of 'Favorite Things To Find When Coming Home At 5 In The Morning': completely naked dude passed out and drooling over the kitchen table. Maybe on the 'Weirdest' list though :D . I was told that at 6:30 he was lying on the floor, legs spread wide apart, proudly displaying his junk ...
27°C might suck when your stuck in the office all day. But they're definitely most enjoyable when barbecuing with the crew for an extended lunch. Down in the park by the river just a stone's throw away. We should do this more often...
As already mentioned before, they're quite bright :P But they do have the advantage of being able to grill and chill outside until at least 11 p.m. Like at Magnus' going-away-barbecue last Tuesday at St. Hanshaugen park. They also let you kinda lose track of time. So you might end up drinking wine with your roomies at 1:30 at night without even noticing while you in fact have to hold a presentation the very next morning ...
Other than that, not much has happened here since I got back from Germany. Working hard as usual, trying to deal with some issues at home and slowly getting accustomed to the thought of moving back in less than two months time. Next to Bleed I'm doing some side projects at the moment – logo and t-shirts for André's (our flash developer) online kitesurf forum and a book illustration for a publication due this fall. While I'll be putting up some final results of the first task very soon, the other will take at least one more week. Also enjoyed a nice dinner at Astrid's last weekend, some after work wine and sun rays on Wednesday and Thor Viggo's very first live performance at one of my favorite bars here, the tiny Sound of Mu. Stian, who fixed him up with this gig, djs there on a regular basis.
By the way, please excuse my mediocre choice of movies these past weeks, it's just that lately I'm usually quite mashed at the end of a day and not really in the mood for anything demanding. And well, aXXo provides me with just the opposite sort of films :)
Last Wednesday, two of my flatmates – the swedish ski bum duo Niklas and Magnus – left the building for good. The guy who's originally renting the room wants to move back in. While Niklas is staying in Oslo and just signed the contract for another flatshare (with more swedish ski bums), Magnus headed home for a couple of days before jetting over to Los Angeles to try his luck on a very expensive music school. Really sucks that he's leaving as he is definitely one of the three or four people here I actually had something in common with, a sort of connection or whatever you wanna call it. Anyways, good luck over there buddy, don't catch any STD's off them american biddies and maybe someday we'll go wakeboarding on swedish lakes :D
As much as I liked the long, long Oslo winter nights and as much as I thought I would love the long summer days – I'm a huge fan of the light at dusk – I have to say that the lack of complete darkness after twelve, and I mean pitch black darkness, actually kinda freaks me out a bit. It didn't get much darker last night than what you see on the picture below, it was almost the same light around 2 in the morning. And we haven't even passed the 21st of June yet. Fuuuck!!!
I'm back in Oslo to finish up my last two months at Bleed. Germany was cool, sad, hot, stressful, exhausting, drunk, shocking, hungover, frustrating, cold, calming, stoned, funny, strange and lots of adjectives more.
I'm happy to have been home but I'm sad about the drastic changes that will take place while I'm gone. I'm happy to get away from it all but I'm sad thinking about how it will be when I return. I'm looking forward to coming back home for good this summer and hopefully finishing my diploma this winter but I'm not looking forward to the uncertainty that comes after.
One last year in youthful freedom before the real world takes over. Another important era of life ending. It's gonna be weird...
...is admittedly already a while back and I'm actually currently taking care of school stuff, organizing some things at home and enjoying this. Nevertheless I wanted to quickly share the events of the day that seems to be so very special to the nowegian people.
At first I thought this søttende mai - which marks the Norwegian Constitutional Day, akin to the 4th of July in the United States - would turn out somewhat similar to the Koniginnendag back in Holland. But unlike the Dutch, who have a more or less humorous approach to the whole event by covering everything in orange color and wearing trashy fake crowns as a reference to the queen, the Norwegians take their day a bit more serious.
Yes, there was also lots of drinking and partying the night before (which I did) and yes, the streets are also crowded with lots of cheerful people, but everything seemed to have sort of a posh touch to it. Everybody, kids and adults alike, was either wearing traditional clothing or their finest Sunday-suits and dresses, as if they were out for a peachy weekend stroll in the park. There was lots of flag-waving and several parades - one for the kids, one for the Russ, for who it marked the last day of their celebrations, and one featuring the King and Queen themselves, waving to the people and all that jazz - after which the mob flocked to the local parks, the harbour or any other public space for fancy lunches. And oh yeah, they all said 'Happy Birthday!' to everyone they met. You know, 'cause it's Norway's birthday...
