T22:52:00.013+02:00

Næringslivsprisen 2010

"Design gir gjennomslagskraft for Tradisjonsfisk" (Design helps achieve breakthrough for Trad Fish, my transl.) Courtesy for photos: Fotografene Kristin&Vibeke.)

Visuelt Business Award 2010 was given to Halvors Tradisjonsfisk, a small entrepreneurial firm located in Tromsø and it is preparing, packaging and distributing Norwegian fish to restaurants and some groceries and supermarkets. Halvors is a newcomer, established in 2000, but deals with traditional clipfish, "tørrfisk" (dried fish) from Lofoten, lutefisk etc. Clip fish is fish for baccalao and other uses, see some suggestions of recipes here.

This case shows how a skilled graphic design approach (from Tank design, Tromsø) can actually contribute to building an attractive and relevant identity, a good and differentiated packaging, a meaningful presentation and so forth in close collaboration together with entrepreneurs.
- You need to respect other kinds of expertise, said Halvor Hansen, one of the cofounders to me just after receiving the Næringslivsprisen (Business award) during the Visuelt award ceremony.

LEARNING LESSONS. Although not yet fully researched in academic ways, we may learn many things from this Halvors case. Here are three suggestions:

1. Working on a skilled design approach with designers and business entrepreneurs can help even a small trad business recreate and project itself - for example, as Halvors Tradisjonsfisk. Design can help create a distinct and attractive character and elegant, differentiated packaging. A skilled designing can also form the online material on the web so as to show and tell in sensuous ways the benefits of the offerings.

(In turn, this may signal and significantly help communication with actual and potential customers, dealers, own salespeople and workers, and other interests).

2. Exploring design work with a holistic take even when starting small. Think beyond - rather than just one separate design/business issue at the time.

(Fish enterprise is also designing the fish and sharing food recipes and possible dish designs).

3. Collaborating closely throughout the design/business process may include many relevant concerns and engage entrepreneurial managers and other specialists.

(Halvors Tradisjonsfisk for example has a key person who also is a cook employed and Halvor Hansen, the cofounder has worked in fisheries for years and traveled much, he told me).

Given the awarded design but also knowing about some of the challenges of continued quality delivery and distribution for small food producers, it will be interesting to see how Halvors Tradisjonsfisk is sustaining their design/business creative efforts in the future.

Hope to learn more from Halvors!

***

Jury statement and some background info in Norwegian:
Næringslivsprisen 2010 ble delt ut under Visueltdagene på Christiania Teater i Oslo 7. mai 2010. Prisen går til en bedrift eller organisasjon som har utviklet en ny visuell identitet som et strategisk virkemiddel for å skape en konsistent og helhetlig presentasjon av bedrift og/eller produkt. Det var mange sterke kandidater til Næringslivsprisen 2010 og HALVORS var i år klar vinner av denne prestisjetunge prisen.

JURYENS BEGRUNNELSE

Halvors Tradisjonsfisk har vist godt entreprenørskap ved å benytte design på en gjennomført måte, og har gjennom de gode resultatene de har oppnådd vist at design er en viktig bidragsyter for å øke omsetning, distribusjon og merkestyrke. Designet skaper oppmerksomhet gjennom sitt nøkterne og kvalitetsbevisste uttrykk, og har en moderne tilnærming til opprinnelse og tradisjon. Halvors Tradisjonsfisk har spesialisert seg på klippfisk og tørrfisk, og gikk fra å være restaurantleverandør til å entre dagligvarehandelen med det nye designet som hovedvirkemiddel. Gjennom sitt nye design har Halvors fått stor gjennomslagskraft, noe som var en klar målsetting for prosessen. Det prisvinnende designet er utviklet av Tank Design i samarbeid med Halvors, og juryen berømmer dem for et solid designarbeid med gode resultater.

Oslo, 08.05.2010

Kilder: egen deltakende observasjon som jurymedlem i Næringslivsprisen samt linker til Halvors tradisjonsfisk og til Visuelt vinner i denne kategori 2010.
Sources: Own participation as member of the jury of the Visuelt Business award, see also links to Grafill Visuelt and to Halvors Tradisjonsfisk above.

The Four Freedoms, listen to Stallman

2010-05-14T20:32:00.007+02:00

Photo courtesy of Think Ubuntu.

SOFTWARE AS COOKING. Freedom for computer use can be compared with cooking, according to Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation. You should be able to do four things:

0. Freedom to use the recipe (or software) when you want
1. Freedom to look at ingredients and change them
2. Freedom to copy recipes and share with your friend
3. Freedom to write down your version of a recipe and give it to the community

These are four essential freedoms for software use as well.
Learn more from GNU website (courtesy http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html):

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. (END of citation)

THE PHILOSOPHER. Richard Stallman is behind the GNU project that Linux became a part of. He says nobody knows how people actually use software. Indeed, he does not want tracking of free software.
Stallman rather wants you to defend the four freedoms of free software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:051118-WSIS.2005-Richard.Stallman.ogg

The inventor's dilemmas

2010-05-13T15:30:00.004+02:00

I save this link from NY for later read: The inventor's dilemmas.

See http://bit.ly/abLu1W

Centralized or distributed friendsfeeds? Notice Diaspora

2010-05-13T13:12:00.015+02:00

The Diaspora team maxwell daniel raphael ilya

(Courtesy for photo: joindiaspora.com)

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLOITATION. Currently, much of the attention and discussions in mass media and among companies are focused on how to enter, use and exploit rapidly growing social media such as Facebook (about half of the population of Norway is apparently already having an account on FB).
However, many issues of reuse, commercialization and privacy seem yet unsolved. Would Facebook administrators for example share our FB information and emergent behaviours with corporate others such as publishing houses or magazine sellers?

While some corporations and publishing houses are debating the new media possibilities of reaching potential customers in new ways through Facebook, some users and developers are already looking for alternative and what they see as less centralized ways of sharing news and other content with friends.

THE BIG QUESTION is how to actually combine sharing content with (many or selective) others with some privacy intact or at least a degree of self-governance of your "own" information, pics, news feeds, variety of connections and other activities including both social and purchasing behaviour.

DIASPORA. Notice the alternative project Diaspora by a dedicated "boy-band" it seems, of young developers and students (from NYU). At least when you see four of them on You Tube, seems to be a devoted group of young men, check out the link below where they introduce their dedication to working on this current project. (Need to check out more on their backgrounds and interests later!)

See some introduction first here:

Is Your Startup Too Geeky? Written by Audrey Watters / May 15, 2010 http://bit.ly/cc42Vr

TEAM EXPLAINING. The current Diaspora Team is: Maxwell, Daniel, Raphael and Ilya. Hear the guys self-explaining their project here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqxQgfQD24M&feature=player_embedded

NAME BACKGROUND. Diaspora, what does it mean? A diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά – "a scattering [of seeds]")

- and according to Wikipedia it is "any movement of a population sharing common national and/or ethnic identity. While refugees may or may not ultimately settle in a new geographic location, the term diaspora refers to a permanently displaced and relocated collective."

(It is a name with a long history of meanings connected to for example exciles of people which is beyond this post).

- according to the current Diaspora project (link) is specifically "the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network."

I guess we might also associate this with the possible future alternatives, complementaries, and/or excile from FB?

Ron Callary over at Inventorspot says:

- The central premise is to replicate the Facebook user experience that’s proven popular (until recent date), but to allow the Diaspora social network to be available on users’ own personal Web servers -- called “seeds.” This differs from Facebook's centralized user interface that claims ownership of users’ content and marketable data while running roughshod over their privacy data. At the rate at which Diaspora is growing and gaining funding, if it continues at its current pace, it might be the Facebook alternative many ex-FBers are looking for.

If anyone has more info on the further work of this free and possibly antifacebook project, please share with us.

UPDATES AND COMMENTS:

Jonathan Higgins comments on Diaspora on 16 May 2010 on the ReadWriteWeb:

- Will that scale ? Time will tell.

Does Diaspora need to scale to hundreds of millions of "users" to be relevant ?

Now that's a question that's worth thinking about.

(SEE my comment in separate new post 16 May).

Visuelt days in Oslo 6-7 May 2010

2010-05-13T12:59:00.004+02:00

For two days, a bunch of graphic designers and illustrators and other interested people met in Oslo for the annual Visuelt event offered by Grafill (association for graphic designers and illustrators in Norway). The seminar was arranged in Vika Cinema and included welcome speeches, several visual screenings and a range of interesting presenters, many from international agencies and collectives. On Friday evening, it was time for the annual Visuelt Award Ceremony in Christiania Theatre. A number of awards (so many subcategories!) and much praise was shared with an enthusiastic audience as also the after-awards party time got closer.

You can see more here: ............(links to come)

http://bit.ly/9qfRoD

New Tannhäuser in Bjørvika, Oslo

2010-03-14T11:48:00.011+01:00

(courtesy for photos Den Norske Opera og Ballett)

Brilliant way of recreating Wagner's grand opera placing it in a Salvation army context. This is actualizing the opera from the old themes of whore and madonna, pleasure and sin, to also questions of being seduced and staged - even by the heavenly forces.. Salvation army leaders and followers - singing for the good for others - become seduced by own fundamentalism, rituals, and double morality. Doubt about what is the right way remains a recurrent theme throughout this opera. The intricate play of seduction is helped by comedian elements.
Stefan Herheim and his team give us highly scenic and fun qualities showing glimpses of opera history in the opening scenes and of heavenly forces in the final ones.

Brief interview with Stefan Herheim, the director here:

http://www.nrk.no/nett-tv/indeks/203381/

Key info (in Norwegian):

Opera av Richard Wagner, premiere Den Norske Opera og Ballett 6. mars.

Regi: Stefan Herheim,

scenografi/kostymedesign: Heike Scheele,

dramaturgi Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach

Roller premiere: Tannhäuser: Gary Lehman, Elisabeth: Elisabet Strid, Venus: Judit Németh, Hermann, landgreve av Thüringen: Magne Fremmerlid , Wolfram von Eschenbach: Geert Smits

***

I want to add that I really enjoyed the eminent Swedish singer Elisabet Strid as Elisabet!

The Girl and The Robot

2010-03-06T14:13:00.008+01:00

Nominated for the annual Spellemann in the category Music Videos. To be decided tonight in Oslo Spectrum, 6 March 2010.

The Girl And The Robot from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

Barefoot running

2010-03-04T20:09:00.004+01:00

Ever been impressed by Masai barefoot runners? Read a brief note in a recent Times magazine issue about barefoot running and the fivefingers' support, probably better for a modern runner not so used to run entirely barefoot. Then I stumbled over this concept again on a physiotherapist student's blog and finally I found a Scandinavian distributor, if anyone is interested (* I have no commercial interests in this).

http://www.head2foot.se/fivefingers/

Marimekko exhibition in Oslo 14.2-9.5.2010

2010-02-17T21:11:00.011+01:00

Courtesy for Photo Marianne Siebke and nrk.

This colourful exhibition recently (14.2) opened at Kunstindustrimuseet - Museum of Decorative Arts and Design - in Oslo (see National museum of art, architecture and design).

This is the retrospective travelling exhibition of Marimekko (first exhibited in 2003, so finally now in Oslo).
More info from the museum here: http://www.nationalmuseum.no/index.php/content/view/full/6955

And here you can find an article with more photos by Marianne Siebke, for nrk: http://nrk.no/nyheter/kultur/1.6967878

Siebke has interviewed Anne Kjellberg, senior curator of the Kunstindustri museum. We get to know an interesting anecdote about the woman designer Maija Isola who later designed one of the most well-known Marimekko patterns, the interlocking poppies (valmuer in Norwegian). Maija Isola had lived in Oslo, where she worked at the restaurant Gamle Raadhus (old townhall). She also visited the Kunstindustri museum and was inspired by old jugs to draw the pattern "Amfora".

In Norwegian (excerpts from Siebke's article for nrk):

Kvinnen bak valmuemønsteret

Allerede i 1949 engasjerte de designeren Maija Isola (1927-2001). Isola hadde bodd i Oslo, der hun jobbet på restauranten Gamle Raadhus. Hun vanket på Kunstidustrimuseet, og der inspirerte gamle krukker henne til å tegne mønsteret «Amfora».

Later her famous patterns for Marimekko were used on a variety of objects such as raincoates.

Prinsesse Märtha Louise i Unikko-regnfrakk.

