More Bears....

Bear with me on this post, because I have had trouble uploading to my blog, but I’ve been writing posts! So everything is stuck together, but with clear delineation between different subject topics and lectures we attended, complete with dates. If I manage to get this uploaded it’s going to be extremely long. 

July 2, 2019 - Utrecht University - Utrecht

It’s the second week already. I can’t believe I spent the majority of the first week sick, but sometimes this stuff happens. My fingers are crossed for my voice coming back today or tomorrow so I can actually say something instead of hissing words at everyone. It’s not the way I was hoping to interact, with from what I’ve observed, an amazing set of people, but they’ve been willing to step up and have conversations with the voiceless classmate. 

I have to say that yesterday (July 1st), when I couldn’t talk for my group, Stephanie and Emily really stepped up. We sat and talked about what we were going to do the night before and although the idea was simple, seeing it in action was so very effective and satisfying. The discussion and sharing rather than having my group talk really highlighted what a good director should be, and do, and Stephanie really didn’t underline that until the end. The Director lets everyone else shine, and works behind the scenes to showcase and support the group as a whole. And that is what she did. SO impressed with them both!! 

Today we spent the day out at Utrecht University listening so a very interesting talk by Dr. Nienke Boesveldt and her research into stopping the loop of homelessness in the Netherlands. From questions asked for clarification and what Dr Boesveldt was saying, the research to stop this cyclical process of people losing their homes repeatedly for various reasons only deals with a very small part of that demographic. Agencies that deal with housing and mental health assistance appear to be siloed and don’t interact with one another and this results in people falling through safety nets that were put in place to keep this from happening. Others factors have to do with drug addiction and mental health issues, and aging out of protective child services. In short there are many many reasons for someone to be homeless in the Netherlands, as with anywhere else in the world. 

I suspect for the research that Dr. Boesveldt did, she needed hard numbers and facts that could be verified because her target audience were government officials. To get a ball rolling in political arenas you often have to start with what they can see and understand, so many facets of homelessness reality in the Netherlands are not touched on. My classmates seemed concerned about this, because back home those aspects are talked about, seen, noted all the time, so we’re all sensitized to it. The lack of it in this report I suspect got some people ruffled. The thing is when dealing with a problem this big, you have to start somewhere and often that’s with the demographic that are recognized by the government entity being addressed.

Hopefully the program Dr Boesveldt was talking about will be adopted by the Dutch government, because it seems like one that would work given a chance. I remember hearing about something similar on a much small scale for refugees coming to New Zealand from refugee camps. A disused house is seized by the government, and the community is encouraged to fix it up, furnish it, and then welcome the family coming in. Other support systems are also put in place to support the new family or people. This has been highly successful there. I realize the circumstances are different, but it CAN be done successfully if the people involved are willing to take the necessary steps. (I’d put a link in here, but the discussion was one taking place on a Zoom guest lecture in a class and I’m fairly sure it was not recorded and archived. Ricardo Gomez’s Information and Migration 598 - Fall 2018).

Later the talk by the fellow at the Salvation Army shelter really illustrated the issues on the ground having to do with homelessness. Many of the situations discussed were ones I encountered when working for public libraries. I did not have a fall back system of a relationship with the social services office or the local sheriffs department. However I did have good relationships with some of the homeless who would come to sit in my library for a few hours, and because they knew I was often working alone in a rural area, they policed themselves. If they saw someone coming that they knew was trouble, they’d go run interference for the library. I was told it was for their benefit as much as mine. By keeping the library a safe space, they kept a safe space for themselves. Honestly I did not mind. My only rule was that they come in sober and stay that way while they were there, and for my time as manager there I did not have trouble at all. This was not the case for other managers so I count myself lucky. Eventually we had panic buttons installed at all the libraries, because a lot of us ran rural branches alone.

Ultimately I think there is a third aspect to the issues facing government and other agencies trying to do something about the homeless, and that’s a cultural viewpoint. In the U.S. as soon as you are unable to keep a home, you’re viewed as a failure. In the Netherlands I was a bit unclear on how the homeless are viewed, but it seemed that it was agreed that yes, the homeless should be helped... but no one seems to actually pick up the ball. Or if they do, it is done without the coordination across agencies to be successful. Lastly... the people who are homeless have to want the help. If there is no effort there, then all the help in the world isn’t going to work. I met a lot of homeless who were homeless because they liked the freedom it afforded them. “No strings to tie me down,” I was told years ago, and that they liked it that way. 

