alissapajer

Yesterday I went on a Yellow Bike Tour of Amsterdam.

Today I ate the best apple pie ever at the cafe De Winkel.

Tomorrow I will leave for Berlin at 4:30 in the morning.

I created a conceptual map of Amsterdam that maps the areas in the city that have the highest concentrations of bicycles. I began my walk at what I call “bicycle central,” which is a four-floor parking garage for bicycles next to Centraal Station. Per square meter, this spot has the highest concentration of bicycles in the city. Then I walked away from Centraal Station. Whenever I came to an intersection I walked in the direction where there were the most bicycles, not counting the direction that I came from. If I made a circle and returned to a spot to which I had already been, I chose the direction with the second most bicycles so I wouldn’t walk in circles for the rest of my walk. My walk lasted three hours.

While I took my walk, I found that I ignored the pedestrians, cars, and buildings and only saw bicycles. The only thing that mattered was how many bicycles there were and where they were. Each time I got to an intersection I would turn around slowly and just look for bicycles. Once during my walk I got an eyelash in my eye, so I closed my eyes because it hurt. When I did, I saw bicycle wheels on the inside of my eyelids.

I made eight photo cubes on my walk. I wanted each cube to be distinct. If I just took one shot in each of the six directions at locations where there were a lot of bicycles, then all my cubes would look quite similar. So instead I focused on a different element of the bicycle for each cube I made. Five of my cubes focused each on one of these elements: pedals, seats, handlebars, spokes, and chains. Then, for my other three cubes I made one traditional cube, one that captured cyclists riding by, and a third that consisted solely of bicycles parked close together.

During my walk I saw thousands upon thousands of bicycles. I wonder how many of them are ridden on a regular basis and how many just sit there locked up. It fascinates me how many different types of people ride bicycles. I saw everyone from small children to elderly men and women riding bicycles. The bicycle-riding demographics seemed to transcend glass and gender lines. It seems that people from all social classes ride bicycles as a primary means of transportation. By walking towards the areas with the most bicycles, I created a map of the city that shows where people are most likely to travel to and from by bicycle.

Every student in the group made some sort of conceptual map. You can learn about everyone else’s projects here at our Roadtrip blog.

1) I went to the movies today and saw Snakes on a Plane. When I bought my ticket, I had my first real conversation in Dutch with the man at the cash register. The conversation went like this:

Alissa: “Snakes on a Plane”
Man (in Dutch): “Will you pay for that in cash?”
Alissa: “Ja”
Man hands ticket to Alissa
Alissa: “Dank je.”

2) I feel really comfortable in Amsterdam. People here seem to be a lot like I am. I have had very few interactions with people, so I am not sure exactly why I feel this way. Perhaps it’s from my observations of people; how they walk, how they talk, how they carry themselves… I have a favorite bench in the city from which I often watch people. This bench is circular and is right in the center of the city where Rokin, Amstel, and six other roads all converge.

3) New project idea: animated video mosaic of Amsterdam. I will take hundreds of little videos and create a video mosaic. Then I will keyframe each tiny video to move around the screen. If I create a new keyframe every three frames, essentially I will animate the videos themselves to create one big moving image out of all the little moving images. This is how it will go:

white screen - rain falls - rain puddles at bottom of screen and forms canal - buildings grow out of canal - bicycle rides by buildings - buildings scroll left off screen - bicycle speeds up and rides off screen right - screen is white - sequence loops

Although Final Cut Pro only has 99 video tracks per sequence, you can nest sequences into other sequences. Thus it is possible to have an unlimited number of video tracks. I am not sure how many video tracks I will need yet, but its comforting to know that I will have as many as I need. I will post a link to this project once I complete it.

Today I visited the Waag Society, which is a research and production institution that focuses on the implications and uses of new media in education, culture, and the public domain. The directors of the Waag Society shared some of their past and current projects with us, and in turn, we told them about our current projects.