Foto: Lars Harald J. Kristiansen /Scanpix

Marimekko is not only an example of Finnish joyful design. It has been a huge marketing success but also experienced troubled water economically speaking as a company. For some elaboration on this, based on empirical design and management research on Marimekko, see a good chapter by Antti Ainamo (1998) in the research anthology book Management of Design Alliances (Bruce and Jevnaker, eds, published on John Wiley & Sons, UK. You will probably get it via a library).

Taking a sabbatical - designer Stefan Sagmeister

2010-01-20T23:13:00.004+01:00

Courtesy to TED and Sagmeister.
Filmed July 2009, posted on TED talks Oct 2009.
Link (if problem with the video here): http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off.html

Darwin's "Origins" 24 Nov 1859 - 24 Nov 2009

2009-11-24T23:41:00.009+01:00

Photos: Birgit Jevnaker, and credit to exhibition poster and exhibits to Oxford University Museum of Natural History

One hundred fifty years ago, a book appeared in England that eventually changed how we view the world: Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

I enjoyed visiting Oxford University Museum of Natural History this August, a special exhibiton on Darwin, http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/visiting/whatson.htm

Norwegian Form's Jacob prize 2009: Egil Haraldsen

2009-11-21T14:55:00.008+01:00

Credit images/photos:
to the left - Roberto Di Trani, Norsk Form
in the middle and right - Egil Haraldsen, Norsk Form

Do you have a Dag Solstad book or another "October" book near you? Then it probably is Egil Haraldsen and Ellen Lindeberg in Exil design who designed its bookcover.

JACOB PRIZE. This week graphic designer Egil Haraldsen (b. 1952) received Norway's highest award for design and architecture, the Jacob prize, for his long achievements in visual design fields. Haraldsen has created and cocreated numerous book covers and cinema posters and served many clients well through creative collaboration over decades. He has also contributed to expressions beyond the brief and conventions.

EXAMPLE. Working recurrently with Solstad, a distinguished, contemporary writer, Egil Haraldsen is given considerable freedom, he tells Oslo's newspaper Aftenposten after the prize ceremony. It is worth noticing that Haraldsen for instance came up with the idea himself to put 'Dag Solstad', the author's name in parenthesis on the book cover, an interesting angle to Solstad's excellent and self-reflective authorship. See book cover above, from Eleventh novel, book eighteen.

Excerpt from interview with Norsk Form (in Norwegian):
- Hva er et godt bokomslag?
- Det må ville noe. Ikke være et forventet tapet, et gjesp. Det må skille seg ut, ha en idé, tanke, innfallsvinkel.

Det er ikke alltid lett. Haraldsen forteller at på slutten av 80-tallet ble designet temmet. Da begynte markedsavdelingene og forfatterne å ta mer kontroll.

- Forfattere er blitt opphøyd til guder. Noen ganger kan de komme med bilde og fonttype.
- Det er deprimerende at yrket designer ikke nyter mer respekt. Folk finner aldri på å krangle med en rørlegger eller skomaker. Men de krangler med en designer.
See full interview text in Norsk Form's website (see link below) by Katharina Dale Håkonsen.

JURY STATEMENT. Here is the jury statement (in NORWEGIAN):
Egil Haraldsen debuterte i 1983 etter utdannelse fra Grafisk avdeling/SHKS, og han har i et kvart århundre vært en av de virkelig toneangivende innen norsk bokdesign. Han driver eget
designstudio i Oslo – Exil design – og arbeider med grafisk design for kulturfeltet, hovedsaklig med bøker, filmplakater og tidsskrifter.
De fleste hjem har et utvalg av hans arbeider. Haraldsen har designet omslag for forfattere som
Dag Solstad, Kjell Askildsen, Tove Nielsen, Knut Faldbakken og Edvard Hoem. Han har definert
den visuelle profilen til forlaget Oktober og har også arbeidet med bokdesign og omslag for en
rekke andre forlag som Pax, Gyldendal, Cappelen, Aschehoug, Tiden, Kolon og Humanist.
Egil Haraldsens solide produksjon representerer en konvensjonell typografisk tradisjon og
presisjon. Samtidig søker han det ukonvensjonelle ved sin eksperimentering og reflekterte relasjon til samtid og subkultur. Hans repertoar er fra det sublime og rent typografiske til det fotografisk- illustrative og koloristisk eksessive. Egil representerer selvsikkerhet og distinkt egenart kombinert med respekt for det unike i tekst og kontekst for hvert prosjekt. Bøkene for Oktober og filmplakatene til Arthaus er utmerkede eksempler på organiske visuelle identiteter som vokser fram på grunn av langvarig, nært og respektfullt forhold mellom designer og oppdragsgiver. Kulturprodukter trenger ikke merkevarestrategi, men kvalitetsbevisst, kløktig og variert innholdsformidling som trigger sanser og nysgjerrighet.
Haraldsen er faglig fundamentalist, en vakthund for typografihåndverket, for viktigheten av
bokstavenes billedlegging av språket og en streng kritiker av faglig slapphet og selvtilfredshet. I hans debatterende og kverulerende ærlighet og satiriske humor ligger det en blod-alvorlig insistering på faglig kvalitet, kompetanse, meningsfylde, ærlighet og arbeidsmoral.
Egil Haraldsen øker tilgjengeligheten og livskvaliteten for et lesende, seende og tenkende
publikum, inspirerer kunder og samarbeidspartnere og er et utfordrende forbilde for grafiske
designere i alle aldre.

«Design oder nicht sein!»

(Source: via Norsk Form 19.11.2009. http://www.norskform.no/

See also a good interview in Aftenposten, by Thorleif Andreassen,
http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article3382354.ece
Accessed 21.11.2009

Cocreator of Central Park's Gates passed away

2009-11-19T17:49:00.011+01:00

Jeanne-Claude, creator of the "The Gates," the 2005 art installation in Central Park, has passed away. http://tr.im/FiLq

Jeanne-Claude, with Christo and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg February, 2005
Courtesy for photo: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

According to the New York Times, 19. November 2009:
- The artist Jeanne-Claude has died. She was 74. The Associated Press is reporting that the artist, who, with her husband, Christo, created “The Gates,” the 2005 art installation in Central Park, among many other works, died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm.

Comment: I did not see The Gates, but my very good friend Louise Birkeland, Bergen, did. And she was thrilled by actually walking through the Gates in Central Park. Here is a part of an appraisal by Michael Kippelman.

AN APPRAISAL
In a Saffron Ribbon, a Billowy Gift to the City

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: February 13, 2005

It is a long, billowy saffron ribbon meandering through Central Park -- not a neat bow, but something that's very much a gift package to New York City. "The Gates," by Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, was officially unveiled yesterday.

Thousands of swaths of pleated nylon were unfurled to bob and billow in the breeze. In the winter light, the bright fabric seemed to warm the fields, flickering like a flame against the barren trees. Even at first blush, it was clear that "The Gates" is a work of pure joy, a vast populist spectacle of good will and simple eloquence, the first great public art event of the 21st century. It remains on view for just 16 days. Consider yourself forewarned. Time is fleeting.

Trabant reborn as electric car

2009-11-16T22:30:00.010+01:00

No comment...except noticing!

Courtesy: Photo to the left and in the middle: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
Source: www.life.com

Photo to the right: Birgit H. Jevnaker, taken in DDR museum in Berlin, July 2009

Will it take off

Trabant Reborn as an Electric Car - Photo Gallery, 12 Pictures - LIFE

Photo in the middle (sorry so little but go to the Life website):
What's Old Is New Again: The new Trabant nT (right) and an original Trabi from 1957.

Photo to the left:
Nov 12, 2009
A visitor takes a snapshot of a restored mural that famously depicts a Trabant smashing through the Berlin Wall.

Walid al-Kubaisi inspiring Anne Grete Preus

2009-11-13T22:43:00.012+01:00

www.pluto.no/.../mk.kveld/ Walid_al_Kubaisi.htm
photo of Anne Grete © Marcel Lelienhof
Courtesy: Anne Grete Preus, see http://tinyurl.com/yl8l2rs

Anne Grete Preus' Lille Hjørne:

Fra julepresang til åpningssang (IN NORWEGIAN)

Det begynte med en fin julegave sist jul. En kjær venn ga meg et abonnement på Dag og Tid. Jeg satte stor pris på gaven for denne nynorske kulturavisa var et nytt bekjentskap for meg og jeg likte både tonen i bladet og mange av artiklene. En omtale av Peter Norman Waages bok ”Jeg” tiltalte meg spesielt, forøvrig en fin og original kulturhistorie. I omtalen brukte skribenten ord som glød og inderlighet, ord jeg er fortrolig med, men som dessverre har gått litt av moten til fordel for et litt anorektisk norsk som ofte preger de mer seriøse tidskriftene. Hvem var denne skribenten som kunne skrive om Wergeland så jeg for første gang ble nysgjerrig på mannen bak barnetog og norsk nasjonalisme? Walid al-Kubaise – ja han er nok ikke født og oppvokst på Lillestrøm eller Norheimsund tenkte jeg. I neste nummer av min julepresang (veldig fint å gi en gave som en får mange ganger!) leste jeg min første artikkel i Kubaisis serie Blekk og Blod og ble enda mer imponert. Håper dette blir en bok så jeg kan lese denne fine og personlige artikkelserien i sammenheng! Jeg har en god, gammel venninne som reiser mye i Midtøsten og arabiske land med et stort kulturprosjekt. Etter flere måneder på reise i disse himmelstrøk har hun også funnet en kjæreste der nede. Jeg følte dermed det var på sin plass å inkludere følgende lille melding i en av mine rapporter fra gamlelandet. Kjære M, …. Alt vel osv osv…….. PS Nå er også jeg blitt fan av en araber! Han heter Walid al-Kubaisi. Sporenstreks fikk jeg en mail tilbake som var en mail med to adressater:
Kjære Anne Grete og Walid ! Dere er tvillingsjeler og jeg er glad for å sette dere i forbindelse med hverandre så får dere selv sørge for å treffes. Hilsen M
Jeg tok oppfordringen på strak arm og bare noen dager etter satt jeg på Walids al-Kubaisi kontor i Dag og Tid og drakk kaffe mellom de overfylte bokhyllene. Den samme varmen og nysgjerrigheten som jeg hadde sett i artiklene hans lyste ut av de brune øynene. Med meg fra dette møte hadde jeg to gaver. Det var en diktsamling av Muhammad al-Maghout Gleden er mitt yrke, som Walid hadde oversatt til norsk og hans egen artikkelsamling Norske poteter og postmodernistiske negere. Begge skulle få betydning for meg i skrivearbeidet.

På side 11 i artikkelsamlingen beskriver Walid hvem han er i en liten orddans i identiteter. Og plutselig slår det meg at dette er en sang! Jeg mailer på nytt til Walid og spør om han kunne tenke seg å skrive denne teksten sammen med meg. Selvfølgelig svarer denne vennlige mannen ja og vi avtaler et møte ved mitt kjøkkenbord. Etter et par treff og en god kaffe på benken ved siden av Welhaven statuen på Riddervollsplass har jeg fått så mange gode bilder og tanker at det er nok til mer enn en sang og jeg innser at dette må bli en sang om Walid og om at vennskap handler mer om sinnelag enn at en har hatt samme pålegg på skolematen. Noen dager senere sendte jeg først utkastet til hovedpersonen og mottok igjen et vennlig svar. Hvor lite Oslo er fikk jeg forøvrig bekreftet når Marcel Leilienhof kom innom Rainbow studio på en liten reseach før han kom for å fotografere meg i innspillingsarbeid med tanke på coverfoto. Jeg hadde akkurat startet med den første grunnsporet på Walids sang og medprodusent Jan Erik Kongshaug og jeg prøvde ut litt ulike tempo. Før jeg hadde sagt noe om låta forteller Marcel at han kjenner Walid godt. Fin fyr, er den presise beskrivelsen han gir og jeg blir enda mer fornøyd med at jeg har skrevet denne sangen! Før Marcel er ferdig med sin befaring er sangen spilt inn.
I går kveld var Walid en av mine gjester da jeg inviterte alle som har hatt noe med Nesten Alene å gjøre på en ettermiddagsfest på mitt kjøkken. Jeg føler av og til at jeg har besøk fra en ungdomsklubb når jeg nå om dagen treffer de fine folka på Warner Music. Er det gjengen der som blir yngre og yngre eller er det jeg …… har tross alt hatt Warner som tilholdsted for arbeidet mitt i 22 år!
Etter at Erland og jeg fremførte sangen holdt Walid en fin tale om identitet for oss. Den konkluderte med at Ibsen tok feil! I løk-scenen fra Per Gynt letes det etter en kjerne i mennesket, men Walid sier det er lagene som er vår identitet og løken bærer frukter når vi planter den ut i menneskenes hage. Da kan den blomstre selv om den er lag på lag og ingen kjerne har! Å se disse unge menneskene bli like forført som meg når Walid sjonglerer med ord, kiler Ibsen under haka og sender takknemmlige tanker til Gilgamesh og forteller om sine 5000 år gamle tårer, var en fantastisk opplevelse.
Både julepresangens avsender og min barndomsvenn M var sammen med oss på kjøkkenet denne kvelden da Walids sang avsluttet sin tilblivelsesreise. Det skal bli spennende og se om den har nok i seg til å komme seg videre på en egen hånd.

