Dirk Vekemans
Since 2005
Works in Kessel-Lo Belgium

ARTBASE (1)
PORTFOLIO (1)
BIO
born in 1962 in Lier, Belgium.
studied filology at Louvain, Belgium.

worked a lot in bars and restaurants before i became obsessivly addicted to producing stuff on computers.

i once won a design contest of cgi-magazine and they let me go to New York for four days, that was nice.

i think in terms of writing mostly (or programming, but those are very similar processes for me)

painting is a very different process and i'm very bad at it but i do it anyway because i like the differences it produces and i like the freshness of amateurism, i guess.

what i produce new media-wise is also very much influenced by my daily practice of webdesign and programming with its concerns of usability and the pragmatic approach it implies.

Discussions (292) Opportunities (0) Events (1) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random


It's a great thing (Magna res) to know (nosse) when to speak (est vocis
[tempora]) and when to be silent (est silentii tempora). Any text is code
and vica versa.

But you, dear Nad, have spoken well and timely.

(Darn it's that late again)
dv

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: owner-list@rhizome.org [mailto:owner-list@rhizome.org] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: dinsdag 17 januari 2006 22:08
> Aan: list@rhizome.org
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
> >Magna res est vocis silentii tempora nosse
> woooo.
> big thing? is voice silent time our?
> a silent voice is a big thing in our times?
>
> ???????
> i was choosing french in school instead
> of latin...and somehow i had in my mind that this would be
> more useful for e.g. communicating with some belgians!
> apparently i was wrong...
>
>
>
> > ...couldn't resist to follow up on Pacioli, started browsing
> > http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/ which is pretty
> solid. When
> > i got to Leibniz and the brachistochrone problem (hey Dan Brown,
> > here's another book title:
> >
> http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Brachistochrone
> > .html)
>
> do you know that you also get a cycloid if you look at a
> bicycle reflector attached to the wheel in the night ?(it has
> to be close to the wheel rim) here you see a flintstone
> version of this (tim - the other part of the daytar group did
> it for his
> students):
> http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~hoffmann/interactive/cycloid.shtml
>
> > i wondered whether you math folks still hold this kind of
> > competitions.
>
> of course...win 7 million dollars...you only have to solve
> some math puzzles....:
> http://www.claymath.org/millennium/
>
> ..for this money you could buy 700 holography displays!! (:-))
>
> > Apparantly they worked wonders at the time, although most
> of them were
> > written out by mathematicians who had solved the problem themselves
> > first, so they'd shine among their colleagues.
> >
> actually usually they are not pre-solved. and the above are
> also not of this type....just to warn you :-)
>
> > This MacTutor 's great although i think it's rather funny
> some British
> > still seem to have a hard time admitting Leibniz and Newton
> discovered
> > differential calculus simultaneously and independently. The page on
> > Leibniz is rather downplaying the man, and the account of the big
> > Newton-Leibniz row over who was first is told very differently from
> > what i read in books.
> >
>
> yep nationalism is a bad thing....
>
> > Another thing that has always intruiged me is that
> Christian Huygens,
> > the Dutchman, was such a brilliant scientist and his brother
> > Constantyn is, for me at least, the best Dutch poet ever.
> It seems the
> > great divide is not a thing of the mind but of cultural and
> > educational conditioning.
>
> there is no great divide. there is even sometimes an overlap.
> like look at generative arts: its pure math in the hand of an
> math-untrained artist who combines it with aesthetic/whatever
> considerations.
> the goal is to get nice/conceptionally
> important/beautyful/whatever output.
> mathematical visualization is the same: its pure math and
> this time the aesthetic/whatever considerations are in the
> hand of an art-untrained mathematician.
> the goal is (usually) to get important mathematical outcome
> (which is "conceptionally important" to mathematicians). I
> know a lot of mathematicians who spend much more time in
> choosing the colors for their math viz piece than they should...
> ...and there are a lot of generative artists around who love
> to dig out weird math....
> the important thing is to keep mutual respect for the
> different disciplines. get me right-its good to ask and to
> think and use things, also if you are not an expert.
> so with being respectful i mean: you have to be really
> willing to learn....and you may be erranous.
>
> > Equally, mathematics, for those seriously into it, is an entirly
> > different matter than what we think of based on school
> experience, as
> > you have previously attested to...
> >
>
> yep-. and thats not only the mathematicians fault. I remember
> when my sister (she is two years younger than me) suddenly
> had some basic set theory in school. i was envying her for
> haveing such a nice math stuff on the plate. but the kids
> parents and some politicians (that was in bavaria, munich,
> seventies, franz-josef-strauss....) where completely against
> it...so they abolished it again.
> how stupid.
>
> ..and i remember my calculus students (umass, amherst usa)
> who demanded to get "recipes" for solving some standard
> problems in order to get through their exams....this is not
> mathematical thinking...this is even not engineering, but a
> lot of calculus textbooks are built like this.
>
> to be more precise lets say: the try and error method (try a
> recipe and see wether it works) works well for a lot of
> standard things, but well yes ---it works usually for the
> STANDARD things.
>
> nad
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in
> the Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random


that was Seneca, an inconceivable bore, so darn the silence

...couldn't resist to follow up on Pacioli, started browsing
http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/ which is pretty solid. When i got
to Leibniz and the brachistochrone problem (hey Dan Brown, here's another
book title:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Brachistochrone.html)
i wondered whether you math folks still hold this kind of competitions.
Apparantly they worked wonders at the time, although most of them were
written out by mathematicians who had solved the problem themselves first,
so they'd shine among their colleagues.