The Waag, the building in Nieuwmarkt where the Waag Society has their workspace, is the oldest non-religious building in Amsterdam. The first stone was laid in 1488. This is the oldest building that I have ever stood in. The building felt so old that I didn’t dare touch its walls or walk too quickly on its floors. The space felt sacred and special, and I felt that if I become too comfortable inside I wouldn’t show the building its due respect.

Initially I struggled with the idea that the Waag Society, one of the most forward-thinking and modern institutions in Amsterdam, makes its home in one of the oldest buildings in Amsterdam. Shouldn’t we house museums in hisorical buildings, not new media societies ? I stood on the second floor looking across the rooftops and thought about this idea. Eventually I decided that the uses of buildings naturally change and evolve over the years. If the Waag were a museum now, the building would be deprived of present culture and instead would only contain the past. Although I do believe that it is important to preserve the past in a way that is accessible to the public, present culture such as new media is equally as important as past culture such as a Rembrant painting. Since neither the past nor the present is more important, as long as there exist some places that preserve the past and others that create the present, I see nothing wrong with housing the Waag Society in the Waag.

Another thought: Regardless of whether a museum or a new media institution resides in an old building, both institutions remake the building into something present. The only way to truly let a building live in the past would be to let it naturally decay until all that was left was a sunken pile of bricks and mortar.

The beginning. I did laundry this morning, and now my clothes are clean. But if it were not for the help of a nice woman in the laundromat my clothes would still be dirty. The setup of the laundromat was different than any laundromat I had been in before. To pay for your laundry, all of the coins go into a central coin-taker. Then, on this coin-taking machine you push the numbered button that corresponds to the number on your washing machine or dryer, and the washing machine or dryer begins its cycle. Before today I had only seen laundromats where you put the coins directly into each machine and not into a central coin-taker. I must have looked quite perplexed standing in front of the washing machine with coins in hand, because that is when the nice woman came over and showed me how to operate the washers and dryers. And now my clothes don’t smell any more. The end.

This evening I embarked on another Ultimate adventure. I went to the first winter practice of Crunch. The practice was in the evening and outdoors under the lights. When I left my hotel to walk to the field, I could see stars in the sky; there was no sign of rain anywhere. But shortly after I arrived at the field, it started to downpour. The rain continued to fall harder and harder as the practice went on. My clothes could not have been any more wet, and I could not have been any happier. When I looked up into the lights, each raindrop looked like a glittering streak in the sky. As long as kept moving I wasn’t cold at all. After running a couple drills and scrimmaging for awhile, practice ended. It was time for me to walk home. I gathered my belongings and headed out.

When it started to rain I had stashed my backpack in this small shed. I didn’t have any sort of rain cover for my bag, so it too became soaked within a couple minutes when I put it on my back. But again, I was not the lease bit annoyed at or upset by the rain. Life felt perfect, and I was happy. So, continuing with my story, before I started to walk home I had to decide what to wear on my feet. I didn’t want to wear my cleats because walking all the way home on the pavement would ruin the bottoms, and I didn’t want to wear my sneakers because they are the only pair of shoes I have with me. If they got soaking wet I would have nothing to wear on my feet for a couple days. Thus two options remained: socks or bare feet. Although walking in my bare feet sounded fun, I decided that there were too many unknown and potentially sharp objects on the ground, and it wasn’t worth running the risk of getting my foot cut open by a piece of glass. So socks it was.

My feet must have been cold, but I don’t remember feeling cold, though I do remember that I jumped in every puddle I could find and tried to make as big a splash as possible. I was quite happy and continued to jump around until I turned the corner and saw an Amsterdam canal in the rain on a dark night. I was awestruck. The water was perfectly flat and looked like I could walk across it. There were no ripples anywhere, perhaps because there were so many raindrops hitting the water that once a ripple started to form another raindrop would hit the water and thus start to create a whole new set of ripples, which then would be destroyed by the next raindrop.

