…and that would be the equivalent photo taken in 1981 from the ‚Gellértberg‘ (see the second image in the previous post).
Archiv Seite 2
While looking through my parents‘ library I came across this very nice travel guide about ‚walking tours in Budapest‘. It was made in 1974 and due to the high cost of photo prints supplemented with very nice illustrations and hand-drawn maps by Attila Emödy.
I can‘t remember where I found ‚Chris & Thomas‘ but I definitely like their singer-songwriter music. Be sure to check out their song ‚broken chair‘ on myspace also if you like them. The song above is called ‚Take these Thoughts‘.
I have absolutely no idea what went wrong on the GEOaudio (audio travel guide) website. The screenshot above tells me that ‚Wandern im Ruhrgebiet‘ (hiking in the urban area around the Ruhr river) is situated in Africa, close Ethiopia and Yemen. And that was not the only mistake…
lovely Haslach architecture just below Mt. Kohlern
camper housing behind the highway bridge
official mailboxes underneath the highway bridge
the Lido (public pool) in Spring time – a little spooky without anyone
„Day trippers are people who go on a day trip, right? Usually on a ferryboat or something. But [the song] was kind of . . . you‘re just a weekend hippie. Get it?“
Once again it’s been done before but it was still interesting to see what I usually take with me as ‚essential‘ luggage. One thing in the image is already wrong – my camera equipment is much bigger. Here I only put the small camera in the lower part as example. Other that that I carry the usual in my big red backpack: some clothes (including shoes, underwear and weather-proof pants and jacket), passport, headphones and MP3 Player, a cellphone (as alarm clock, usually not as a phone), a pocket knife, a pen and notebook, a toothbrush and -paste, a very handy sewing kit (served me already many times), super glue (also this can help in the worst case), a book, a towel, my house keys, a bag for daily use (camera bag, etc.), sunglasses and some spare shoe laces.
I wonder how far I could reduce it and still be able to help me out in the most situations?!
While thinking of my thesis and what direction I could steer to I started writing down how many kilometers and hours I spent traveling in 2009. The numbers are really only based on my memories, Google Earth and other route planning software and do not represent an accurate result (Iran for example is surprisingly not included in Google Maps). The second point is that 2009 is not representative for myself nor for the average person, I assume at least.
Anyway the outcome surprised me of course. According to my calculation I traveled around 62,000 km last year – around 33,000 km of this in airplanes which equals around 50 hours of time, almost 12,500 km in busses which means about 140 hours and about 10,500 km in trains with about 160 hours time spent. The rest was spent in cars (~5,500 km / 60 hours), Moped (~120km / 3 hours) and on ferries (~450 km / 7 hours).
The result really doesn‘t tell me much about my topic and was yet another ‚time-consuming‘ activity but still it brought me back to a very essential question. Is travel necessary at all? Most of the distances I traveled were for personal and therefore rather egoistic reason. I can certainly say that it broadened my personal horizon, showed me many different places which were extremely different to what I have seen before, I met great people of which most don‘t have the possibility to travel as free and as much as I did and I have a huge amount of photos that I still haven‘t looked through completely (or properly). But why did I really decide to go through all this? It’s really not because I personally like spending time in travel busses 
.
‚Just‘ another video clip, this time a time-lapse I made from a pile of photos I took out of my studio window. So yes, this is my view, it’s quite a luxury I admit.
*** Update: same song different perspective and shot at dawn – unfortunately it’s getting a little shaky once the exposure is getting longer
The second ‚big‘ event of last week was the ‚typo auction‘ initiated by Martin. For his last semester project ‚UN-TYPE-ISCH‘ he collected letters from old neon signs and used them to create a book about typography that has a great 3D effect when using colored glasses.
After taking photos of the letters they were ’stuck‘ in our studio for a while until he decided to sell them in an auction and give the money to Designistan (our unofficial student group) to finance our blog, etc.
I was recording with very shaky hands and ‚editing the video afterwards.
We finally did it we had our first Ping Pong Competition at the university. The Competition table was a regular Eiermann table we have in our studios. It was a great success with 14 people participating actively and many spectators stopping by to have a beer or watch the games.
Sara & Martin as well as myself filmed during the whole evening, I did the ‚editing‘ afterwards. I like the rather ‚trashy‘ style very much but I have to admit that it is due to the little time I have to edit it properly. And besides it fits into the image of the evening and Simones pink bike tights
It’s almost one week now that I have my studio at the university ‚outpost‘ for my thesis. One week without much progress except on the theoretic part but even though the time is short the first week should be used for adapting to the new situation I guess .