Apart from feeling slightly awkward in a celebration that I have absolutely no relation to and - being the German that I am - having suspicions towards everything that involves overly patriotic gestures, it was particularily bizarre to walk through these masses of excessively dressed-up people in jeans and a t-shirt. Especially since I'm not the type of guy for this kind of appareal anyways. Being hungover and uncomfortable, I only took a couple of pictures, had a quick chillout session with Magnus and Niklas down by the fjord and crawled back to bed. Should've listened to that half of the people who told me to get away as far as possible from Oslo on this specific date.
Last part, I promise. Just wanted to drop a few lines about the smaller things that were going on these five days in Portugal.
For example was there an interactive 'Space Invaders' game on a huuuge touchscreen – instead of a joystick, you had to throw rubber balls at the aliens. There was Humvee/DJ podium from which two guys were playing electronica almost the entire festival – with a maximum audience of maybe 20. There were a couple of smaller installations, mostly focused on user interaction, a long row of tables with designers selling books, t-shirts and artwork (only few things were really cool though), and a 'chill out zone' where you could play Xbox or just recharge your laptop. The sanitary facilities consisted of a massive array of port-a-potties, where on the first day you had to wash your hands with bottled water cause they hadn't installed any sinks yet. Getting food (toast sandwiches, baguettes) or drinks (water, beer, Red Bull) was almost impossible due to never ending queues and a stupid system where you had to first buy vouchers which you could then 'trade' for the product of your choice. As I've said before, the bad organization of catering, the toilets and the horrible acoustics were the three major downsides of the festival.
A lot of the designers, even though they had their own 'VIP Room', could be seen walking around the premise and watching lectures, always distinguishable by their big badges instead of wristbands. So you could actually get up close and personal with the creative masterminds if you wanted to – I saw a lot of them talking to visitors/admirers throughout these three days. Some of the designers even stated in their lectures that you should just approach them off-stage if you had a question or just wanted to chat. And so I could observe Stefan Sagmeister being followed around, almost molested by two female groupies the entire time. He didn't seem to mind too much – they were pretty good-looking and for some reason he didn't show up Saturday morning for one of the discussion Panels... I could also see that the energetic Joshua Davis looks pretty tired and worn out from up close. I even managed to talk to Si Scott for a couple of minutes – by the way, him and me look pretty alike, if I were to shrink a bit and gain a little weight I could pose as his friggin' stunt double – and I might be getting a custom tattoo by him... We'll see :)
All in all, I'm very happy and grateful that I had the opportunity to go to this very recommendable 'cause interesting and inspiring event. It was very very worth it. Thanks Bleed!
Very well then, this post will be all about the lectures I was able to see at the OFFF conference. I'll try to keep it short and not bore you too much. There are some images and on the very bottom a short video to give an idea of what these speeches 'looked' like – and also if you just wanna skip through all this reading crap :D
Thursday started with Neville Brody who opened up the entire event with a mixture of theoretical design talk and a look back at his broad spectrum of work. Sometimes confusing where he was actually going with his thesis but that might have been in part due to our crappy seats and the bad acoustics. The latter of which we would have to deal with at all times. Because the schedule was also constantly tossed around, with lectures being delayed, pulled up or canceled altogether last minute, I only got to see 15 minutes of Xtrabold in the small conference hall (Brody started late and stretched his time a bit). Very talented and at 19 also very young illustrator from Brazil who unfortunately seemd to already be losing grip on reality and tried to teach meaningful design lessons. Maybe in 20 years kid! Next up was Director Kobayashi who was a bit of a letdown. First off, he wasn't Japanese but Italian. Second off the one video I had seen of him was by far his best. And third off he was quite full of himself, constantly yapping about the short periods of time he used to produce his stuff, which in big parts were just rip-offs of other designers anyways. Photographer Eva Vermandel I only saw for a couple of minutes – due to her very boring style of presenting. Jason Bruges Studio was a pleasant surprise, showing a lot of very unique interactive light installations. Against the impressive work of United Visual Artists however it was a mere warm up. Jesus f***ing Christ, these guys are amazing! Complex motion graphics, 3D animations and tangible, interactive installations – they do it all, and they do it more than well. Plus, they are a very sympathetic, down-to-earth bunch, it seems. Then some weird but very cool flash stuff from the guys of Presstube before a very long day came to an end with music video guru Chris Milk, who was kinda cute in the way that he was so nervous from the big crowd, he needed one of the organizers up on stage with him to hold the lecture in form of an interview. He just couldn't handle talking to that many people directly. But his videos were smoking!
