Last week I was invited to do a Second Life workshop with students at Merz Academy in Stuttgart (Click on the image to watch a video of “Merz Academy’s Next Top Model”, the fashion show we did). The students built the Stage, scripted the light show, designed catwalks and of course cloths.

Merz Academy is, by the way, a really nice school and the students were very good. We were a bit late with everything and had to improvise for the presentation on Friday, but that’s of course the kind of situation when one can really see how people work.

Besides skill theory seems to be an integral and important part of the education at Merz Academy. I also noticed that there is room for political discourse, which I think is very important in design and art studies. All in all I had a great time in Stuttgart (it was actually my first time the city).

Aram Barthol, architct, media, performance + intervention artist and a friend of mine marked the NewBerlin Sim that YouSeeMeIn3D has set up resently in Real Life. Despite heavy rain the performance went smoothly without the lag one usually expects when particle effects get used excessively. The man with the camera is Arial Schlesinger aka Ariel Chico, frequent contributer to Minor Urban Disasters. I expected he might score for the Flickr group when Aram drew the line across Karl-Liebknecht Straße. Besides Second Life, this scene also referenced the Arcade + C64 game classic Frogger – not intentionally I guess, but perfectly in line with Aram’s body of work.

The Sim limit runs right through a MacDonalds Restaurant, a Church, the train station and Kaufhof, the large retail store at Alexander Platz. So does Aram’s line.

See all photos I took of the intervention on Flickr

Here is another train story: In January I finally bought a reduction card for dutch trains, because I use trains in the Netherlands all the time. I bought it at the station in Eindhoven, where I ended up with some spare time because of just missing a train. I was given a temporary card because the real one containing an ID photo could not be done immediately. I was a little surprised when I heard that the expected time frame for delivery was going to be about three months (I received my german Bahncard within a week, also containing a photo). I never really had a closer look at the temporary card and was therefore taken by surprise one evening last week, when a conductor told me that it had expired and that I should contact the NS about my card. The next morning I had to take an early train again and of course there was no time to contact the NS in the meantime.

Again a conductor noticed that my temporary card had expired (I had been using the card for a while after the expiration date without anyone noticing). She stamped my ticket and said: “You’re not getting your card back, it has expired”. Since this card was my only receipt, I insisted on getting my card back – as a compromise I offered that she could de-validate it. When she just ran off I went after her, demanding that she would give me back my card. She freaked out threatening to call the police. I told her that this was exactly what I was going to do, if she insisted on keeping my card. When I asked for her name or employee’s ID she refused to give it to me (so far I thought this was a french speciality).

To make a long story short: I let her go with my card after we had agreed on involving the police. 5 minutes later another conductor (the supervisor) showed up. excusing himself and giving me back the card. He told me that he knew that there was a delay with the delivery of reduction cards and that not all conductors had been informed about it. He politely asked to see my ID and explained that the temporary cards are often passed on when people receive the actual card. That is of course no surprise.

But that the NS doesn’t seem to be able to install a system where they don’t need to give out thousands of temporary cards in the first place is a bit surprising. 3 months and a delay on top of it? Get real!

After all the Netherlands are the self proclaimed country of pragmatism and efficiency and unlike the french SNCF which is famous for poor service the NS has been privatized.

Oh yes, did I mention that one can’t use the card during rush hour? Of course I found out after I had bought it, the person selling it to me apparently didn’t think that this was an important detail.

“The Future of flea-market mixed with highest fashion, lifestyle, surface and emerging producers.”

Until now I thought the future of flea-market was eBay and that it had arrived a decade ago. The presence of flea-markets I can observe every Sunday near my house at Mauerpark / Bernauer Straße in Berlin. Seeing the masses gathering there I sometimes wonder if they haven’t heard of eBay. Of course the flea-market at Mauerpark is so successful, because it’s also mixed with lifestyle and a bit of fashion.

International Festival, a very cool crew from Stockholm organizes My Market at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and they promise an eruption of economical exchange, merchandising, bargaining and a celebration of market forces.

Unfortunately I wont be in Berlin and I will miss it. International Festival’s last gig in Berlin was very good though: A party in a standard Ikea kitchen set up in a large space inside Haus der Kulturen der Welt (which was a construction site at the time and still is to my knowledge) with music from a portable radios and pizza delivery.

More and probably better images can be found here. If you wonder about the TV tower: I had my camera attached to a guy in a cop’s outfit. While I was taking the snapshot, he got bounced off the SIM and my camera went tried to follow. This was the image I ended up with.