see-conference #5 – nice (and exhausting)

Juten Tach,

a weekend with a lot of driving lies behind me. The plan was fool-proof, we thought. Take the plane from Hamburg to Frankfurt and go to Wiesbaden by train. Unfortunately, as most of you probably have heard, there were some ash-clouds coming into our way and so on Friday me and David were hastily driving to Hamburg airport and canceling our tickets and rent a car. From Hamburg to Wiesbaden it is roughly 520 km. So i got up at 5 in the morning, picked up David and drove to Hanover first, were we picked up Jens and Ulf and then headed for Wiesbaden, where we arrived at 9.45, perfectly on time, but a bit tired, naturally.

The weather in Wiesbaden was awesome, no clouds and after a while we recognized, also no condensation trails of course, because there were no planes flying. I remember, after 9/11, when there was no air traffic over the USA, scientists did a study, where they found, that these condensation trails actually have an effect on climate. I wonder, if scientists were doing studies here in Europe over the weekend, too.

Anyway, the conference began and the first speaker was Prof. H. Franke. I have to say, it wasn’t the best opening talk, the see conference has seen. Prof. Franke is a true scientist and as such elaborated on facts, that most of the people have probably already heard of. It would have been interesting to me, if he had put these facts in context to when they were found or invented, because then we could have seen, that a lot of what we are working on today has been found out decades ago already, but Prof. Franke did not talk about history, he presented the facts, like if they were brand new.

Because of the air traffic problems, some speakers could not make it to the conference, others had to take adventurous trips through Europe to arrive at Wiesbaden. Thus, the program got mixed up a bit, but that’s understandable, of course.

The two most interesting talks for me were those from Andrew Vande Moere (infosthetics.com) and from Hannes Koch (www.random-international.com).

Andrew talked about the projects he did and does as a lecturer at universities in Australia and Belgium. The point there was, that Andrew suggests, that data visualization is persuasive, as the designer can choose, how he interprets the data and thus where he puts the emphasis on. Later in the evening, i had the chance to have a chat with him at Mexican restaurant down at at the Rhein, which was nice and insightful.

Hannes Koch presented work from his design studio random. At one point he joked about the people, who always want to know, how the pieces are done technically rather then simply enjoying the pieces. I have to admit, i am one of those nerds, too. I would say, it lies in the nature of us human beings, that we want to understand, how things work, and art installations are no exception. So the only difference might be, some people care less, others care more.

Hannes was the last speaker. In the evening, together with Lars, Raphael, Jens, Patrick and a bunch of other guys we were having a good time chatting, having a beer and enjoying the very nice weather.

Then on Sunday we had to drive back all the way to hamburg, so when i arrived there, the rest of the day was mainly sitting on my balcony and doing nothing really but preparing for my upcoming talk at the GoodSchool next Thursday.