Well this post is just to show how much time I use for doing non-thesis nonsense work together with drinking coffee next door and so on.
my strange neighbors 
Nothing spectactularly innovative, neither video nor song but it’s still great to listen to. White Rabbits with Percussion Gun
I spent some time in the silkscreen lab yesterday and made new ‚heile Welt‘ shirts. It’s a very limited edition so if you‘re interested send an e-Mail to heilewelt2010 [at] gmail.com (prizes are negotiable)
male shirts are available in the colors above (light blue w/ neon green & brown w/ light yellow) in sizes medium & large
female shirts in a darker blue (don‘t have a photo, yet) and the same brown, sizes medium, small & large
The shirts are 100% cotton in a really good quality.
Monday was the opening for the exhibition ‚Persianissimo‘, an exhibition of about 50 posters made by iranian artists and graphic designers. By coincidence I became part with an own photo exhibition. I was a little late with everything and then of course the technical problems occured so in the end everything was finished by the time of the opening.
I chose to display only black & white photos on the one hand for aesthetic reasons and on the other hand because a selection of these photos was used for a magazine article in ROest Magazine (#39) from Rotterdam (I wrote about that last year). As I had to say it during the ‚vernissage‘ also, it was not my intention to go and take these photos and I did not follow a certain topic. The photos are my personal travel documentation and are therefore taken in a spontaneous matter.
The press was quite positive about my photos also (unfortunately only in Italian):
CASA – Corriere della Sera
Press Release – undo.net
Next monday – 08/03/2010 – I have the great opportunity to open* my first photo exhibition at the university. On display will be black & white photos from my trip to Iran last year. I‘m not quite sure about the closing day but I guess it will be on for about 3 weeks.
*if I will manage to print and hang everything until monday Time is running and nothing is working out so far.
I have an entry in my notbeook from a trip where I had the wish of beaming myself to my desired destiny. The whole entry started a very interesting discussion with my brother and friends and came back to mind just recently.
‚I‘m once again stuck in a travel bus. Sleep is impossible since the ground we drive on cannot be called a road [European measure] and the driver really seems to insist on the ‚EXPRESS‘ sign on the outside. While I‘m dozing I start thinking about how much time I spent for transportation on this 10-day trip (not inlcuded inner-city transport) and come to a total of about 30 hours. I‘m impressed although not shocked. Wouldn‘t it be nice to be able to beam myself instead of going through all this hustle?‘
The whole idea was mainly brought to audience by the TV show Star Trek with its most famous sentence ‚Beam me up Scotty.‘ but it could become reality one day as scientists already work on it for quite some time.
In all the discussions we found out that beaming is not just about crossing long distances without the dimension of time. There are far more positive and probably even more negative aspects that need to be questioned before anyone should really consider using this technology.
One of the many aspects we talked about were the components ’space‘ and ‚location‘. As we discussed it we figured that they lose their total meaning. It simply doesn‘t matter anymore where I am if I could beam myself to any place in about no time. In the meantime it puts a very high pressure on us. Because we can we also have to be basically ‚everywhere‘.
I think the most important question though was whether it effects my body or different if I can be ‚reduced‘ to a binary code what would be the effect when just a small portion is changed?! We found a possible solution to that but the consequences are immense. My personal binary code of the very moment needs to be registered and saved in a HUGE database to have something like a backup in case of an error. What this means though is that I‘m giving the information of myself to make reproduction possible.
From this point I could go on forever but to me or us it showed that transportation becomes a mere side-product or maybe also simply a justification for scientists to work on it.
I saw this sign this morning while waiting for the ski lifts to open up in Selva Gardena (Wolkenstein) in Val Gardena (Gröden). Just a very lovely use of english at the fassade of a 4-star Hotel.
Images are never ‚blurry‘.
What we define in photography as ‚blur‘ is the aberration of the object depicted. But as images are not made to be compared with reality they cannot be ‚blurred‘ or ‚imprecise‘ or ‚different‘ (different than what?).
I‘m more and more thinking about my upcoming thesis and started writing down any kind of thought that seems appropriate for my topic. In general the topic will be ‚travel‘ or ‚journey‘ which sound and are actually quite huge terms that don‘t really give me a point to start. Or I simply would need to choose a ’sub-topic‘ and start from there which of course seems easier to find than it is. I still have time to cut it down a little but then again I would like to do that soon.
