Ich bin ein Berliner...

On our way back from a tour of Steim, a cross between a mad scientist's lab, a garage band, and an artist's colony, Julia and I stopped by a large Berliner stall and obtained bananen and appel bol Berliners, respectively.

However, delicious pastries are not the point of this entry.(see this entry for delicious pastry-related blogging)

Rather, I now find myself surrounded by a different sort of Berliners - the ones who decorate giant fiberglass bears and paint their entire bodies into flags for soccer. The ones who had apples and cookies waiting for us at our class and have an entire aisle devoted to chocolate in their grocery store. The ones with the most efficient IES we've found (not the coolest, no worries bicyclemark, but the most efficient) and most definitely the best apartments I've had the pleasure of making tea in. I hadn't realized how much I missed cooking until we moved in to a place with kitchens. Tonight, I'm making chocolate fondue.

But, with Berlin comes the end of our program, and the culmination of our work in digital art, which means I need to get my ass in gear for the final project.

And that is freaking me out. I'm working with Julian and Jeremy on some sort of VJ thing. At first we were going to do a live performance, then we realized we didn't have any time to practice, so we were going to do a 12-15 minute video using the Livid Union mixing tools and effects, but editing it in Final Cut, but after seeing so much cool live stuff, like Pipslab which blew my mind, the bar has been significantly raised. We're simultaneously inspired and frightened, or at least I am.

(picture by CultuurPodium)If music, theater, video had some sort of huge creative orgy, they would have somehow birthed the crazy Dutch artists of Pipslab. We saw a tape of a performance of "The Washing Powder Conspiracy" which was simply amazing. Their use of digital tools transcended the "holy crap that's cool!" aesthetic to the "whoa, that makes me think!" part that a lot of new media tends not to quite get to.