Oslo , 7.nov 2009
Publisert 08 Nov 2009
Tilbake
design © treepixel 2008
photo © Marcel Lelienhof

PERSONAL COMMENT: I found this by chance a couple of days ago. What magic, I thought, here two of my favorite poets had come together by good chance circumstances and a song was born. A lesson to learn is to continue give the special Dag & TId newspaper as gift to friends for Xmas! Then good things may happen...

Oxford Scholarship in the name of Neda

2009-11-12T01:04:00.006+01:00

After Guardian 11 Nov 2009
A demonstrator holds a photo of dead Iranian student Neda Agha-Soltan during a protest in New York
COURTESY Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Queen's College Oxford naming philosophy scholarship after young student Neda Agha-Soltan killed in Tehran.

The first holder of the scholarship, Arianne Shahvisi, is studying for a master's degree in the philosophy of physics. In a statement on the college's website, she said: "It is a great honour to be the first student to receive the scholarship in the memory of Neda Agha-Soltan, which is particularly meaningful to me, being a young woman of Iranian descent also studying philosophy."

BACKGROUND. Guardian informs that Queen's College announced the graduate scholarship in memory of Neda Agha-Soltan who died in June at the age of 27.

Her final moments were captured on a mobile phone and broadcast round the world, making her a symbol of Iranian resistance.

A donor contacted Queen's College after her death, to set up the scholarship in philosophy, the subject she had been studying, for Iranian students. The first recipient is now studying at Queen's.

The college said today that a letter it receieved from the Iranian embassy in London said Agha-Soltan's death had been staged by enemies of the regime. The letter accused the university of joining a "politically motivated" campaign in creating the scholarship.

Queen's replied that donors are allowed to decide what to call any scholarship they fund. The name of the donor of this scholarship has not been made public.

Professor Paul Madden, provost of college, said: "The college is keen to support graduate students and this scholarship will help Iranian students to study at Oxford, regardless of their financial background.

"Donors make their own decisions, within reason, on how to name scholarships that they fund.

"In this case, the donor who was instrumental in establishing the scholarship is a British citizen and is well known to the college."

ON NEDA AGHA-SOLTAN. See also another blog entry from this summer.

Leadership in Action 10 years in action

2009-09-25T00:52:00.001+02:00

10 years
This autumn is the tenth year for arranging the Leadership in Action program, a final special leadership and organization program in the Bachelor of Management executive education of BI Norwegian School of Management. On 18 august 2009, most of the teachers and administrative supporters involved were meeting up for a FAGSEMINAR at BI. Kari-Mette Mørdre made the very good WHITE LADY cake herself. I think the photos suggest lots of good spirit in LiA.

BRIEF BACKGROUND. It originates in an initiative Spring 1998, when a program proposal was developed by two associate professors, Agneta Karlsson and myself with encouraging support from a few BI administrators (incl. Dag Aadne Sandbakken).
Back then, Agneta and I were both newly recruited to BI. A suggestion from our head of Dep Rolv P. Amdam put the two of us together on the task.
Accidently, it turned out that we had ideas, backgrounds and hope for approaches, which were not difficult to tune. Complimentary competences and many a good laugh together probably also helped make the proposal real quickly, we were both eager to start something new & somewhat different from conventional, mainly one-way classroom teaching, although we kept, and tried to strengthen, the theoretical inquiry - by good scholars as well as students themselves.

In brief, we wanted the student to go on an active learning journey with other adult learners - from the initial grounding when formulating own challenges, to learning to find own literature to respond to own themes of interest, and grounding this in both theoretical reflections and own good examples and experiences. Leadership in Action allows to explore all this further in own term paper project - doing small studies in own organizations. The latter is not unique for this course, but some other ingredients were perhaps more unique such as finding your own literature, writing a synopsis and engaging further via a special synopsis exam. Or doing ARL tasks and reflective dialogues as part of the learning trying to weave the various aspects together in an experience. Of course everything was not so clear by then, but these aspects emerged soon in our development and experimental work with the course.
We also tried to respond to the adult and diverse learner by having a blend of good ingredients and ways of learning in each learning module - theory lectures preferably with some research frontier critical reflections, student group exercises in the form of action reflection learning, insights from selfreflective practitioners as guest lectures and lots of dialogues. In the process, when becoming the first teachers of the course, we learned to really appreciate the many spontaneous and emergent possibilities for learning among experienced adults from many parts of business and the society.

The program became approved already in 1998, yet it turned out that it was too late to launch it that same year. So first course realization was Autumn 1999, that is, ten years ago. It started with one class offered by BI's Net studies, teachers were both Agneta and myself, as said, and Kjersti Hatlevold and Boas became excellent adm supporters. We had great fun doing this together!

Later on, another class started in Oslo and one in Bergen and eventually 6 classes were up and running, i.e., from 2007/2008 (And some time before that, Agneta had stepped down and also moved back to Åland, but even before that, or later on, many other good persons were recruited as local responsible teachers such as Stein Lavik, Roald Nomme, Tonje Haalien, Randi Skare, Elisabeth Seim, Ragnhild Wiik, Frode Solberg, Leif-Runar Forsth, Jennifer Teague and Benedicte Brøgger and also several administrators became key and have contributed recurrently to the program).
This autumn it is 8 classes: 1 Net studies, 2 in Oslo, 1 Bergen, 1 Stavanger, 1 Drammen (new) and 1-2 Stavanger coarranging with and for Kristiansand.

This brief story is summarized after memory for this blog and is only one initial personal part of the background, of course. It is way much more to say about the further development of content, and the students' manifold practice backgrounds, searching abilities and course activities. What we have encountered and what we try to bring about in this course, may be another posting.
Just like to add that the name Leadership in Action, (or sometimes called just LiA) came later (an idea/initiative from me, to help signify its identity and orientation with a short name).

More on avatar Colonel Pessian

2009-07-11T20:41:00.007+02:00

Here are some more tweats regarding the colonel Pessian, the avatar for Oxfordgirl, a voice twittering for people opposition in Iran:

oxfordgirl @OnefortheTable Colonel Mohammad Taghi Pessian, Iranian hero who was executed by Reza Shah 4 not accepting election crook PM #iranelection (about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck)

@OnefortheTable he started rebellion by ppl Khorasan and nearly defeated Shah. His head was cut off and displayed Tehran #iranelection

oxfordgirl @durk00 Great. That is Colonel Muhamad Taghi Pessian, a great Iranian hero who died for freedom #iranelection
1 day ago from TweetDeck

THE GREAT THING. I like to add this from today's twittering by oxfordgirl: "The great thing about freedom is that I can write what I want and others are free not to believe it or read it."

Oxfordgirl's avatar

2009-07-11T13:54:00.021+02:00

Colonel Pessian
AA 1-441 First lieutenant Mohammad Taqi Khan Pessian
Courtesy: The Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (IICHS) Copyrigth © 2008 IICHS. All Rigths Reserved
The reproduction of articles is free by announcing the resource. Designed by RayanKaveh co. Source: http://www.iichs.org/index_en.asp?id=1680&img_cat=104&img_type=0

ON TWITTER and in the midst of the Iranian people's movements, there is an interesting communicator called @oxfordgirl. S/he is presenting her bio on twitter in this way: "I'm a writer, a literary agent and have a consultancy that helps writers with their books, plays and film scripts. In my spare time I dabble in politics."
Her picture (avatar) is an edited version of Colonel Pessian, this is not presented explicitly in the profile. However, reference to the Colonel has emerged but only a few places in the tweats and dialogues with others: "...There has never been a hero like the Colonel #IranElection" (about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to NN. (Accessed 11 July 2009.)

FOLLOWING. I have followed oxfordgirl (and also the persiankiwi and others) since the (flawed) election results were announced in June 2009. I was immediately struck by the particular gestalt, a personal voice mediated via the Colonel avatar and also the sometimes shifting aestetic background of this profile site hinting to literary and historic references and beauty of the Persian past.

A COLONEL FROM PERSIAN HISTORY. Who was this colonel, I've wondered. And why would this oxfordgirl choose a hero colonel for #Iranelection current twittering? I searched for various persian colonels but were not sure and did not find the right photo either. Today I eventually hit upon the right colonel since his name was used in a twitter dialogue, oxfordgirl with NN. Visiting NN I found the Colonel's name, at last:

"@oxfordgirl Amazing that you know Colonel Pessian. Our history is amazing indeed. Many ppl stood up against oppressors #IranElection"

According to Wikipedia, Colonel Mohammad Taqi-Khan Pessian (1892 - 3 October 1921) (also Colonel Pessian or Pesyan "Pesseyan"), born in Tabriz, was a popular military leader of Iran.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Pesian

According to an article in IICHS, "During world War one and invasion of Iran by other powers, his bravery in Mosalla battle became known to all. He went to Germany to attend a course of aviation. He returned to Iran and was sent to Khorassan as the head of Gendarmerie. Following Seyyed Zia's coup and the formation of the new government, he was on mission to arrest Ahmad Qavam. He confiscated his properties and sent him to Tehran under guard himself became the acting governor of Khorassan."
"Colonel Pessian was a brave man; at the time of death, he was only thirty years old. He was devoted to Persian literature and music. He has let some poems, translations and articles behind."

DOUBLE MAGIC. So there I guess are the roots of double inspiration - brave (& probably just) fighting for Persia and an art-maker including translating literature. A crossover figure familiar with several cultures and with believable personality.

However, it is more to this reuse of a historic figure, the colonel Pessian, as an avatar for a brave actor-networker in the current people opposition against the flawed election and for a more people-grounded governance. Notice the way oxfordgirl is twittering. What is interesting is for example that @oxfordgirl in fact do not defend violent opposition, s/he is recurrently speaking against violence... in spite of violent basij she insists on not using the same means back.

SOME TWITTER EXAMPLES (*reaccessed 11.7.2009):
1) @jim1010 he is an old dying man, nothing can be achieved by violence against him. Not sure he will survive much longer #iranelection (about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to jim1010).
2) The events of last few weeks have transformed image of Iran in the world, they have seen a noble & heroic ppl not terrorists.
#Iranelection (about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck).
3) @Bergen2 a wonderful generation of young ppl prepared to die for freedom and justice. #iranelection (about 14 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to Bergen2).
3) This movement is such an example to the world. Calm and dignity and sacrifice #iranelection
4) Hate will not win this battle, only love of a country and its ppl #iranelection
5) We must learn from history, enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. #iranelection #iranelection Beware those wnt 2 use Green 2 grab power (about 15 hours ago from TweetDeck).
6) No 1 in Sea of Green has any intention of killing Mullahs or anyone . Pray that U nevr have 2 take the life of another human #Iranelection (about 15 hours ago from TweetDec).
7) @oxfordgirl recently shared this reflection: "RT @justtash71: Heroes are not born they are created in times of need #iranelection So true.! " (about 15 hours ago from TweetDeck).

The work of an artist...

2009-07-07T21:06:00.001+02:00

The work of an artist is to change the value of things. @yokoono July 2009

Prize for 'Sun in the box' cooker

2009-07-07T20:47:00.005+02:00

Jon Bøhmer, the entrepreneur behind the Kyoto box get media attention via e.g. BBC and Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

"A cheap solar cooker has won first prize in a contest for green ideas.

The Kyoto Box is made from cardboard and can be used for sterilising water or boiling or baking food.