So this morning I had a question in mind that is a little abstract but follows the idea of ‚Fischli/Weiß':
„If my mind is traveling can I say I‘m on vacation?“
Well I didn‘t find an answer, yet. Maybe I will be soon…
Another video clip that caused my computer to crash several times (also caused by power cuts in our flat) but that came out alright. I‘m still not extremely satisfied with the end result – the close-up of the highway jumps a little too fast (rendering it again only takes about 6 hours ) – but it’s already much much better than the first one.
Enjoy.
I was just messing around with a photo I took last week on the peak we walked up to. I like it.
another short clip I made for a friend at the university, this time even with recorded audio (the actual quality is pretty good, when rendering it for the web it was messed up a little)
I was on a rescue mission sunday morning and boy I was lucky…I recovered my lost snow shoe just below the peak. Luckily there wasn‘t too much snow on it so we could see it.
The weather was perfect too so basically a great day.
lucky me with the missing snow shoe
Another day, another video this time a turbo version of a ping pong match in our atelier. I even won the game!
Phantogram – When I‘m small
Phantogram is a band of two from Greenwich, New York that published their first album in 2009. I discovered them yesterday while looking for something else and was really amazed by their music. When it comes to comparisons I guess Portishead and maybe also Goldfrapp (click on the name to see an example) should be named.
Phantogram – Mouthful of Diamonds (Live on KEXP)
Before I came back to Europe I really couldn‘t resist and scraped together all my money to get a new camera, an awesome Canon 7D. Some photos on here come already from it but now I have a premiere. I have to admit that I‘m far from being satisfied with the end result but I really didn‘t have the time and will to get more into the video function of the camera. The scenes are recorded off the roof from our university, my room and the weekly market on saturday. The quality of the videos I think is pretty amazing (from the technical point of view), the way I filmed it is still developable .
Another great Christmas present that I got in 2009 was a pair of snow shoes which came to use for the first time this morning. We managed to get up very early and head for the ‚Rittner Horn‘, an about 2200m high peak just outside of Bolzano. While it was raining in the city at the time we left it was snowing pretty much all the way up. Being so early we were really the first ones to reach the peak by foot to then see a great winter panorama of the Dolomites. The ride down was not the best powder ride I had but it was still fun except to the point when we realized that I had lost one of my snow shoes that were attached to my backpack. Well I went up again and tried to find it which was useless at this point since the clouds had conquered the mountain. I didn‘t see a difference between the ground and the sky and kept falling which eventually led to strong cursing and last but not least I wasn‘t successful in my search either. Up to this point it was a lot of fun and I‘ll probably have to walk up there again tomorrow and restart my search (Max will borrow me his snow shoes..I sure hope I don‘t lose one again ).
I was watching the new animation movie Avatar yesterday, unfortunately not the 3D version of it, and while I was watching it I had a question in mind that I discussed with my brother earlier today.
The question is simply ‚Can birds fly loops?‘
My brother and I came to the conclusion that physically they should be able because their weight-wing-size-ratio is pretty good as opposed to planes which are not always able to fly loops (just check the Microsoft Flight Simulator and you‘ll notice how hard it will be to loop a Boing 787 and similar). But unfortunately this is not the answer because the wings of birds are very different to those of planes. The wing of a bird is creating the upward as well as the forward force to get up in the air. Planes have turbines or propellers to do so and have the wings fixed to the body without the ability to move (except maybe some early versions of planes which weren‘t very successful).
Max suggested to ask the internet – WolframAlpha – to get an answer but it didn‘t work either. Google was the only site that linked to possible answers so I found out that the hummingbird can fly upside down for a short time, no loops though.
One guy wrote a very nice answer:
I do not have a definitive answer to your question, but the following story suggests they can not. After all, birds fly for a living, not for fun, and the ability to loop probably would not help them find their next meal.
Well who says that birds have no fun when flying? Maybe they haven‘t realized that they should try flying loops.
Partly Cloudy from Dan Graham on Vimeo.
