Marcel Reichart Blog

Taryn's view

Last week, Taryn Simon gave a talk at Christiane zu Salm's About Change Collection. I was happy to go there, since Taryn spoke at DLD08 and it was good seeing her again. She showed two series of her work: American Index and The Innocents (Taryn is a highly relevant new photoartists introduced to us by Hans-Ulrich Obrist look her bio and profile here).

The image above belongs to the American Indes series. It shows the only legal canabis lab in the US. On her website you see more of these examples of unknown and hidden places of reality we don't know. To me this is very strong. Even more so, the prior series on convicted innocent people who she portraited at the crime scenes the never have been. The stories of these people make you think a lot. Often it is, as she explained, due to false photo identification they are sent to prison for years. Then DNA tests brought them back to life. So the unvisual overcomes the visual. It is part of the change of our times. I would like to keep tuned on her future projects.

Kara Swisher on our DLD Lunch

Kara Swisher, key opinion maker in the Sillicon Valley (she is a top-writer at The WallStreetJournal and Co-Founder of the D-Conference) posted on her blog on our latest DLD Lunch in Palo Alto. And the made a wonderful short video on this. I stunned by the quality and how much feel the atmosphere of the luncheon from this and what people are on to. Great and a big thank you to Kara. Looking forward seeing you at DLD2009 at latest.

Rafael's Pieces

We met Rafael Rozendaal this week in Paris. He is a brasilian-dutch digital artist whose work I became an instant fan. Actually, it was our dear friend Miltos Manetas who showed some of Rafaels interactive pieces at DLD and as part of his NEEN project. Just click through the site, if possible watch the works with a beamer. My favorites are I am very sorry and jellotime. The New Museum in New York will show the latter soon. Rafael told me that his idea is to represent his life through his art living in the internet. I think reflects very much on how the web becomes our representation of reality.

super normads

Philippe Starck could be called a super normad. Well perhaps he would see himself this way. When I read about his lifestyle this weekend in ParisMatch, I thought so. He tells there how he permanently travels around the globe for his projects, the Baccarat in Moscow, the Le Lan in Bejing or designing a new eco-friendly and almost invisible superjacht. And he keeps his energies by creating a personal cocoon with his wife around himself during all this jetset, the keep rituals, doesn't take baggage. Interesting.

I thought of others who keep their average speed at these levels. Our DLD friend Hans-Ulrich Obrist for example who takes his inspiration around the world connecting artists, exhibitions and people. Josua Ramo wrote about the average speed, the miles you travel divided by the hours in a year. Hans-Ulrich will be in Dubai next week, too. Looking forward. I spoke with Steffi today about super normads who are the first global citizens.

Luxury selfemployed

It has been written about this a lot already. The new generation is more and more at ease being selfemployed. We remember Sascha Lobo's and Holm Friebe's "Wir nennen es Arbeit". This week, I have been thinking about this trend again. I had a talk with two magazine editors who described selfemployment as the new luxury of their well-educated twen readers, letting them chose their city to live and work times. And I met two others who just left their permanent jobs to become their own chief and work for a small number of clients. While this has been a long tradition in the creative industry, however there seemed some coincidence here towards a change in urban lifestyle enabled by better communication, i.e. the internet, and lower transport cost. And this goes alongside the massive downsizing in traditional industries and resulting social tensions.

Peter's Nobel Faces

When I was for lunch in Einstein Cafe unter den Linden in Berlin yesterday, by chance I met Peter Badge, a befriended photographer and DLDster. Peter has worked over the last years with the Nobel Committee on a fascinating project. He had the assignement to portrait all living nobel laureates in the world. This made him travel substantially, but even more meet these geniuses which constitute a community of excellence of their own. I got to know Peter through Till of Cicero Magazin which presented some of Peter's portraits (which Nobel Laureate is on the photo, any guess?)

Peter published a photobook on these encounters and was so kind to invite me to the Opening of his exhibition "Nobel Faces" at the MadaTech Campus in Haifa on March 18.

Evan Williams rechte Hirnhälfte

Hier ein interessantes Portrait im Economist über Evan Williams, der Blogger und Twitter erfunden hat und der erreichen will, das es mehr Zufälle gibt.

Florian Illies über die "Entschleunigung" der Provinz

Die FAZ brachte gestern ein Interview mit Florian Illies, in dem er über sein aktuelles Buch “Ortsgespräch” spricht. Nach der “Generation Golf” und “Monopol”  wendet sich Illies seiner Jugend in der oberhessischen Provinz zu.

Ich halte dieses Buch (das ich noch nicht gelesen habe) aus zweierlei Sicht für interessant: Es thematisiert die “Entschleunigung” – diese Dialektik zwischen globalisierten digitalen und sinnlich, naturstarken lokalen Lebenswelten. Illies weist selbst auf seine zeitgleiche Lektüre des Buches “Beschleunigung” von Harmut Rosa hin. “High Tech – High Touch” wie der US-Trendforscher John Naisbitt schon in Ende der Neunziger formulierte. Dazu passt, dass er sich Illies dem Buch und seinem hessischen Schlitz über Google Earth genähert hat.

Aber Illies beschreibt das Buch auch als “subjektive Schilderung”. Ist das eine Annäherung an den Begriff Heimat? Schon mit Generation Golf drückte er aus, was viele seiner “Generation” dachten und wie sie mit wie sie die Konsumlebenswelten der 70 und frühen 80er prägten. Weist Illies einen Zeitgeist?

Medienmittwoch on Blogging

Blogging is much easier with a blog client such as Blogjet which I downloaded again. I took some critic that my blogging was to little in the last weeks. Good point…This week, I participated in a panel discussion of Medienmittwoch in Frankfurt. I liked the event and learned from the panelists – in particular Don Alfonso’s explaining the essence of blogging (narrative closer to literature!) – as well as from the audience and their blogging comments (see also Thomas Wanhoff).

Google soon at 6 bn$ turnover and the cathedral of knowledge?

NYTimes yesterday published an article on Googles dynamic future, including the following  forecast:

“This year, Google will sell $6.1 billion in ads, nearly double what it sold last year, according to Anthony Noto, an analyst at Goldman Sachs. That is more advertising than is sold by any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television network. By next year, Mr. Noto said, he expects Google to have advertising revenue of $9.5 billion. That would place it fourth among American media companies in total...”

The article also showed an interesting comparisin to Yahoo:

“Because of this technology, users click ads 50 percent to 100 percent more often on Google than they do on Yahoo, Mr. Noto estimates, and that is a powerful driver of Google's growth and profits."

And Saul Hansell of the NYTimes gave an idea, what that is all about:

“…HIDDEN behind its simple white pages, Google has already created what it says is one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence systems ever built.”

In this context I might add this wonderful coverage by Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing on historian George Dyson’s recent visit to Google — ‘a historian amongst futurist’.

“Despite the whimsical furniture and other toys, I felt I was entering a 14th-century cathedral — not in the 14th century but in the 12th century, while it was being built. Everyone was busy carving one stone here and another stone there, with some invisible architect getting everything to fit. The mood was playful, yet there was a palpable reverence in the air. "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people," explained one of my hosts after my talk. "We are scanning them to be read by an AI."  

You surely know John Batelle’s book on Goolge “The Search”– he also writes on the deeper vision of search beeing AI – or if I remember well – creating the Startrek-like machine that can answer all our questions…