The Kenyan-based inventor hopes it can make solar cooking widespread in the developing world, supplanting the use of wood which is driving deforestation."

Source: http://twurl.nl/l153sa

Heia Jon! Who is from Hedmark, Norway.

One doctor who tried to save Neda when shot Saturday

2009-06-25T23:30:00.002+02:00

"Why we protest"

2009-06-22T00:09:00.003+02:00

Elegant slideshow, anonymous post, from "Why We Protest: Iran" http://bit.ly/11b4tr
Found it via Twitter@TimOBrienNYT

A reaction on Neda

2009-06-21T23:49:00.004+02:00

Many people have shared their feelings about the killed Iranian woman Neda. A British blogger, Jenny, wrote the following as part of a longer post:

- Saturday night was an extraordinarily harrowing and humbling experience. I followed the events though the hashtag and regular ReTweets from @debaucherydean who did a great job filtering out some of the noise, and at one stage organised a phone campaign to the Foreign Office to ensure their Tehran embassy was open to the injured. At one point a video was posted showing the aftermath from the shooting of a young woman. She was being carried by a group of protesters and they laid her on the road as her father ran over. At first you could see no sign of a wound. As she lay their her eyes glazed and then blood started to seep out all over her face, from her eyes, from her nose, from her mouth… and then she died. It was the most stark and upsetting video I have ever seen and to know It had happened just moments earlier made it all the more real. This video brought home the plight of the Iranian protesters, with heavy heavy thud. We later found out that her name was Neda. Her face with live with me for a long time. I’m not sure whether to post the link to the video. If anyone wishes to see it then I guess you can track it down.

Other tweets that night were for information between protesters. Advice was given as to how to be protected from chemical attack. Information was posted as to which foreign embassies were taking in the injured. We also say great compassion from the protesters. One picture showing a fallen riot police motorcyclist being shielded by a protester was particularly humbling.
---
JENNY ends by also providing some info on Twitter:

- A Twitter week from the mundane to the vital. Twitter Terms Explained :

Tweet = a short message under 140 characters, can contain links to pictures or videos

@username = your twitterer username

Followers = the people / feeds that you follow and follow you

RT or ReTweet = a tweet passed on

Hashtag or #something = a webpage automatically created to elicit shared real time contributions on a topic

Posted by Jenny Harvey at 22:02 Source: http://jenny-vs-theworld.bl...

Neda - a victim of brutal action in Tehran

2009-06-21T22:17:00.009+02:00

Courtesy: arta07
http://twitpic.com/817ft

According to Iranian sources via Twitter and elsewhere, Neda Soltani was a 27 year old philosophy student in Tehran. She was with her father when she was brutally killed on the street.

She has become a martyr, and a symbol, for the uprising for human rights and free election in Iran and she is becoming known for the supporting world.

Neda means voice in Farsi. Voicing is what many women and men are doing just now on the streets and thru all kinds of media.

Later on Sunday 21. June I found a reference on Twitter to a new Wikipedia article: RT @idrawhouses Neda (Iranian protester)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://bit.ly/8cDwu

Twitter on the Barricades: 6 lessons learned

2009-06-21T20:01:00.002+02:00

New York Times published this today:
- http://tinyurl.com/nxcsp2

Extracts, facsimile *courtesy to NYT
June 21, 2009
Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned

By NOAM COHEN
Political revolutions are often closely linked to communication tools. (...)

But does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means — individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites — were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion. As the Iranian government restricts journalists’ access to events, the protesters have used Twitter’s agile communication system to direct the public and journalists alike to video, photographs and written material related to the protests. (...). So maybe there was no Twitter Revolution. But over the last week, we learned a few lessons about the strengths and weaknesses of a technology that is less than three years old and is experiencing explosive growth.

1. Twitter Is a Tool and Thus Difficult to Censor

2. Tweets Are Generally Banal, but Watch Out

3. Buyer Beware

4. Watch Your Back

5. Twitter Is Self-Correcting but a Misleading Gauge

6. Twitter Can Be a Potent Tool for Media Criticism

THe article concludes: "Just as Twitter can rally protesters against governments, its broadcast ability can rally them quickly and efficiently against news outlets. One such spontaneous protest was given the tag #CNNfail, using Internet slang to call out CNN last weekend for failing to have comprehensive coverage of the Iranian protests. This was quickly converted to an e-mail writing campaign. CNN was forced to defend its coverage in print and online."

Source: Cohen, 2009 The New York Times, 21.6.2009 see above link.

An eyewitness from Iranian hospital

2009-06-21T12:46:00.003+02:00

I post this eyewitness report I found on a blog, it seems authentic.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2009

"What I have witnessed"
A powerful note from a female medical student in Iran, translated from Farsi by a trusty reader.

Hello,

It's painful to watch what's happening.

I don't want anything to do with what has been said this far, as I neither have the strength nor the resilience to face all these unfathomable events.

I only want to speak about what I have witnessed. I am a medical student. There was chaos last night at the trauma section in one of our main hospitals. Although by decree, all riot-related injuries were supposed to be sent to military hospitals, all other hospitals were filled to the rim. Last night, nine people died at our hospital and another 28 had gunshot wounds. All hospital employees were crying till dawn. They (government) removed the dead bodies on back of trucks, before we were even able to get their names or other information. What can you even say to the people who don't even respect the dead. No one was allowed to speak to the wounded or get any information from them. This morning the faculty and the students protested by gathering at the lobby of the hospital where they were confronted by plain cloths anti-riot militia, who in turn closed off the hospital and imprisoned the staff. The extent of injuries are so grave, that despite being one of the most staffed emergency rooms, they've asked everyone to stay and help--I'm sure it will even be worst tonight.

What can anyone say in face of all these atrocities? What can you say to the family of the 13 year old boy who died from gunshots and whose dead body then disappeared?

This issue is not about cheating(election) anymore. This is not about stealing votes anymore. The issue is about a vast injustice inflected on the people. They've put a baton in the hand of every 13-14 year old to smash the faces of "the bunches who are less than dirt" (government is calling the people who are uprising dried-up torn and weeds)

This is what sickens me from dealing with these issues. And from those who shut their eyes and close their ears and claim the riots are in opposition of the government and presidency!! No! The people's complaint is against the egregious injustices committed against the people.
POSTED BY EVERY IRANIAN AT 2:40 PM
LABELS: IRAN, IRANELECTION

Iran today: what is happening now?

2009-06-21T12:00:00.007+02:00

I can only say, stop the killing. Respect the dignity of people, along the lines Obama said.

Mousavi yesterday, Sat 20.6.2009

http://different-ways.co.cc/?p=332

Mousavi message on Twitter:
- I am prepared For martyrdom, go on strike if I am arrested #IranElection
(about 17 hours ago from web)

Yet, there is much confusion now in Tehran. The big Q is, what happens next?

Now people asks, acc to twitter sources, where is Mousavi?

And 5 members of the Rafsanjani family (he was expresident) is said arrested. Worrying news.

What is happening behind the scenes?

People suffers in the streets.

Women in the forefront of Iran upraising

2009-06-20T22:34:00.007+02:00

Women in the forefront (of the protests)... Says Azar Nasifi, author of Reading Lolita in Iran on CNN today.

This is noticed also when twittering, many women are very active and well linked with other protesters it seems. Cannot name them here as yet.

Retweat, do not know if confirmed
@IranRiggedElect: Zhila Baniyaghoob (journalist, women's rights activist) has been arrested (via @iranbaan) #iranelection

Do not know where Rafsanjani's daughter is at the moment, it seems she is still in Iran (she and a brother were probably stopped leaving Tehran, according to previous tweats).

Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of Mousavi stepped up today for the people's march 20.6.009.

Power play in Iran

2009-06-20T12:21:00.004+02:00

The Independent reporter Robert Fisk suggests this thesis:

"...Because the fundamental conflict in Iran is being fought not on the streets of Tehran – a mere tragic, brutal sideshow that could soon become a bloodbath – but beneath the cupolas and minarets and pale blue tiles of the mosques of Qom."

http://tinyurl.com/nxsk3g

Robert Fisk on the difficulties to check what is truth in Iran

2009-06-20T11:44:00.003+02:00

20. June 2009 The Independent correspondent Robert Fisk reflects on the challenges to know what is truth or fantasy in Tehran
Source: http://tinyurl.com/nqnj7o
"...So let's take a look at those Iranian elections. A fraud, we believe. And I have the darkest doubts about those election figures which gave Mousavi a paltry 33.75 per cent of the vote. Indeed, I and a few Iranian friends calculated that if the government's polling-night statistics were correct, the Iranian election committee would have had to have counted five million votes in just two hours. But our coverage of this poll has been deeply flawed. Most visiting Western journalists stay in hotels in the wealthy, north Tehran suburbs, where tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters live, where it's easy to find educated translators who love Mousavi, where interviewees speak fluent English and readily denounce the spiritual and cultural and social stagnation of Iran's – let us speak frankly – semi-dictatorship.

But few news organisations have the facilities or the time or the money to travel around this 659,278 square-mile country – seven times the size of Britain – and interview even the tiniest fraction of its 71 million people. When I visited the slums of south Tehran on Friday, for example, I found that the number of Ahmadinejad supporters grew as Mousavi's support dribbled away. And I wondered whether, across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iran, a similar phenomenon might be discovered. A Channel 4 television crew, to its great credit, went down to Isfahan and the villages around that beautiful city and came back with a suspicion – unprovable, of course, anecdotal, but real – that Ahmadinejad just might have won the election.

This is also my suspicion: that Ahmadinejad might have scraped in, but not with the huge majority he was awarded. For with their usual, clumsy, autocratic behaviour, the clerics behind the Islamic Republic may have decreed that only a greater majority for the winner could decisively annihilate the reputation of its secular opponents. Perhaps Ahmadinejad got 51 per cent or 52 per cent and this was preposterously increased to 63 per cent. Perhaps Mousavi picked up 44 per cent or 45 per cent. I don't know. The Iranians will never know, even though the Supreme Leader told us yesterday that the incredible 63 per cent was credible. That is Iran's tragedy.

Yes, Ahmadinejad remains for me an outrageous president, one of those cracked political leaders – like Colonel Ghaddafi or Lebanon's General Michel Aoun – which this region sadly throws up, to the curses of its friends and to the delight of its enemies in the West. And the Islamic Republic itself – while it has understandable historical roots in the savagery of the Shah's regime which preceded it, not to mention the bravery of its people – is a dangerously contrived and inherently unfree state which was locked into immobility by an unworldly and now long-dead ayatollah.

And those nuclear arms? How many of us reported a blunt statement which the Supreme Leader and the man who ultimately controls all nuclear development in Iran made on 4 June, just eight days before the elections? "Nuclear weapons," he said in a speech in which he encouraged Iranians to vote, "are religiously forbidden (haram) in Islam and the Iranian people do not have such a weapon. But the Western countries and the US in particular, through false propaganda, claim that Iran seeks to build nuclear bombs – which is totally false..."

There are few provable assurances in the Middle East, often few facts and a lot of lies. Dangers are as thick as snakes in the desert. As I write, I have just received another call from Lebanon. "Mr Fisk, a girl has been shot in Iran. I have a video from the internet. You can see her body..." And you know what? I think he might be right."

Aung San Suu Kyi 64 years 19 June 2009

2009-06-19T21:17:00.005+02:00

Courtesy for photo THe Guardian, Getty.
Burmese demonstrators in New Delhi pray for Aung San Suu Kyi on her 64th birthday. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images/AFP/Getty Images

Aung San Suu Kyi is 64 today.

"She marks this milestone, as she has so many before, in detention – this time within the confines of Rangoon's notorious Insein jail, almost two decades after the election victory of her party.

Millions in this country have never seen Aung San Suu Kyi but she remains the thread which connects many of them to hope
They've never heard her speak. Many probably have only a vague idea of her views. But they know very well what she represents. They know very well how their lives have changed for the worse in the two decades she has been gone and what is at stake in this trial.

Ranged against her and the other brave people who struggle for a better future is an intimidating apparatus. An army over 350,000 strong. A different intelligence organisation for every day of the week. Eyes and ears everywhere. Crushing of the most minor displays of dissent. Yet for the last few weeks this unequal contest has shrunk itself down to a lone figure in the courtroom.