July 3, 2019 - Het Nieuwe Instituut - Rotterdam

My voice was still gone this morning when I set out with the class to Rotterdam to see the institute there and I think I was supposed to be learning or hearing about how the institute was exploring new ways of exploring the future and what that might look like. I got through the video about Beyoncé and Jay Z’s music, “Apeshit”, and the responses they got from those asked to comment on it. I would talk about this further, because I was just getting into the topic when I had a pretty bad coughing fit, and to keep from disturbing the class I left so I could cough up a lung (not literally). Downside, I missed the rest of the talk while I was in the bathroom coughing. Upside, after the coughing fit, my voice was starting to come back. I know this isn’t supposed to be about coughing and my voice, but because it impacted so much of my time here... 

So, I missed the talk, but I did very much like the institute and the interactive exhibits they had set up for the public. I can’t say I understood all of them, but there were some I did enjoy playing with. Emily and I played with a computer screen and camera that layered pictures on top of older ones as you went, and the resulting pictures were really fun. We had hands and fingers and a teddy bear layered all over the computer screen. It was an interesting concept of time too. How many people, items, things had been there before us? All the things that weren’t captured in that space? It makes you think about use of space and what the concept of space actually is. Everything moves through this small spot eventually. What did all of that look like? It was interesting. 

There was also the timeline explaining how the intranet, became the internet. I could hear Joe Janes in my head talking about this from the 520 MLIS class, as I looked over this exhibit. It was quite well done, explaining concepts of distribution differences that usually baffle the general public. I was also very interested in what appeared to be a 3D printer, and figures it had created. I remember reading about how advanced this tech was getting, being able to use DNA sequencing to write different organs or even skin to match the person who needed the organ. That’s all still in testing phase, but the possibilities are enormous. 

Moving on to the Sonneveld House and taking the guided tour was really interesting. Not just because of the restoration, but because of all seeing what the innovations of the era where, some of which I thought had pretty good potential, but apparently never really caught on. Or perhaps they were just something that the rich could afford and the company discontinued production after they failed to sell as well as expected. The entire house was built with comfort in mind with every convenience that worked for the house and those living there. It could be said it was ahead of it’s time with multiple phones for everyone, phones that could be used to call directly throughout the house and those that called outside lines. Cell phones today could be considered the equivalent with the ability to call anyone anywhere. I found the heated towel racks a nice addition to the bathrooms, but I suspect, much like the multiple shower head situation in Mr and Mrs Sonneveld’s private bath, that such things are not common place today. Or if they are, they are only found in opulent hotels or in lavish editions to the restrooms of the rich and famous. 

The renovation and restoration of the house was also very well done, with original furnishings used when they could be found, or rebuilt using pictures of the items. The attention to detail was lovely. I think it shows in each generation what the height of modern living could be, and it is interesting to see what they thought would be fabulously popular, but never really took off. Again it was a bit of time frozen in place, and had me asking myself about the layered nature of what space is. It changes and stays exactly the same all at once. In the case of the Sonneveld house, it stood still while the rest of the world evolved around it with very little interference from the outside except for age. Restoration of age related deterioration was really the only thing they really did to the house, leaving it’s thoughtful architecture to showcase itself. It is a lovely house although I’m not sure I’d want to live in it. Although I did like it, there was a very creepy feel to walking through it. Akin to walking back in time, and seeing everything as it was, but missing the people who lived in it. 

There was also a level of intrusion to the experience that made me uncomfortable after a while and eventually I just started speeding up through the rooms, not because I found the recorded tour boring, but because at the back of my mind there was a slowly increasing feeling of being unwelcome. Caught in the ambiguity of the space of someone else that has long since passed from the house, long since moved on, just still present, reflected in every piece of furniture and corner of the property. Very weird feeling. 

July 4, 2019 - Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision (NISV) - Hilversum

Voice is back! Hallelujah! Now to more important matters.