After I passed the canal and was almost home, I thought about how lucky we are that we do not remember what it feels like to be in extreme pain, or to be really cold, or even to be extremely joyful. If we had the capability of actually remembering how much something hurt or how intense an emotion felt, we couldn’t keep ourselves alive. The memories would be too much. I do remember that it feels awful to be really cold, for example, but I when I remeber that it felt awful I don’t remember how my body felt. I just remember how my mind reacted to how my body felt.

When I made it home I jumped into the shower right away and got all warm. Now I am sitting all cozy in bed, trying to imagine what it must have felt like to be running around in the rain under the lights playing Ultimate. Honeslty, I can’t remember what it felt like. I just know that it felt extraordinary.

Right now even the immediate past feels like it didn’t take place recently. A couple hours ago seems like forever ago.

When you drive out of Amsterdam into the countryside, there are cows and sheep everywhere. The city ends abruptly; vast fields take the place of the crooked buildings, and it is impossible to tell that the city lies just a few kilometers away.

Today I went into the countryside to play Ultimate at a local tournament. Bicyclemark, who organized some of our group’s events, plays for Crunch, an Ultimate team based in Amsterdam. Crunch was playing in the tournament, and Mark invited me, Boris, and Aaron, to join the team for the day.

We played four games during the course of the day, which equaled about six hours of playing Ultimate. We lost all four games, but the team stayed in good spirits. After the games were over, I learned that in the Netherlands, everyone showers in the public facilities at the fields. After Ultimate tournaments in the United States everyone gets into their cars sweaty and dirty and showers at home.

One of my favorite things about Ultimate is its universality. People play Ultimate all over the world, and everyone abides by the same rules. It doesn’t matter if I don’t speak the language of the country I am in; on the Ultimate field everyone speaks the language of Ultimate, and thus we can all understand each other.

I like to watch people dance because I like how the human body moves. While I watch people dance, often I forget that I am watching live people; I see them as three-dimensional figures, not as as fellow human beings. Yesterday evening I watched people dance in Carmen, a ballet performed at the Muziektheater.

The theater itself is grand with plush seats and two balconies. I sat in top balcony and would not have traded my seats for any others in the theater. From my seat I could see all of the dancers at once and could easily see how they used the space on stage.

My favorite part about the dance were the colors of the dancers costumes. Carmen wore a red dress, so I always knew it was she when she came on stage. The rest of the female dancers also wore colorful dresses that flowed quite gracefully as they moved. All of the male dancers wore earth-toned pants and shirts. I couldn’t tell one man from another, and their costumes starkly contrasted those of the women. Once during the ballet the men and the women were dancing together. All of a sudden all the women ran off stage taking all the color and light away with them. When the women danced with the men I didn’t notice how dull the men’s costumes were, but once the women left the stage immediately I noticed that the men’s costumes lacked vibrant colors.

When I left the theater after the ballet I spent a couple of minutes looking at the reflections in the canal. One of the reflections was red. I stared at it, and the harder I looked the more I saw Carmen’s figure dancing on the water.

This afternoon I took a five hour walk around Amsterdam. I don’t know exactly where I went, and I like it that way. I find it hard to enjoy a city if I am constantly looking at a map. If I have to reach a specific destination at a specific time I will look at a map, but otherwise I just like to walk. As I walk I create a map of the city in my mind. The map I create is multi-dimensional. It includes the three spatial dimensions (the shapes and sizes of things), time (how long I spent at a given place and what time of day it was when I was there), and my sentiments (how I felt while I was there).

It is important to note that my mind’s map of Amsterdam exists only in my memory and thus is subject to change over short periods of time, while a paper map will stay the same from one day to the next. But, nonetheless, the map in my mind is more accurate than any two-dimensional map could ever be. I’d rather trust my instincts and my memory than trust a piece of paper with ink on it.

Yesterday I did the tourist thing and ran around London with my digital camera. I took lots of photos of Big Ben and the Thames River. There are a lot of strangers in my photos. I like to think about how many times I am in the background of other people’s tourist photos.

During the past five weeks I’ve found that the more I see of the world, the bigger the world feels. Tomorrow I’ll be in Amsterdam, and the world will probably feel even bigger than it feels now.