Aung San Suu Kyi once said that those struggling against oppression had no alternative but to draw on their "own inner resources" as they fought for their inalienable rights "as members of the human family". It's this core of dignity and determination that has won the admiration of the world ever since and which has shone through in her court appearances. Poised and dignified. Utterly assured. Mixing humour and seriousness and showing no hint of exasperation at the absurdity around her.

One could be forgiven for wondering who was on trial, captor or accused."

Posted by
Mark Canning Friday 19 June 2009 12.19 BST
guardian.co.uk
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Aung San Suu Kyi spends her 64th birthday in Rangoon's Insein jail
Latest post in a series by the British ambassador in Burma, Mark Canning, one of the few outsiders who has been allowed into the courtroom during the trial of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mirriaam's hand raised for freedom in Tehran

2009-06-19T20:53:00.005+02:00

http://img.piqlet.com/img0623.jpg
18 june. Imam sq. my hand :)

The world is watching and twittering...

2009-06-19T18:28:00.003+02:00

Oxfordgirl twittered this afternoon:

"I went for a cup of coffee and there were more than 5000 new tweets on #iranelection #tehran #gr88. The world is truely watching."

The Independent today: Cockburn commenting on Iranian uprising

2009-06-19T10:29:00.009+02:00

Courtesy: GETTY and the Independent (see link)
Protesters hold up a poster of Ayatollah Khomeini during a demonstration against the Shah on 1 January 1979
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/history-suggests-the-coup-will-fail-1708996.html#

History suggests the coup will fail, according to Patrick Cockburn, who reported from Iran during the 1979 revolution. In an article today he reflects on the fall of the Shah and explains why the current uprising is very different

Friday, 19 June 2009
"At first sight, what is happening in Tehran today looks very like the extraordinary events of the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago. But how deep do the similarities go? On 2 December 1978, two million Iranians filled the streets of central Tehran to demand an end to the rule of the Shah and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the most popular revolution in history. At night, people gathered on rooftops to chant "Allahu Akbar – God is Great". In the daytime, mass rallies commemorated as martyrs the protesters who had been killed by the security forces.

The methods of protest are very similar."
-"The spectacle, the symbols, and the language in Iran in 2009 are similar to those present in 1978-9, but the political forces at work could not be more different. The protesters then were much stronger than they looked; those of today have the odds heavily stacked against them."

18 June 2009: Sea of Green in Tehran

2009-06-19T09:31:00.006+02:00

18 June,Imam sq rally

Courtesy: Mirriaam,
http://twitpic.com/7q5l6

Zan's editor Faezeh Hashemi

2009-06-18T15:23:00.004+02:00

Because of the current situation in Iran, it may be interesting to learn more about some potentially key figures. Here is an old interview with Faezeb Hashemi, former Parliament member, former editor of Zan (Woman) and daughter of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Meeting Faezeh
The rise and fall of a talented woman

By Massoume Price
October 5, 2000
The Iranian

The first time I met Faezeh Hashemi was in December 1998, a day after my arrival in Tehran after 15 years of absence. We had never met but corresponded, exchanged gifts and knew about each other's private life. After the first Muslim Women's Olympics in Tehran in 1993, she sent me a copy of her book with a memo. Later on, being sarcastic, I sent her a see-through chiffon blouse and to my amazement I received word that she loved it. I still wonder where she might wear a blouse like that?

http://www.iranian.com/Features/2000/October/Faezeh/index.html

BBC News covering Iran protests

2009-06-17T22:50:00.000+02:00

Industrial designer investing in Saab

2009-06-17T21:52:00.010+02:00

Today it was announced that the designer Bård Eker via his 100 % owned company Eker Group is actually investing in the Swedish car-maker SAAB together with some other investors. Saab is owned by GM and is not making any money, rather it has been in big debts (today "akkord" solution was agreed upon).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPDwncq36GU

Today in Tehran

2009-06-17T21:47:00.003+02:00

Source: Twitter today via @mirriaam

Why blogging is helpful for innovating

2009-06-17T21:08:00.003+02:00

http://www.tendocom.com/view/behind-the-scenes-the-impact-of-blogging-on-the-tesla-roadster-690

Who has tasted freedom... Rolf Fisk is reporting from Iran

2009-06-17T20:41:00.003+02:00

Robert Fisk: Fear has gone in a land that has tasted freedom
In defiance of the ban on foreign reporters, The Independent's Middle East correspondent ventures out to witness an extraordinary stand-off on the streets of Tehran

Wednesday, 17 June 2009
AP
Supporters of Mirhossein Mousavi protest on the streets of Tehran yesterday

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-fear-has-gone-in-a-land-that-has-tasted-freedom-1706912.html

Nobel Womenâs Initiative - 17 Nobel Peace Laureates Sign Declaration for the Elimination of Nuclea...

2009-06-17T09:55:00.001+02:00

Nobel Womenâs Initiative - 17 Nobel Peace Laureates Sign Declaration for the Elimination of Nuclea...

Shared via AddThis

On garbage fleet into Venice

2009-06-16T12:44:00.008+02:00

great idea!

- The Brooklyn artist Swoon and her merry band of anarchists from deepest Bushwick are invading the Venice Biennale this week—on boats built from garbage. New York City garbage.
By Vanessa Grigoriadis Published Jun 7, 2009

http://nymag.com/arts/art/features/57181/

Productive distractions

2009-06-16T12:22:00.005+02:00

In favour of distractions, what I've felt right for many years in order to think or do things differently. So attention economy and scanning widely are not necessarily dichomotous, I suspect there are potentially productive disctractions but aided by a certain attention economy (to be able to scan quickly, move on etc).

http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/ *discovered this link via my colleague and friend Thomas Hoholm, BI.

BI TV: Master student Daniel Urzin Haugen reflects from Inno & Ent master study

2009-06-16T12:12:00.001+02:00

Legal services exchanged in "new ways"

2009-06-16T10:19:00.005+02:00

Legal services expected to be reorganized and bought in many "new" ways, see lessons from new book grounded in interviews.

http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/legal/story.html?id=1590420

Knitting - again!

2009-06-15T22:43:00.002+02:00

http://socialbydesign.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/glem-skoleb%C3%B8ker-sats-pa-youtube/

Saab+Bård Eker?

2009-06-15T22:35:00.003+02:00

Exciting times, wonder if designer entrepreneur Bård Eker together with Koenigsegg etc will manage to buy Saab.
http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/han-vill-ta-over-1.890683

Read SaftSuse from Berlin!

2009-06-15T00:16:00.004+02:00

http://saftsuse.blogspot.com/ thoughtful pieces in Norwegian.

*from my daughter.

2009 Year of Astronomy

2009-06-14T23:38:00.006+02:00

It is four hundred years since Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) constructed his version of the telescope.

Courtesy to Wikepedia:

In 1609, Galileo was, along with Englishman Thomas Harriot and others, among the first to use arefracting telescope as an instrument to observe stars, planets or moons. The name "telescope" was coined for Galileo's instrument by a Greek mathematician, Giovanni Demisiani, at a banquet held in 1611 by Prince Federico Cesi to make Galileo a member of his Accademia dei Lincei. The name was derived from the Greek tele = 'far' and skopein = 'to look or see'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo#cite_note-3

Interview with the creator of Bubble Project

2009-06-14T21:25:00.002+02:00

Wave is here! New conversational beta email

2009-05-29T01:01:00.004+02:00

How would a new email or digital conversational tool look like if we could start anew?

Wave is here from Yesterday 28 May 2009, as beta /Google wave.

Congrats, exciting news.

See an exclusive probably first interview here with the founding team incl two Danes Brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon (the two brothers are serial innovators, see the originating of what became Google maps elsewhere):

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/exclusive-video-interview-with-the-google-wave-founders/#comments

Movie on 60s Pirate Radio station: The Boat That Rocked

2009-05-24T14:05:00.003+02:00

23 May, Oslo:

Saw fantastic film Yesterday, The Boat That Rocked, by Robert Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, etc). This movie, however, is not romance but rather about a weird gang of DJs and a pirate radio station broadcasted from an old boat out in the North Sea. With lots of 60s good pop music to enjoy.

THE PLOT is the weird DJs fight to keep up their Pirate ROCK Radio station against the British Government including a stiff, control-driven Minister (played by Kenneth Branagh) and some overeager Gov officials. We´re back in mid 1960s (1966 I think it says in the film) when the British Government did not like this music nor its broadcasting, and BBC allowed only a very limited time for the new pop music played in official channels, as far as known.

POP MUSIC SPREAD QUICKLY. Despite limited BBC access, the 60s new pop music did not stop but rather spread fairly quickly and eventually became a flood-shed. Pop music gained increasingly more in popularity... whether listened to from radios stuck secretly under children´s pillows or shared more in the open by teenagers and eventually others, in variable places indoors or outdoors, thanks also to new transportable radios.

I wonder how this diffusion was actually feasible when BBC and Government were restricting the pop music broadcasting severely at the time? How active they were I do not precisely know, could be interesting to know more about this. (I´m not an expert in this field and was a bit young at the time but my friends remember more and listened to e.g. Radio Caroline. We also have a record with authentic recording from this and other pirate stations).

Anyway, a lot of new pop-based pirate radio solutions popped up so to speak... What is only hinted to in the film, is the role played by commercials. It was probably not merely the closed state broadcasting regime but perhaps also (or even more) the actions of numerous commercial interests spreading ads in relation to popular music programs that nourished an outside-the-shore pirate solution. Broadcasting via boats and a "free ocean solution" seemed to be financed by commercials and was tried successfully for some time... opposing and bypassing the severe restrictions on the British island. Remember Radio Caroline and other pop and commercial boat solutions at the time.

This is timely to remember now in our new pirate music and movie situations, I guess...

And if you enjoy pop music from the 60s as well as the DJ lads´ongoing relationship plays - a thrilling mix of bad and good behaviour and much humour - this is smth for you. Enjoy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/5049946/Richard-Curtis-talks-about-his-new-film---The-Boat-That-Rocked.html

Exploring the load of twitter

2009-02-23T22:36:00.004+01:00

Is twitter a narcissistic fallacy or like sending friends a postcard?
See more on http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article5747308.ece
Form the Sunday Times, 22 Feb 2009

Anno 2009: i-tweet-i-am

2009-02-23T22:18:00.006+01:00

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5158699/i-tweet-therefore-i-am?skyline=true&s=x

Remember that Descartes changed his mind, from "I think, therefore I am" to something significantly different, as far as I remember: "I am, I exist"
(source TBA)

Fiddler on the road - towards Moscow

2009-02-22T00:23:00.003+01:00

Alexander Rybak (21), born in Minsk, now living on Nesodden, Oslo, won the Norwegian song test "grand prix" this evening.

He is a multitalent playing violin, composing, singing and acting - even wandering around in local communities in Norway to get inspiration.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.yohan.no/images/stories/alexander%2520rybak%2520i%2520farta%2520web.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.yohan.no/component/content/161%3Ftask%3Dview&h=299&w=448&sz=62&tbnid=wyfGlPYMyAk6tM::&tbnh=85&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dalexander%2Brybak&usg=__SaCrjX04z50D2QhCdmkYwigme_A=&ei=8IOgSeYoipX6BtKQlbYO&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=7&ct=image&cd=1

He is going to represent Norway in the Eurovision song contest in Moscow this May.

Becoming Munch Exhibition Art Center Chicago Feb 2009

2009-02-21T22:23:00.005+01:00

the best way to explain a piece of art is with another one, according to a critique of the new exhibition Becoming Edvard Munch. http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/Munch/index

See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/arts/design/13munc.html

MOD Jan 2009

2009-02-06T22:50:00.001+01:00

See http://www.bi.no/Content/Article____73371.aspx

MoD Oslo 2009

2009-01-25T09:44:00.005+01:00

A COCREATING SCHOOL AND STUDENT COLLABORATION. Since Winter 2006-2007 faculty at two very different higher education schools in Oslo, that is, BI Norwegian School of Management and KHiO, the National Academy of the Arts, and some of their student groups have cocreated what we call MoD, management of design (*originally management and marketing of design).

It is a crossover kind of ideation, project management and entrepreneurship course for bachelor students from the two higher education schools involved. So far, students and faculty from two educational areas, 'culture and leadership' and 'design' of the two schools respectively can engage in this. The joint 'MOD' learning project is focused on concept-development, visual design and communication, and management of creative projects in interdisciplinary business and design groups. The business and design students are organized into preset mixed groups and 'thrown' into joint ideation and project managing practice for three weeks.

