PICNIC 08 – Outside of the Lectures and the Dome, a Critical Note

Although a lot of the lectures could be followed on the website of Picnic through a live stream is was too bad the fee was very high and expensive. As a Masters of Media student of the University of Amsterdam it would have been nice to have participated in discussions about what’s happening online. Now we did listen to a lecture or Visual Power Show by Koert van Mensvoort inside the white E-art dome on the premises of Picnic. This lecture was about nature versus culture and what can we control and what’s beyond our control and the power of the visual.

After that we had to stay outside. There were a group of people who asked us to join in games like a Samurai game and slow motion football and ‘stoelendans’ (picking a chair). This was fun as we had to collaborate with each other and strangers which went really well I must say. What’s the use of including people from different businesses but excluding students who are new to the field of new media?

Then we were listening to GPS sounds on a headphone by Yolande Harris which sounded very weird and disturbing. The first response was to take the headphone right off but you had to walk around to get it. There’s an example in the collage. The concept is to receive these signals and transform them into a kind of music. It should make the user aware of his or her environment as we get disconnected from it with technologies as TomTom around. We trust new technologies more than our own sens of location.

At friday night the main party was fully booked so some of us went to another party at the Flex bar where we could leave the little energy we had left after three days of Picnic.