This MacTutor 's great although i think it's rather funny some British still
seem to have a hard time admitting Leibniz and Newton discovered
differential calculus simultaneously and independently. The page on Leibniz
is rather downplaying the man, and the account of the big Newton-Leibniz row
over who was first is told very differently from what i read in books.

Another thing that has always intruiged me is that Christian Huygens, the
Dutchman, was such a brilliant scientist and his brother Constantyn is, for
me at least, the best Dutch poet ever. It seems the great divide is not a
thing of the mind but of cultural and educational conditioning. Ofcourse
there's not much 'romance'in Huygens' poetry, so you need to strip all that
sentimental bs from what poetry is, before you can actually begin to wonder.
Equally, mathematics, for those seriously into it, is an entirly different
matter than what we think of based on school experience, as you have
previously attested to...

dv

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: owner-list@rhizome.org [mailto:owner-list@rhizome.org] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: maandag 16 januari 2006 19:50
> Aan: list@rhizome.org
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>
>
> > My own collection of math books is growing, btw.
>
>
>
> reminds me of leonardo da vinci who apparently at one point
> in his thirties started collecting books....
> however most of it was in latin...(and leonardos latin was
> not so good..)
>
> ..just joking...
>
> interestingly among the few books leonardo probably actually
> read was euklids geometry book (it is most probably that he
> read it together with a mathematician friend called luca pacioli)
>
>
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in
> the Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random


Magna res est vocis silentii tempora nosse
dv

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: owner-list@rhizome.org [mailto:owner-list@rhizome.org] Namens Nad
> Verzonden: maandag 16 januari 2006 19:50
> Aan: list@rhizome.org
> Onderwerp: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: Re: Re: Re: the random
>
> Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>
>
> > My own collection of math books is growing, btw.
>
>
>
> reminds me of leonardo da vinci who apparently at one point
> in his thirties started collecting books....
> however most of it was in latin...(and leonardos latin was
> not so good..)
>
> ..just joking...
>
> interestingly among the few books leonardo probably actually
> read was euklids geometry book (it is most probably that he
> read it together with a mathematician friend called luca pacioli)
>
>
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in
> the Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

DISCUSSION

Car sale


http://www.vilt.net/nkdee/eroto.jsp

greetings,
dv @Neue Kathedrale des erotischen Elends
http://www.vilt.net/nkdee

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: the random


> Dirk wrote:
> >
> > Who ever mentioned novelty, btw? Soit. En disant: assumptions are
> > wicked, you can't discuss things based on assumptions.
>
> answer:
> of course you can. and actually usually the contrary is
> rather true - if you discuss things you have to specify your
> assumptions. almost all of math (hmm) is based on
> axioms...which are more or less assumptions you do not want
> to discuss further.
> ---> see e.g. axiomatic set theory:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiomatic_set_theory
>
> and by the way every physical theory is just an ASSUMPTION
> about how the world is, no physicist claims that the world IS
> like that, she just ASSUMES that the world is like that.

I was being ironic here. Intending to refer to sth similar as you bring up
here. These late night ramblings of mine are dark and full of
exagerration,not to mention the obvious mistakes. It's just the mood they're
written in. i know, sorry, but i sometimes feel the urge to let off steam
like that.

> Dirk wrote:
>
> >Any point of view is
> > meaningless. In the end.
> >
>
> depends on the meaning of meaning i would say....:-)
>
> > Everything of course. Manovich will have it declared illegal by the
> > end of the year. April will supposedly be the cruellest month.
> >
>
> is April assumed to be the new end of year?

Just a pun on T.S. Eliot's Waste Land. Springtime being cruel because it
stirs dull roots in an infertile land.
>
> > Jim's little historic expos? expertly shows the 'mediatic' use of
> > random,
> > that can ofcourse only be advantageous in the working process. Going
> > over to
> > music one could add a spiritual dimension to that,
> referring to Cage's
> > approach that explicitly favours the stochastic element over the
> > forced
> > authoring/ordering in order to generate a playfullness, a Zenlike
> > affirmation of life. Pierre Boulez invented the term
> aleatory music to
> > post-modernistically differenciate his habit of giving his
> performers
> > the
> > liberty to partake in the composing process from what seemed highly
> > suspect
> > at that time, a positive impulse towards the spiritual.
> >
>
> i had already some weeks ago a little discussion with jim on this
> forum about aleatoric music....may be i am wrong but
> to my knowledge it was not
> pierre boulez who introduced the term "aleatoric music" but
> werner mayer eppler. apparently he used this term e.g. in his paper:
> Werner Meyer-Eppler, Statistische und psychologische
> Klangprobleme, in: die reihe 1: elektronische Musik.
> Informationen uber serielle Musik. Wien 1955, p. 22. see also:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleatoric_music
> and apparently he took the term from the book:
> Theorie des fonctions aleatoires von Andre Blanc-Lapierre und
> Robert Fortet....which is i think a math book.....

I don't know for sure either, but i think Boulez used the term himself,
approved of it himself. That's what seemed important to me, independent of
who actually introduced it. But there's a more serious mistake, lancune:
probably Boulez used (uses) the term primarily to distanciate himself from
the likes of Giacinto Scelsi rather than from Cage. Scelsi went much further
in driving the use of zen-random-spiritual to a kind of hermetic cult. All
three of them have produced some exquisite music, Boulez still being 'in the
running' and quite an institution on his own. Scelsi deserves better, i
think.

My own collection of math books is growing, btw. Someone ought to write a
math-for-artists thing sometime, wouldn't mind if it were linear or bad web
or anything. As long as it's useful...
dv
>
> nad
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at
> http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>