WONDERLAND JUNGLE I
dreams, matches, grass seed, Polder taxes, Delft, parking lot, different perfumes
"Could you eat a six-course meal?" "That depends on the quality and the quantity of each course." "The wine list looks terrific." "If you're really convinced that you're right and someone can prove you wrong, you're usually tempted to go along with that person's theory." "Theory or Person?" "If someone demonstrates that your theory is flawed, it doesn't necessarily mean that his is right. That is what you suggested before." "I don't quite remember..." "You were besides yourself, because he dismissed everything you said. That doesn't mean that he was right." "He?" "Just don't take what he said to heart." "Memory isn't linear: it's based on true experiences, as well as open to hypothetical experiences." "A glass of Chardonnay?" "Yeah, that's allowed." "Let me put it differently. You do something that results in A. You adopt a certain theory that explains that A is the result of your actions." "What did I order last time?" "A mixed marriage, between a wood pigeon and a quail?" "I do understand, when you refer to the past essentially determining the way you experience things now, the way you hear or read." "Being overly verbose will get you nowhere." "This has to be science." "I've got a knack for both science and humanities." "Good for you." "Some more wine please." "Allright, I accept that the concept of the image has lost its meaning. Photographs are no longer accepted as the ultimate proof, all images can be manipulated." "Take a collection of photographs of towers. They can easily be assembled by computer programmes." "Of course." "It's simple. Our overly-visual society will eventually reject the image. Perhaps a bit odd, since the world will still exist as images." "It seems contradictory: the image loses its meaning, yet will continue to exist, albeit with a different value. " "Suppose you accept that condition, would it be negative or positive?" "I'd have to say it would be a wonderful chaos." "I love it, it has cheered me up tremendously." "But wouldn't it lead to the world falling apart?" "Not necessarily." "Your thinking is too one-dimensional. You disregard our potential as humans beings." "For most people the visual is a million times easier to grasp than text." "Really?" "One single image says more than three pages of text ever will. That will never change. What will change is that, due to manipulation, people will question the authenticity of images. I doubt people will ever abandon their traditional belief in the image. I think you'd know a manipulated image when you saw one." "For instance, take the first portrait photographs. You had to stay still for 10 minutes, I'd call that manipulation as well." "It wasn't out of the norm in Soviet Russia to erase a persona non grata from a picture." "If people accept that images can be manipulated, it doesn't imply they will question everything." "These days everyone has a camera, a video camera and a computer." "I don't." "Well, you're a little retarded, aren't you?" "Okay, I'm a retard. I don't have a video camera, I don't even want one. I only take snapshots." "Usually I prefer coffee after dinner." "I'd like a cappuccino." "Another example; ask a hundred people to go and see a movie, then ask them what they saw. Will you get a hundred different answers?" "Oh, you mean a Gauss curve." "What curve?" "A Gauss curve. Don't you know the principle of the Gauss curve? Hang on, give me a pen." "Here is the y-axis, here the x-axis, this is the Gauss curve. It looks like a classic bowler hat. Whatever you measure: strength, intelligence, movement, the results will always be a Gauss curve. There's a large group in the middle, and on either side a small group, the brim." "Send a hundred people to the cinema. Most will have seen the same thing, but a few will say 'It was about Hitler', others will say 'No, it was all about Shirley Temple.' Regardless of the subject of your research, the result could always translate in a Gauss curve." "Confused? You've never heard of this before?" "The law of mediocrity." "This isn't about quality." "No, about Gauss's curve." "A bowler hat, nothing underneath, nothing around."