THE TASK each year is to come up with eventually one core idea in each group and make, refine, organize and communicate the group's core idea, visual design, and project and business planning around the idea chosen within a short time frame. The groups are free to choose idea and set up of their project organization within the overall aims and frame of this learning project. See the MOD overall aims and intentions as well as history and experiences outlined elsewhere (modoslo.blogspot.com). Brief on the background initiative, see note below.

IN MOD 2009 18 groups have been working from 5. to 23. January in a highly intensive cocreation in addition to lectures, seminars, field visits, guest lectures and so forth.

On last Friday, the 23 January, 18 groups presented their idea - many in highly triggering 15 minutes performances. The ideas varied from culture-communication focused ones to business ideas based on mixtures of health, safety, and environmental concerns. Arts and design aspects were essential in the projects. Many concrete ideas could contribute to social and service innovation for people and places in Oslo. For example a project that could light up literally dark areas along the Akerselva (*river in Oslo) because many people want to walk in this area.
It is amazing how the groups had developed their ideas and team spirit in few weeks.
It will be exciting to learn about the future careers of the 2009 MOD students and see if any, or other related, projects will become realized. Most important perhaps is to learn to collaborate in new ways.

---------------------------------
Note on background
THE INITIATIVE for MOD was originally taken in 2006 by four faculty members, two from each school, i.e., dean of design Halldor Gislason and fashion design professor Tove Kjær from Khio and Donatella de Paoli and Birgit Helene Jevnaker, both associate professors from BI. Thus, the collaboration also is involving two of BI Management school's departments, 'Communication, culture, and language' and 'Innovation and economic organizing'.
Both Dori and Birgit had run ideation and entrepreneurship/design-business creativity oriented courses previously (also in other school settings), and we have also friends that have been involved in some related initiatives in other countries. The other faculty members, Donatella and Tove also had long and varied experiences that could be reused creatively for this joint learning project. All were also in formal positions (*with course or program responsibilities) at their schools to influence the school's courses and students' work. Last but not least, I would say a critical success factor, is a group of at least four faculty members have been highly engaged in both launching AND following-cum-realizing this project. A creative joint effort by more than one faculty made this crossover initiative feasible in practice.

WHO WAS HE? Arne Dørumsgaard 1921-2006

2008-11-21T00:06:00.004+01:00

Arne Dørumsgaard with a family cat
(courtesy: Norsk lydinstitutt, I presume, not me! I took some other photos of him when visiting him in Oct 1991)

Rediscovery of this renaissance man, see new article in the newspaper Dag og Tid (in nynorsk, "new" Norwegian)

Litterært storverk utan like

Av ARVID BRYNE, 20.11.08

I 25 band har Arne Dørumsgaard (1921-2006) gjeve oss kremen av poesi frå Kina, Japan og Korea, samstundes med at han presenterer diktarane og deira tid.
http://www.dagogtid.no/nyhet.cfm?nyhetid=1419

LITERATURE AS WALLBREAKER Seminar on Dørumsgaard 18 nov 2008 Oslo

2008-11-20T23:33:00.006+01:00

Seminar in Litteraturhuset (House of Literature) in Oslo on Arne Dørumsgaard's book series on the old poetry of East.
Program in Norwegian:

ØSTENS POESI OG LITTERATUR SOM MURBREKKER
Åpning ved førsteamanuensis Birgit Helene Jevnaker og redaktør Hans B. Butenschøn

Avduking av "Østens gamle poesi", et bokverk på 25 bind som presenterer kinesisk, japansk og koreansk litteratur og samfunn fra "de eldste tider" til det 20. århundre, gjendiktet og skrevet av Arne Dørumsgaard. Avduking ved Walid al-Kubaisi mfl.

Torbjørn Færøvik foredrag:
Litteraturen – vår døråpner til fremmede kulturer.

Hans B. Butenschøn:
Barbarer – vi?

Kinesisk tradisjonell sang og musikk:
Zeng Xiao Gang: Sang og bordharpe
Turid Alida Solberg: Sang

Arkivleder Jacqueline von Arb, Norsk lydinstitutt:
En musikkbegavelse – flere livsverk

Arne Dørumsgaard leser gjendiktninger (i opptak)

Professor Rune Svarverud:
Nærlesing av Dørumsgaards VÅR: Diktning, gjendiktning og oversettelse

Arrangør: Polyteknisk forening, Kultur og medier og Andresen og Butenschøn AS
http://www.litteraturhuset.no/program/2008/11/litteratursommurbrekker.html

HVEM VAR DØRUMSGAARD? Født i Fredrikstad 1921. Bodde siden 1968 i den nord-italienske landsbyen Marzio der han døde i mars 2006. Hans liv i noen korte og ufullstendige stikkord (sakser fra forlagets presentasjon):
"Dikter, gjendikter, komponist og sanger, levde det meste av sitt liv utenfor Norge, men arbeidet i alle år for norsk kultur. Han begynte sitt arbeid med gjendiktninger av Østens poesi i 1949. Da han på grunn av sviktende helse måtte legge ned pennen forelå tre omfattende bind om Kinas poesi fra 1368-1911 nesten ferdig. Han mottok kunstnergasje fra den norske stat på livstid."

ØSTENS GAMLE POESI NÅ FERDIG: Arne Dørumsgaard utførte et helt livsverk ved sin gjendiktning til norsk av Østens poesi. I 25 bind presenterer han de viktigste diktere i Kina, Japan og Korea gjennom alle tider og med fyldige presentasjoner av dikterne og deres bakgrunn. I Viften av perlemor 3A gjendiktes perler fra det tidlige Ming-dynastiet (år 1369-1500). Nå foreligger snart også bind 3B posthumt. (vi avventer trykkingen hos Valdres trykkeri).

2008-11-03T21:08:00.008+01:00

DESIGN is discussed in New York Times by Janet Rae-Dupree (4 Oct 2008) noting that design is more than packaging and so forth. The article also introduces design thinking, an emergent hot topic in some design milieus, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05unbox.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=%22Janet%20Rae

YET WHAT IS NEW IS NOT pointing to the wider meanings or discussions of design or design thinking per se. Rather, what appears new is the new crossover cultivating of design-oriented activities in "new" or "old" contexts. The article gives some insight into this by referring to the new educational approaches such as unfolding at Stanford's new socalled d.school.

D.SCHOOL. New York Times reports that the d.school is not set up as a new trad full education for designers. Instead, it is providing joint design courses for interested students across the school's existing fields but also a grad opportunity. The rise of new design-oriented courses for students coming from a variety of backgrounds may thus affect several breeds of students getting entirely new experiences, which is interesting from a design management and innovation perspective.

D+B COURSE MoD OSLO. Providing new learning initiatives as a joint collaborative offering for crossdisciplinary groups of students is something we are exploring also at Norwegian School of Management (BI) , e.g., through an ongoing collaboration on Management and marketing of Design (MoD) with the Design Faculty of Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) offered from January 2007 onwards. The particular collaboration with design teachers and students at KHiO is involving its three design educations and at BI it involves two bachelor courses and two of its departments (Innovation and Economic Organization, and Intercultural Communication). It has been offered for at least around 100 design and business students each January since 2007. See http://modoslo.blogspot.com/2008_01_06_archive.html

Rediscovery of Innovation (again)...

2008-11-02T09:56:00.003+01:00

Innovation Economics... is suggested" as a new field in relation to the current crisis and what is seen as a need to "reinvent" the US, see http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_38/b4100052741280.htm

COMMENTS. I posted this today:
(Birgit Jevnaker Nov 2, 2008 10:01 AM GMT)
This is interesting but appears to be perhaps somewhat lagged in its view? (e.g., focusing mainly on innovation and R&D). There exists an enlarged view, or in fact, many views, on innovation, e.g., as represented by "innovation studies" including business history, sociology, and evolutionary or heterodox economics as well as other social science views. Innovation-oriented economics is part of a broader domain with many fields of knowing, which is fruitful to understand and stimulate valuable innovation.

Dørumsgaard seminar 18 Nov Oslo

2008-11-01T15:02:00.002+01:00

Our Polytechnic Society seminar on Dørumsgaard and his work on Eastern poetry is approaching...

Work meeting Yesterday to prepare for the details of this seminar.

Soon the whole book series by Dørumsgaard is completed (25 books in total).

Stay tuned...

Litteraturhuset 18 Nov 2008, 10.00- 13.00.

Twist theatre festival in Oslo opened yesterday

2008-11-01T13:36:00.012+01:00

FULL HOUSE ON OPENING NIGHT. I entered "Riksteatret" Yesterday (31. Oct 2008) around 7.30 p.m. The lobby was crowded with young people (and some oldies like us) enjoying meeting each other on a Friday night as well as the opening wine and a key speech by Fabian Stang, the major of Oslo (relevant here to mention that he is son of Wenche Foss, an excellent actress in Norway). Standing in the back near to the ticket counter we could only hear a few of his words but I guess he underlined the value of this brand new theatre festival. It is indeed an interesting joint effort and creative collaboration among three theatres: Riksteatret, Nordic Black Theatre, and Det Åpne Teater.
http://www.twist08.no/home/
"SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD" GUEST PLAY. After the opening, most of us entered the stage room to experience "Sizwe Banzi is Dead," by Fugard, Kani and Ntshona.
The play is problematizing many things including the absurdities of power relations and ways of expressing this in work and societal relations between black and white people. Especially, it explores the shift of and playing with - even stealing - identity and manners when two poor guys in a township of South-Africa finds a dead man's passport... and plays with it in a hostile South-African city setting: "A black man stay out of trouble? Impossible! Our skin is trouble!"
With: Habib Dembélé, Pitcho Womba Konga

Regi/director: Peter Brook
Light design: Philippe Vialatte
Scenografi: Abdou Ouologeum

Production: C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

Translation to French: Marie-Hélène Estienne

BRIEF INTRO (in Norwegian): Handlingen foregår i en sørafrikansk township, bosetning, og er forfattet av en av landets mest kjente dramatikere, Athol Fugard, i samarbeid med de opprinnelige skuespillere. Urpremièren var i 1972. Men oppsetningen som nå besøker Norge, er fra 2006, og er satt opp av den engelske teaterlegenden Peter Brook og hans franske kompani Théâtre du Bouffes du Nord. - Kan føye til at noen husker kanskje oppsetningen i Bergen i 1972 med bl.a. Lothar Lindtner, også en teaterlegende!
Source: http://oslopuls.aftenposten.no/kunst_scene/article94807.ece

EVALUATION: 6 points! The two black actors were amazingly good and communicated excellently even when speaking French to a Norwegian audience. Among the best performances I have ever seen - with only two actors and sparse resources. Just a few cues: the two guys were excelling in using their body language, voice and facial expression and playing with gestures (smile!), movement, and sound... exploring the audience's sense of humour as well as empathy by being uniquely present on stage "with us"... but using only a very few stage furnishing tools (In Norwegian: en krakk og noen papp-plater, et par stativer som fungerte som dører og vegger, en sko som repr. en død mann).
PETER BROOK-DIRECTING. A background to understand their way of acting and using the few sparse tools creatively is knowing about the approaches and thinking of Peter Brook, one of UK's greatest theatre directors (recently awarded the Norwegian Ibsen prize). He is known, for example, for his 'empty space' approach, daring to take away anything that can hinder the actor becoming present and preparing hard for the performance as a unique event to be born, to put it very briefly.
TWIST LEADERS. Before the play started, on stage, three leaders of the three collaborating Oslo theatres were greeting us shoulder-to-shoulder, a very symbolic and warm welcoming to this new festival. Instructive handy program folders available as well. Congratulations!

Stabæk is celebrating

2008-10-26T23:30:00.003+01:00

Finally Stabæk won "Serien" (the football liga of Norway) and celebrated at Nadderud stadion nearby where we live and where I also went to gymnasium.

This football club is famous for its leadership group - building up an interest for football and its club in a community not so very interested in football from the outset.

Things have changed, see pictures on e.g., this link

http://www.dagbladet.no/sport/2008/10/26/551637.html

Dansens Hus, Oslo

2008-10-26T23:05:00.003+01:00

14 October 2008: Visited the new Dansens Hus (house of Dance) in the Vulcan area in Oslo, situated close to Akerselva (*the river dividing Oslo in East and West. Nowadays a growing area for creative industries firms, educational and cultural institutions.)