Just came across this song and thought it fits to Bolzano somehow . It’s called ‚Wooden Shoes in Tirol‘ and is performed by ‚De Zwervende Keien (The Drifting Boulders)‘. Once again from the netlabel ‚Comfort Stand Recordings‘ out of the Compilation ‚Wakka Chikka Wakka Chikka – Porn Music For The Masses Volume 1′
On the website it says the following about it:
De Zwervende Keien – Wooden Shoes In Tirol
In this piece they‘ve tried to combine the erotic aspect of Dutch folk dances with the atmosphere in German and Austrian soft porn movies.
So yes this is 2010 and I‘m still eager to write here. 2010 – a new year and a new decade. Last year has been extremely ‚rich‘ on new experiences and of course it simply keeps going. If nothing goes wrong I‘ll graduate this summer to see myself once again in the state of decision-making for the ‚what’s next‘ question. Obviously I don‘t know what will be but since it has always worked out so far I‘m not too concerned, yet. But let’s switch back to 2009 once again. Christmas was just a few days ago and I got a really nice present from my brother. It’s a comic book titled ‚Shenzhen‘ and was drawn by ‚Guy Delisle‘ a Canadian Comic Artist who spent 3 months in Shenzhen. Despite the very nice drawing style that I really enjoyed reading I found myself in his stories having experienced very similar situations. As I wrote several times before (I believe it was ’several‘ at least) I‘m not unhappy that I went but the more I think about it and the more time passes I realize that it was a very interesting and extremely helpful time but certainly not the happiest time in my life (except maybe some trips in between ). Right at the beginning Delisle writes „I kept realizing that it will be a very lonely time here.“ which is luckily not what I can share with him but I understand what he means. The Chinese culture – to me at least – is simply too different and even confusing that I would not consider spending a long amount of time in the country.
The book is a very nice description of a city that is simply absurd to westerners.
Last but not least two rather general examples of the book that anyone traveling in China will probably already notice:
in the elevator
a very common scene in any public space since Chinese are literally addicted to Mobile Phones
(top-bottom – left-right): ‚I‘m once again in China, this time in the South‘ – ‚Last time I spent in Nanking.‘ – ‚I had forgotten all about the smells, the noise, the many people, the dirt, the monotony.‘ – ‚I realized that only the good sides remained in my memories…the exotic…‘ – ‚Time blurs out bad memories, the impressions remain naively positive.‘
Alright it’s just another quote story no photos or anything. But well it’s almost Christmas and I‘m ’superbusy‘ (this would be the first quote already, an austrian guy told me that not long ago) so only a little story.
A few days ago a friend invited us for dinner. After the eating part we sat and had a few more glasses when suddenly (I‘m dramatizing today ) a book came to the table. I don‘t know whose book it was and where it came from but it caught our attention pretty much for the rest of the evening. The book is called ‚Findet mich das Glück?‘ (‚Does luck find me?‘) and was written by the Swiss artist duo Fischli/Weiß. The book is very simple as such containing ‚only‘ a number of questions that might seem strange in the beginning but make you think after a while, some question that make you laugh and some questions that are simply ridiculous. To some degree I guess it can be considered ‚philosophical‘ although I know that philosophy-lovers among us will probably call it ‚hobby-philosophy‘ in a rather negative sense. Well anyway I guess I should make some examples. So here we go:
‚Is my body a motel?‘
‚Why do I know everything better?‘
‚Should I pull off the muffler of my car and drive through the neighborhood?‘
‚I guess 2+2 equals 4, right?‘
I assume you get the idea of it by now. It’s quite fun to read it and discuss the questions with a bottle of red wine. Of course you also start to come up with your own questions. So the one question that I actually tried to ‚only‘ write about today (my quote of the day) is interesting because it works very well in German but once you translate it to English it’s still an interesting question but the whole play of words is not working out anymore.
‚Bin ich glücklich wenn ich Glück habe?‘ – ‚Ist glücklich sein verbunden mit Glück?‘
‚Am I happy when I‘m lucky?‘ – ‚Is being happy connected with luck?‘
I‘m impressed about the length of this entry when I consider the actual content .
another day another quote, this time from Paul Theroux:
Traveling is a process of disappearing
a lonely road
on a thin geographical line,
that leads into oblivion.
I read a very nice quote today from German graphic designer and typographer Erik Spiekermann:
„I cross the road when the traffic light is red even when children are present. Simply because kids need to learn that red doesn‘t mean anything. They need to check for cars and not just walk when the light is green. I could also simply write ‚rain is prohibited‘ because I want sunlight. Nobody will care about that.“
one of my favorite signs in Turkey/Istanbul…
The translation would be:
‚Danger! There is dog.