Some pictures to break it up: Dave Ferner from U.V.A., Chris Milk, Si Scott, Joshua Davis, PES and Sagmeister.
On Friday most of us took their time and made the Bleed lecture at 3 our first one of the day. Dag was shitting his pants but pulled it off nicely in the end :) Then a quick peek to Champagne Valentine who do some very beautiful, yet creepy flash animation and illustration things but pissed me off with their overly hipster appearance and arrogant attitude so much that I could only bear it for a while. Robert L. Peters started off quite interesting and funny with his extremely theoretical approach to design but soon succumbed to dulling palaver. Motion graphic designers Onesize made up for it by showing an interesting making-of of their superb opening credits, which I'll post some other time soon. It was almost as funny as the hilarious stop motion videos by PES. That guy is a comical genius with great ideas – you should definitely go check out his work. Paula Scher from Pentagram, who, if you haven't heard of her before, will at least know from the 'Helvetica' movie, must've held an interesting lecture. Unfortunately I came too late, didn't find a good spot and couldn't hear shit. The day finished with the highlight of the entire festival: Joshua Davis. His lecture – part inspirational pep talk, part portfolio presentation, part stand-up comedy show – was amazing. Davis, ex pro skater, high on Red Bull and who knows what, gave a hyperactive, funny as hell and still thought-provoking performance that left everyone else standing in the dust. And even though his work might not be everybody's taste (I personally think he fucks up almost all his stuff within the last two steps of the design process by using wrong colors and overdoing the design in general) everyone got up for the standing ovations.
The last day was maybe the most pleasant one – the smallest amount of attendants meant good seats, temperatures below 30° indoors and somewhat breathable air. It started with the 'Fail Gracefully' Panel, a discussion lead by Florian Schmitt from Hi-Res! with PES, Davis and a couple of others talking about the theme of the festival. Interesting stuff. After that Si Scott took over. Really mellow, shy type of guy, who, like Chris Milk, didn't seem too comfortable up on stage. He was mumbling into the mic with a strong British accent so badly that people were constantly shouting 'Louder!'. Honestly though, not his fault – why didn't the tech guys just turn up the volume? No new revelations besides his work being amazing, except maybe that all his stuff is hand-drawn(!). Grey London had to cancel their presentation due to client trouble at home son instead we got to see the results of a workshop held by motion mastermind Re:Nascent – good effort by all participants but nothing special. 'Nerdferences' Panel was indeed very nerdy but also fun with Gijs Gieskes, among others, explaining some truly bizarre instruments like the 'Acid Machine'. Even spiced it up with a short live performance. Nice! Digital Kitchen, the makers of the 'Dexter' intro presented some insight on how they produced the opening credits for the 'True Blood' TV series. Interesting but not really my cup of tea. Last but definitely not least on this immensely long list was Stefan Sagmeister who performed in a polka dot dress – why the fuck ever. Despite his condescending tone, his I've-seen-it-all attitude and him obviously being totally full of himself – and as much as I hate to say it – one has to acknowledge that he is a design god. Content wise the best and most comprehensible presentation, to the point and well structured. Plus a couple of new works here and there. In one sentence: Sagmeister knows his stuff.
Sadly I wasn't able to see any of the great (but very similar) music acts like Alva Noto, Kangding Ray, Bytetone, Signal or Fennesz, all from the label Raster Noton. Only popped my head in once or twice.
Aaaand the video showing Jason Bruges Studio, 'Fail Gracefully' Panel and 2x U.V.A. demonstrating one of the programs they developed for producing 3D graphics (I'm telling you, these guys are sick!) and their sound based stage effects for the Chemical Brothers. Sorry for the poor quality, will try to get a better one up soon.
Back since yesterday afternoon after the shortest night ever, a bumpy flight and an undecided battle against exhaustion. Before I get into all the details, some panoramas (again! whoopee!!) in advance. This time some of them actually fulfill a purpose though – showing you the vast localities of this year's OFFF conference to give an idea of how massively big it was. And the others, oh well...
From top to bottom: my stylishly clean cut room at our fancy pantsy hotel, the view from that very room, the line to OFFF on the first day, the big conference hall, standing ovations for Joshua Davis, Dag rockin' the Bleed presentation in the small conference hall, André and me lunching in downtown Lisbon before hitting Oeiras, and watching Paula Scher all the way from the back in double vision.