This was perhaps one of the most enjoyable visits for me because I very much loved learning about how to collect and archive media that can be problematic. Plus I learned about a bunch of websites that I didn’t know existed which I will be exploring when I get home. Very much liked the world radio website where you can find out what is being listened to in other countries. Also, the idea of marrying electronic music with heritage photos was a wonderful idea as it benefits all parties involved. It is a great way to spread awareness of them both in venues one would not normally look at. 

When we got to the part about how websites are catalogued I had to wonder if eventually their methods might trip them up. Especially the screen shot method as that takes a lot of time, and more space than the other methods mentioned at the beginning. Although they don’t at this time have their own catalogue program, it might be a good idea to look into adding one. It would be intensive writing a program for cataloging websites, but at the same time eventually it would save them time as a tool. Perhaps offer it as an open code source so that many individuals could work on it with one person that NISV hires to oversee the work to make sure there are no backdoors or hiccups in the code writing. Just a thought, as they seemed to be straddling three different gathering options. 

My very favorite thing in the NISV was the radio room, in which they stored hundreds of old radioes of every type. I would have loved to go through that room with my Dad, as he would have been extremely interested in seeing all of them, and I like discussing old tech with him. He was technician for Hewlett-Packard testing mainframes for years and knows his older tech backwards and forwards. I wanted to take a lot of pictures, but it was a closed room to the public and we were on a tight schedule. So many radios and so much history contained therein. I wrote a short paper years ago about the history of radio introduction to Australia which was at some points hysterically funny, because of how the Australian government decided to preside over broadcast systems, and the agreements they made with Marconi (who in turn was nearly as fanatical about his radios and broadcasts as the Aussie government, but for very capitalist reasons) in order to set up broadcast systems. I was unclear if they ever haul that radio collection out of mothballs, but that’s something I would love to design an exhibit for. No one really thinks about how important radio is anymore, or why in the U.S. it is illegal for foreign companies to own U.S. radio stations or have a controlling share. Anyway, just an aspect that really got me excited and had to wonder if they do anything with them besides let them sit in storage moldering away (not that they were actually moldering...). I get excited over the weirdest stuff. 

The fellow who took us on the second part of the tour to talk about audio and visual recovery for archiving purposes was also interesting, but he was trying to talk about the topic at speed, which actually slowed him down quite a lot. The process he talked about it terribly intensive and I would imagine actually takes longer than what he told us, which was anywhere from five to seven hours for audio recordings to months for video recordings. Having just two people going through all those taped materials, even with the help of machines, is going to result in lost materials no matter how fast they are able to go. Especially the nitrate film that which is extremely explosive, so they keep it in an old bunker site near the ocean. Our first guide Mel, said it’s set to explode towards the ocean if it ever goes up, away from populated areas. That’s a lovely thought. Who knew NISV dealt with such exciting materials? (Pun absolutely intended) There is also a third vault which is kept at freezing temps to preserve color film as it degrades very fast due to acids used in the film. All of this has me rethinking having anything to do with archival work dealing with recorded material. Yes, not all of it is explosive, but it is so very delicate. There would also be the problem of getting the right machines to even access some of it in the first place. Getting to a digital archival stage is also extremely expensive, involving a machine that cost nearly $750,000, and only about 100 of them exist at the moment. They are built on demand. This is not an easy process, and I suspect that they have more failures than successes, but I’m just going off impressions I got from the fellow who was showing us the process of digitizing analog material.

This whole institute was fascinating from the top down, and I mean that quite literally, as part of the place is literally below the ground level by several stories. I can see why our first speaker said he would probably be fielding questions about how to get a job in the Netherlands with NISV. It would be a seriously fascinating place to work for. At the same time, they seem a bit understaffed for some of their projects, but at the same time they have found ways to step up through partnerships, clever usage of free programs, and building what they could not find to fill those holes. It was impressive how much they have been able to do with the materials and then taking steps to make it available to the public at large for their use and knowledge building. Having the funding from the government can go a long way. Seeing something like this in the U.S would be amazing, but given the current administration, I don’t see something like that happening soon. 

I’m going to stop this blog here, because this has reached ridiculous levels of wordage, and I don’t want to choke blogspot to death. I’ll add another post for Friday after we get to Delft, for the museums I missed seeing the first week. It’s been a super fast two weeks!!