Dansens Hus seemed very fit for its purpose, the main performance room could include around 350 people - seat rows were steeply built so that everyone should be able to see the dancers well.

The wooden stage floor appeared to be fit for its dancing purpose.

A long bar and nice mingling area is the first thing you meet when entering. It is also a flexible space for meetings and events.

We were also guided outside and updated on the plans for this Vulcan area. A food hall is planned in the old brick building, and near to the Maridalsveien a new hotel (Scandic) as well as new theatre stage are going to be built.

The visit was arranged by our Culture and Media group of Polytechnic Society.

100 years' celebration Geirr Tveitt

2008-10-26T22:48:00.004+01:00

Jacob Culture Church in Oslo, 19 October 2008: We celebrated the birthday of the Norwegian composer who renamed himself Geirr Tveitt (from Nils Tveit).

A great evening orchestrated by Lars Klevstrand and his companions together with also Gyri Tveitt, Geirr's daughter.

Wonderful music ... incl. excerpts from Hardingatoner and well-known songs such as "Fløytelåt" and "Vi skal ikke sova bort sumarnatta."

Some "refound" pieces were also performed. (to be filled in..)

I appreciated in particular the highly sensitive piano-playing by Håvard Gimse.

Melancholia

2008-10-04T13:13:00.005+02:00

2.10.2008 Den Norske Opera & Ballett
Interesting performance of an entirely new opera: Melancholia is narrating one day in the life of Lars Hertervig, the talented, enigmatic but highly suffering South-Norwegian painter while he was in Düsseldorf striving with his talents and doubts (Ich kann malen!) and fell in forbidden love with Helene Winckelmann, the step-dauhter in the patriarchal Winckelmann house where he rented a room.
It is performed during the Ultima festival in Snøhætta's white new opera in Oslo.
The libretto by Jon Fosse and music by Georg Friederich Haas, a young Austrian composer. I experienced excellent singers! and triggering new compounded music by Haas.

Geirr Tveitt's Balder's dreams rediscovered!

2008-10-04T11:43:00.009+02:00

BALDUR LOST... OR NOT. The Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt's main work, Baldur's draumar, is literally rising from the ashes (see below). Until recently, this his major work, performed in the University of Oslo's Aula 24. Feb 1938 and also in 1939 in Paris, has been thought lost in fire ... either as stored in his fairytale house in Hardanger (Bjødnabrakane high over the Hardanger fjord) that tragically burnt down many years ago (July 1970) and/or, according to Tveitt himself, the original "Baldur" was also said to have become destroyed in London bombing during WW2 (the first score was sent to London for review to a complete stranger at Covent Garden who Tveitt had got recommended).
SEVERAL VERSIONS - THE ORIGINAL REDISCOVERED. Yet, it recently turned out that two written down versions both are luckily now refound partly accidentally and partly as research and documentary projects. This is triggering news and attracts some interest because 2008 is the very year Norway is celebrating 100 years since the birth of this composer (1908-1981). See a new biography below!
It is amazing to rediscover art works but perhaps not entirely unusual, as vestiges of creation do seem to turn up again, I wonder.
- Thus, in Oslo, Norway, literaly arising from the ashes... half-burnt note-pages were found some years ago, first identified by a music student. It could be recognized and then recreated as Baldur's dreams (in companion with an NRK radio recording from the original live performance and contributions by two composers, incl. the Russian Aleksej Rybnikov, more on this later perhaps!), i.e., significant parts of Tveitt's revised music score have been found in a box, consisting of vestiges of his works from the ashes of the Hardanger house. The box was luckily preserved via Bergen Museum and then moved to the Norway's National Museum archives and reexplored recently by the musician Håvard Gimse and the conductor Ole Kristian Ruud. Ruud and Stavanger Symphony Orchestra performed a recreated version of Baldur's Draumar in May 2002 in Grieghallen during the Bergen Music Festival, an event I happened to experience.
- In London, the complete 1938 original first score has also late 2007 surprisingly been refound in music archives at Covent Garden (it was sent by Geirr Tveitt to Mr. Bruce Ottley, Covent Garden in 1939).
NEW INTEREST. This, and other interesting stuff is outlined both in a recent film documentary by the team of Sondre Hallvardsson Bjørgum (son of the exceptional Hardanger fiddle player Hallvard Bjørgum, I guess) and shown this autumn on NRK, and also in Reidar Storaas' revised biography of Geirr Tveitt, Mellom triumf og tragedie (between triumph and tragedy), a biography, launched in the new Litteraturhuset in Oslo (24 Sept) as well as Bergen last week. I enjoyed the launch in Oslo with the well-prepared biographer and journalist Reidar Storaas (also a friend of Tveitt), the singer and guitar musician Lars Klevstrand (who has performed with Tveitt's music for decades), and the musicolog (I think) August Albertsen. In additon, the Think (electric car) industrial designer and Hardanger/Norheimsund-born Stig Olav Skeie had prepared and presented contributions to a discography.

AN ARTIST'S LIFE AND WORKS. I will read the new biography with interest (only scanned some parts now), but I appreciate that Storaas' new biography expands on Tveitt's artistic works as well as life, part of that is controversial stuff, I guess. However, the fascinating artist who renamed himself Geirr Tveitt (rather than Nils Tveit) still is an enigma, not least after the recent discoveries!
INGEBJØRG GRESVIG. Although many of Tveitt's artistic and life connections are mentioned including his first wife, herself a musician, I still miss more information about what he learned from and came to do in inspirational collaboration with his first wife, Ingebjørg Gresvig. She can be thought of as "the Andsnes" of those days, because she already was a creative, distinguished, and known master of the grand piano when they married. She had performed e.g. for many audiences and notable families in the cultural Berlin. Personally I really appreciate our lively encounters in the neighborhood of Kalfaret, Bergen when she was still alive. We could also fully observe directly how she memorized the notes and played excellently even at a high age. So my thoughts in this Geirr Tveitt year also go to her, thanks for your inspirations!

PETER OPSVIK and ULLA BRANTENBERG - awarded Anders Jahre Cultural Prize 2008

2008-09-05T20:55:00.016+02:00

Anders Jahre Winners 2008.
Courtesy photos Anders Jahres Humanitære Stiftelse

Yesterday, designer Peter Opsvik and glass artist Ulla-Mari Brantenberg received the Anders Jahre's Cultural Prize 2008, together with two young talents (Daniel Rybakken and Tuva Gonsholt) the prize winners had helped selecting.
Because I have a special research interest for designing, I will focus on the designers here. According to the press releases, this is the first time a designer receives this prize.
In collaboration with the prize winner, a young designer was also awarded, as already introduced this was Daniel Rybakken, educated from Industrial Design, AHO.
Congratulations to both designers Peter and Daniel!
The award ceremony was in Oslo's Gamle Logen, and the prize winners surprised the audience with a shared music performance - Peter Opsvik is a good sax player but few had expected Ulla to sing. It was terrific my brother told! Sadly I was not there but Princess Astrid was! (see link below to Kongehuset).
See more on the prize and prize winners here http://www.ajhs.no/scripts/ingress/read.pl?id=080630103026-95
http://www.kongehuset.no/c26939/nyhet/vis.html?tid=73195

Sitting with movement and variation. Opsvik is known in design milieus and beyond because of his contribution to innovating sitting. Among his commonly used designed products is his Tripp Trapp chair that "grows with the child" (produced by STOKKE). He has also designed a variety of human-centered chairs or "sitting tools" for people to sit actively at home, in the studio or elsewhere (including the balans and rocking-wise chairs codeveloped with STOKKE, now sold through Varier). Further, Opsvik has codesigned a range of office chairs and conference chairs for work settings aiming for "movement and variation" (codeveloped with HÅG, cf. especially the HAG CREDO and the HAG Capisco, the latter is a sadle-like chair. I sit in it at BI everyday, it feels very good for my back and whole body!).

Rethinking sitting. There are of course many sources of inspiration behind what has crystallized as "Rethinking sitting" (Opsvik's new book, 2008). Among the fundamental inspirational sources was the Danish dr. Mandal working on improving school children's seating possibilities, and Opsvik met Mandal and other specialists involved in ergonomics at HAG.
Furthermore, another critical source is the Norwegian Balans design group with its alternative sitting conception and models brought forward by a group of four in the late 1970s, i.e. three designers one of them was Peter Opsvik, the others were Svein Gusrud, and Oddvin Rykken and all of them worked with Hans Christian Mengshoel, an inventor who has been attributed for the concept. At the time all of them interacted in various ways to create an alternative sitting, which eventually contributed to the new thinking. Also a few companies became involved in this co-creation and further development such as HAG, STOKKE and RYBO).
Although complex design work often involves team work, it is a significant contribution over a life-time by Opsvik (who also is a musician and designs artistic cupboards). No doubt, his efforts have been crossing disciplinary and other borders, and this was explicitly acknowledged by the prize committee headed by Åse Kleveland.
For more elaboration on Peter Opsvik, Stokke and HAG and their design collaborations, see research articles and reports on my website:
http://www.bi.no/Content/AcademicProfile____37600.aspx?ansattid=FGL98006&siteid=2D93E6C6062086B2C12571C4005B9DF5&type=pages

DØRUMSGAARDSEMINAR in Polytechnic Society - Autumn program available now!

2008-08-28T20:40:00.001+02:00

Polytechnic Society/Culture and Media Group: This autumn we will remember and study Arne Dørumsgaard's works, e.g. how he interpreted poems from China, Japan and Korea.

Arne Dørumsgaard was a Norwegian multi-artist who lived in Marzio, Northern Italy. He was a singer, a composer, and collector. Thanks to his large collection of early recordings, we can now listen to all recordings made by Edward Grieg in Paris 1903. Eventually he gave his whole music collection to Stavanger city, thus contributing to the birth of Norwegian Institute of Recorded Sound (courtesy for the photo, imported from REC's website).

Polytechnic Society Autumn 2008. We've just finished hectic preparation of the autumn program in Polytechnic Society of Norway, and a number of interesting meetings and seminars are offered. For example, in our group Culture and Media, we are coarranging five meetings, including two particular book-related meetings (cf. authors Galtung and Dørumsgaard), one theatre performance backstage talk (Riksteatrets new Zivil play), and one visit to the new house for Dance in Oslo.

Here I like to point to the planned day seminar at Litteraturhuset in Oslo to present and discuss the works of Arne Dørumsgaard - especially his book series on Eastern poems and societies. More info on this artist's works and life in links below.

Note the respective dates for arrangements of the Culture and Media group:
- 29 Sept 18.30 Meeting with Galtung and others
- 14 Oct 18.00-20.00 Vulkan, Dansens Hus
- 6 Nov 18.30 Zivil performance with backstage talk, Riksteatret (discount for PF members)
- 18 Nov 10.00-15.00 Dørumsgaard-seminar

Most welcome, see details and terms in our folder (soon to be distributed) or on Polytechnic society's website:
See more in pdf file on http://www.polyteknisk.no/

For info on Dørumsgaard, see e.g.,

- in Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/jun/06/guardianobituaries

- info from REC: http://www.recordedsound.no/collections/arne_dorumsgaard.htm

- From A&B publishers, we learn about the 25 issues book series (in Norwegian):http://www.abforlag.no/

Economist Joseph Stiglitz: "The way we measure performance is often wrong."

2008-08-25T16:40:00.000+02:00

Joseph E. Stiglitz, courtesy for photo and text excerpts to http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/bio.cfm

Joseph E. Stiglitz visited Oslo today and talked about the social responsibilities when making investments: "You can do well by doing good."
Investments in responsible manners for private companies as well as public institutions "can be good for returns" as well as for society, was the overall message. This "doing-well-by-doing-good" may happen "especially when social responsibility anticipates broader social movements, or when social responsibility contributes to better corporate governance."
Stiglitz did not say anything entirely new. Yet as Nobel prize laurate in Economics his voice can be heard. In Oslo he was heartily welcomed by Kristin Halvorsen, Norway's current minister of finance. At 10 o'clock a Monday morning the meeting room was full and a lot of journalists were also eager to make interviews afterwards e.g. TV2 was interviewing him after his presentation.