WONDERLAND JUNGLE II
traffic jam, fog, may flowers, hot chocolate, a missed turn-off, having a rest
"Do you always get so uptight about those lousy articles in the papers?" "That's a bit vague." "You're testing my patience." "How do you mean?" "Commentaries, you know the type." "Shall we agree to drop discussions about quality today?" "Huh?" "Can't we for once moan about all those second rate journalists?" "I got to be somewhere later." "Allright, fair enough." "In my opinion there's a difference between the amount of time spent on something and the level of appreciation." "Isn't that a bit obvious." "Not so long ago I spoke with a writer about the difference between word and image." "Tut-tut." "He pointed out that the 'Net clearly shows what is happening with images. Downloaded, one after the other, copied, you can do whatever you like with them. Easy peasy. Language doesn't give you that freedom. It cannot be copied endlessly. You need at least three pages to make your point." "A picture says more than 3 pages." "Words are thought to be a bigger threat than images." "So, images were never taken as seriously or considered as interesting as language. You can do whatever you want with them." "Especially since you could always manipulate them." "Really?" "From Hieronymus Bosch's demons to cheap computer manipulations." "Because of his book Salman Rushdie was persecuted. Persecuted because of his words." "Could images provoke persecution?" "Yes and no, that is the paradox. A picture is a thousand words, isn' it? If you had to describe the Mona Lisa, a book wouldn't suffice, even a hefty one. All you need is an image." "Any idea why that is?" "Maybe it could be due to the fact that religions prohibited images since the dawn of time." "Which religions?" "Portrayal has always been prohibited, be it of a human or a god. That has always been the rule, people have always hesitated breaking it. On the other hand, books were always burnt. Painters and sculptors ..." "Iconoclasm?" "Icons. Yes, but they burnt icons. Writers are prosecuted. I cannot think of any painter that was ever prosecuted. For some reason or another dictators always feared the written word, rather than the image." "Simultaneously, an image is thought to be more powerful, there's our paradox." "What a dilemma for the artist." "Yes, you couldn't be more right." "Have you experienced that when going to museums?" "No, that's the funny thing." "I keep on walking till I come across an artwork that for one reason or another makes me stop." "What happens next?" "I take a look." "How long does your look last?" "5 to 10 minutes, maybe half an hour." "I don't have that kind of endurance. Sometimes I time myself and on average I've never got past 30 seconds." "There are some works of art you can look at for ages." "Rembrandt's self-portrait at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam." "Absolutely sumblime." "I could look at that till time stood still." "Not me. I could look at it many times, that's the difference." "That's why I like benches in museums." "Every time I see a work like that, I see something different." "Half an hour..." "I often find artworks too severe. Art is a crude means of expression. It's devoid of time." "Above all literature is linked to time." "That's what's so absurd. It takes a painter two years to make a painting, and I take a minute at the most to look at it. A writer needs two years to write a book, it takes me say six hours to read it." "And then?" "Then I think it's a wonderful book." "But it is very unlikely that you will soon re-read it." "That's not the point." "You could go see that same painting 20 times." "Is that the shopkeeper in you?" "20 times 1 minute adds up to no more than 20 minutes. Six hours spent reading a book, is 6 times 60 minutes, making a grand total of 360 minutes." "It seems a given that an artist deals with time in a way that he catches your attention as long as possible." "Can't we just gossip about that stupid article on the latest fads in art in last week's paper?" "I'm afraid I have to be strict today." "You're always being strict." "A writer publishes a book. To discover whether I like the book, I spend, let's say, two hours with it." "How much time do you spend looking at the artwork on your living room wall?" "Visual art is more demanding than literature." "I think it is more demanding. It's just like holidays. You only get a 25 days a year. You book three weeks to Tunisia. Even if it were the worst holiday you ever had, you would still say it was great. So much money and especially so much time." "For status?" "When I finish a book, I wouldn't say I was bored stiff. That's not the case with the artwork. Relatively speaking I've hardly spent time and energy on it." "It seems as if you confuse the amount of time spent on it with the quality of it." "I'm only talking about the difference between time spent on something and the level of appreciation for it." "More time doens't equate to appreciation." "That's too difficult." "The effect of time." "We're not discussing quality." "Oh no, only the Gauss's curve principle." "A bowler hat, nothing underneath, nothing around."