No wonder the Turkish have trouble with other languages…
Since I was asked a few times already I will make a ’short‘ photo presentation next Tuesday in atelier0 (at the university in Bolzano) so anyone who is around should stop by .
It will be in German though (I can translate and since all students are doomed to learn English as well here it shouldn‘t be a big deal).
I was out of town once again last week and finally started my photo organization and post-production process (again) today and came across this photo. It’s not that I particularly think that it is a great shot and I ‚Photo-Shopped‘ it quite a bit as well but the content made me smile yet again. ‚Hans‘ is the very Chinese name of a beer that was brewed in Xi‘an and sold for a very low price. Since ‚Hans‘ is a very traditional German male name we had great fun (not only because of the alcohol level) especially because we bought a case of 9 pints to survive the lovely 36 hour train ride to Kunming.
And it’s actually not a bad beer. I had much worse beer before that had a much worse price-quality level.
My strange life ‚in between‘ surprisingly left enough time to sort through photos a little bit so here is the first part of my ‚final trip‘ across China.
We started in Beijing, went south-west to Xi‘an, down all the way to Kunming in Yunnan Province (close to Vietnam and Tibet) and back to Shenzhen to leave the country for a few last days in Hong Kong before heading back to Europe. With a 36 hour train ride from Xi‘an to Kunming you can get an idea of how huge the country really is and how closely inhabited. I think the first time we saw some uninhabited nature – or maybe only with a few farmer houses – was in the southern part of Sichuan Province close to Yunnan already. Before that the sight was highly concentrated on industrial sites (sometimes more or less disturbing).
dragon ’tile‘ artwork in the Forbidden City
red (lantern) decoration for the 60th birthday
chinese mythical creature in the Forbidden City
the military parade was presented on screens anywhere in town (public places, sights, metro, etc.) so people who missed it could still watch it – here near the Olympic Stadium
guard in front of the Olympic Stadium (‚Birds Nest‘)
Tian‘anmen Square at night with HUGE screens showing the military parade…
…and thousands of proud Chinese photographing each other in front of everything – some more, some less excited
I was almost amazed to get a photo with no people that night – and the bike really has a strong symbolic value as well 
My second time on the Great Wall, again in Jinshanling but this time in autumn cloud
I like the ‚office‘ translation on this rusty sign – I wish the manager would have been there to talk to a little
Forbidden City
The Star Ferry is one of the many means to cross the waters dividing Hong Kong. It was founded in 1888 and is since then been extended several times but the boats remained as one of the historical artefacts in this else extremely modern town.
I just like the animation that’s why it’s on here .
I came back to Europe last week after another wonderful trip across China – this time even more ambitious than before crossing almost all the way from the north to the south by train, etc. I will certainly post some more photos in the next days/weeks until I will put this blog into a ‚pause-mode‘. It’s been fun to write and post photos, etc. during the last year also because I was on the road quite some time. Now that I have to settle down (at least for about one year) and eventually finish my studies I‘m sure there is much else to do and prepare for. So thanks to everyone who stopped by to see and read what I had to tell and for the very positive feedback I received (including my little counter which revealed a very suprising ~2300 people visiting this blog since I left Europe in May…ok my advertising wasn‘t the worst either ).
For now I thought I should post some photos of people since China is called the ‚People’s Republic‘ and I would say they absolutely deserve this title just in terms of numbers .
shortly after the 60th birthday on Tian‘anmen Square
Chinese at what they like most…
farmer woman in Dalì (Yunnan Province)
Xi‘an has a ‚Muslim Quarter‘ where you can find the most delicious culinary treats
on the train from Xi‘an to Kunming (36h) on hard seats – definitely the worker class train travel
old man with a chinese kite in downtown Kunming
farmer washing up spring onions in an irrigation channel in Dalì
CCTTV – Chinese Culture Traditional Transport Vehicle aka rickshaw / bicycle / tricycle
apparently a portrait of the Chinese teacher of the last emperor (seen in the Forbidden City in Beijing) – to me it looks like a portrait of a well-fed Brad Pitt
Can you see the opening in the pants? In China diapers just slowly become common. Parents instead cut in these openings and children just do what they have to do wherever they need to – be it just on the street or a supermarket.
a very proud lady in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace
and some more extremely proud people in front of the Mao Zedong portrait