In Oslo this morning. Stiglitz started his speech in the Departmental building by outlining how "efforts of theft" in fact can supersede efforts of doing good. Innovation can thus become negative in its consequences. He further elaborated how firms tend to oppose a lot of legislations, thus influencing what is actually "legal." Firm's behaviour may also become geared toward "how to cheat the government" or even using the same procedures to cheat multiple stakeholders. This happens in private sector investments, more often than one believes, he explained, which has led to the scandals of Enron and so forth. Stiglitz opposed the narrow moral of self-interest going back in economics to Adam Smith he said (though Smith may have been somewhat misinterpreted, I've heard from other sources, such as UiO prof Kalle Moene.)
Anyway, what is interesting is that Stiglitz firmly claimed that "the way we measure performance is wrong." He called for a broader view beyond monetary measurements, such as including what he called "social returns." He added that "the social returns may be more difficult to quantify" or measure. But with "longer time horizons" and the idea of (investing also for) social returns, this opens up for the possibility of firms that might be doing well by doing good. Stiglitz explained that this seems to be a paradox, because according to standard economics, if you constrain investment, you have a smaller set. One would thus expect to do worse...instead one may rather do well, which is a puzzle according to standard economics, he reflected. Stiglitz also called for more attention towards spillover effects or what in economics are called externalities (external effects; can be positive and negative).
Birgit

PS Stiglitz also got some questions regarding Milton Friedman's contribution, and he responded by distinguishing between M. Friedman the politician and the economist, adding that "most of his ideas (political ones) have been rejected" and through an example (Chile and Pinochet) he showed how they had led to debt and failures.
For EXTRA info on Stiglitz: see e.g. his official website (linked above), a few facts: Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana in 1943. A graduate of Amherst College, he received his PHD from MIT in 1967. He is now University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. And he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000. In 2008, he was appointed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to chair a Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Economic Progress, and he serves on numerous boards, including Amherst College's Board of Trustees and Resources for the Future.

It is worth noting...
- that Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts.
According to his website, he has also made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to the theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and to the theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D.

Oscarsborg Opera with eminent Tosca 23.8.2008

2008-08-24T14:28:00.000+02:00

Magnificent Tosca at the old Oscarsborg in Oslo fjord Saturday 23 August 2008 - the weather Gods were pleased too!
In full-light Scandinavian evening sunshine, Norwegian broadcast orchestra KORK (Kringkastingsorkesteret) played Puccini's Tosca conducted by Terje Boye Hansen. Director was the eminent Stein Winge who had contributed both colour and drama to what he saw as a crime story.
In the three main roles we experienced the soprano Victoria Nava as Flora Tosca and the tenor Tor Inge Falch as the painter Cavaradossi, both performed and sang excellently. And the barytone Espen Fegran gestalted a really excellent and gruesome Scarpa!
I found the Oscarborg very suitable and attractive for outdoor opera performances, we experienced it in its best weather conditions Yesterday. With simple stage arrangements the Oscarsborg yard was actually transformed to a very enjoyable and moving music art experience (only restrooms for women could be improved, though...)
We also had a pleasant boat trip with Rigmor from Sandvika to Oscarsborg in full sunshine and in in the star-lighten night we sailed home from Oscarsborg.
Let me add: This fairly new annual summer opera event in convenient distance from Oslo should get public funding with its excellent casts and staging, it has shown that it deserves it!
Birgit

How was West-Eastern DIVAN orchestra co-created?

2008-08-24T13:55:00.000+02:00

Curious about the originating of the West-Eastern DIVAN orchestra that we just heard in Oslo (20.8.2008, see blog entry 21 Aug), I visited the co-founder and conductor's own website, and want to share this story with you (courtesy to www.barenboim.com, accessed 24.8.2008, my excerpts and headlines):
-- A Chance Meeting:
"In the early 1990s, a chance meeting between Mr. Barenboim and the late Palestinian-born writer and Columbia University professor Edward Said in a London hotel lobby led to an intensive friendship that has had both political and musical repercussions. These two men, who should have been poles apart politically, discovered in that first meeting, which lasted for hours, that they had similar visions of Israeli/Palestinian possible future cooperation. They decided to continue their dialogue and to collaborate on musical events to further their shared vision of peaceful co-existence in the Middle East. This led to Mr. Barenboim's first concert on the West Bank, a piano recital at the Palestinian Birzeit University in February 1999, and to a workshop for young musicians from the Middle East that took place in Weimar, Germany, in August 1999."

-- Furthermore, we learn:
"The West-Eastern Divan Workshop took two years to organize and involved talented young musicians between the ages of 14 and 25 from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia and Israel. The idea was that they would come together to make music on neutral ground with the guidance of some of the world's best musicians. Weimar was chosen as the site for the workshop because of its rich cultural tradition of writers, poets, musicians and creative artists and because it was the 1999 European cultural capital. Mr. Barenboim wisely chose two concertmasters for the orchestra, an Israeli and a Lebanese. There were some tense moments among the young players at first but, coached by members of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony and the Staatskapelle Berlin, and following master classes with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and nightly cultural discussions with Mr. Said and Mr. Barenboim, the young musicians worked and played in increasing harmony.
The West-Eastern Divan Workshop was held again in Weimar in the summer of 2000 and in Chicago in the summer of 2001. It has since found a permanent home in Seville, Spain, where it has been based since 2002."
-- On performances:
"Each summer, following their workshop, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra gives public concerts; to date they have performed in Europe and North and South America, including at the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh, Lucerne and Salzburg festivals. In 2004, they performed a historic concert in Ramallah, the Orchestra's first concert in an Arab country. In December 2006, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra went to the U.S.A., performing at Carnegie Hall and ending the tour with a farewell concert at the United Nations for outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In 2007, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra was invited to be in residence at the Salzburg Festival."
....and we may add, in 2008 they have among several places performed with great success in Scandinavia including Oslo.
Birgit, 24.8.2008
PS Interestingly, also the excellently improvising cellist Yo Yo Ma has immersed himself in crosscultural efforts, see the SILK ROAD PROJECT: www.silkroadproject.org
And Daniel Barenboim has accepted several citizenships including Palestinian, see his website (link in the headline of this blog entry). For more background on Barenboim from other sources, see e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Barenboim

40 years since invation in "Czecho"

2008-08-21T12:17:00.001+02:00

The night between 20 and 21 August, Czechoslovakia (Československo) was invaded by other Warzawa pact countries. As outlined on UK Wikipedia: "In 1968, in response to a brief period of liberalization, five Eastern Bloc countries invaded Czechoslovakia."

My thoughts go to my sister-in-law dear Liba (Libuce) who was among the arrested that very August... for opposing this invation as a student leader and civilian.

The Maciavelli student society of University in Oslo,
with prof Bernt Hagtvedt and others, arranged a lunch meeting Yesterday, and ingress in Norwegian is:

"Natten til 21. august ble Tsjekkoslovakia invadert av Sovjetunionen med store styrker fra fem Warszawapaktland (16 sovjetiske, tre polske, to østtyske, to ungarske og en bulgarsk divisjon), uten at tsjekkoslovakene hadde mulighet til å sette seg til motverge. Invasjonen ble mottatt med forferdelse og fordømmelse i den vestlige verden.

Midt opp i det hele befant to journalister fra Dagbladet, Gudleiv Forr (bildet) og Arne Finborud. Sammen med den tsjekkiske forfatteren Michael Konupek kommer de til "Lunsj med Bernt", onsdag 20.august, klokken 12.15."

See more on http://foreninger.uio.no/dms/program/frokost-med-bernt/2008-2/2008-08-20-tsjekkoslovakia.html

"An independent music republic": West Eastern Divan Orchestra

2008-08-21T10:33:00.000+02:00

Noa Chorin, Cellist for the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, photographed on the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel. Photograph: Antonio Olmos Courtesy also The Guardian, 13.6.2008.

The West Eastern Divan Orchestra performed in Oslo Yesterday 20 August 2008.
- We can play because we are a mixed group of people... We enhance each other! Said Daniel Barenboim, the conductor, to the audience after receiving recurrent applauding in the Oslo new opera (a white marble space with wooden interiors, designed by Snøhetta - a good place for such music and human events).
Co-founders of this orchestra, Daniel Barenboim (born in Buenos Aires 1942, Russian-Jewish parents) and Edward Said (Palestine-American author) took the name from a series of late poems by Goethe during his study of Arabic and Persian verse, Divan meaning 'the other', according to reporter Ed Vulliamy (see link below).
The orchestra when in Oslo played German music - from W. A. Mozart's concerts (Concert for three grand pianos, The "Lodron") and even R. Wagner (1 part of Valkürien), the latter with three excellent singers, Waltraud Meier, Simon O’Neill and John Tomlinson. - Though in the beginning I missed Rene Pape... who was originally scheduled (he was expected to rehearse also for Carlos: Pape is singing in this autumn's big opera event in Oslo, Verdi's Don Carlos, in late September (and he is also coming in early October). Yet, the singers who did perform Yesterday "sang each other up" as we say in Norwegian. It became very moving.
Nonetheless, even more interesting for me Yesterday was to listen to the vital interplays of the young musicians in this highly special orchestra encompassing musicians from Palestine and Israel to Egypt and other nations in the Middle East. "Each of these musicians are courages persons just to come here", explained the conductor vividly to us (the audience).

"They meet in Sevilla each summer" to rehearse, which fits this realworld story: Daniel Barenboim explicitly pointed to the old (but later destroyed) civic tradition in Andalucia - of allowing Jews, Arabs and other people to live and work in the same place(s) in Southern Spain (for more elaboration, see "Abraham's children", an essay by prof Trond Berg Eriksen, UiO, in Morgenbladet, 2007).

I guess it is also attractive for the young very good musicians to meet and work with Daniel Barenboim as well as other excellent music artists. Barenboim was recommended by the conductor legend Wilhelm Furtwängler already as an 11-year-old. Now Barenboim is recreating magic with the new generations of musicians from the Middle East and audiences worldwide.
Thanks for coming to Oslo!
Birgit

Ps let me add some extras,
- LINKS in English:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/13/classicalmusicandopera.israelandthepalestinians
and www.danielbarenboim.com.
- LINKS in Norwegian:
1. "an independent, musical republic..." (Courtesy to Press news of the Norwegian opera and ballet):
"- For meg er dette en suveren, uavhengig republikk. I vårt orkester spiller israelere, palestinere, andre arabere og kristne i full likeverdighet. Musikken er vår store sjanse. Ordene tilhører den argentinsk-israelske dirigenten Daniel Barenboim som i morgen leder sitt West-Eastern Divan Orchestra på Hovedscenen i Operaen. Orkesteret ble grunnlagt av Barenboim og den palestinske forfatteren, aktivisten og professoren Edward Saïd etter at de to møttes tilfeldig i London i begynnelsen av 1990-tallet. Med bakgrunn i hver sin side av den palestinsk-israelske konflikten, fant de fram til en felles visjon for kunstnerisk samarbeid på tvers av politiske og religiøse skillelinjer.
Siden 1999 har det anerkjente orkesteret fungert som en musikalsk og politisk brobygger, de har flere cd-innspillinger bak seg og har spilt i konserthus over hele verden. Etter at Edward Saïd døde i 2003, drives orkesteret videre av hans enke Mariam Saïd foruten Barenboim."

2. For a field research reportage, see this article (courtesy to Morgenbladet, Oslo):
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8280192458170847866&postID=3968406909493 6102

3. For more on Intercultural dialogue, see a seminar 13 Sept 2007 in Oslo by UNESCO and Polytechnic Society: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8280192458170847866&postID=39684069094936102

Languages, School Books+Net, daring new combinations

2008-08-19T22:40:00.000+02:00

Again there is a problem of managing to get books ready for school start up. Why can't texts be published on the internet in combination with books on paper? I know it can be done, cf. Zoom, a new project I just read about in a newspaper: http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article2594648.ece

In Norway we have 2-3 languages but two are the official ones every pupil has to learn. It takes time to translate a whole book in "bookish" Norwegian into socalled New Norwegian. (New norwegian is actually the most original one constructed from various dialects and would enrich the books I guess).

Why can't we have a mix of language texts in the same book, that is, some written in the one and some written in the other of the two different Norwegian languages - and why not also pockets of Swedish and Danish texts as well to get familiar with other closely related Scandinavian languages in the same book? The newspaper Bergens Tidende does have a practice of mixing the same issue with articles in either of the two Norwegian languages, they have had it for years without any protest as far as I know. Since this newspaper is a regional one on the Western coast, the Oslo people have perhaps not noticed this good mixture?

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