Bend It

Turn the sound on and turn it up!  You totally will not regret it.  This is Gilbert & George, the men who made Shitty Naked Human World, in action.

Gilbert & George and their Original Dancing Sculpture.

Ionic Air Gun - I Don't Believe in It

Today at work we were busy unframing, treating, and reframing Shitty Naked Human World.  It was really exhausting because the photos are so big and because the last one of the day was a huge pain.  It would not allow the frame to close properly - the photograph kept jumping out of line and risking itself being crushed.  Not good.  That is the opposite of conservation.

One tool that Clara uses all the time, to get dust off the Plexiglas, is an ionizing air gun.  It's hooked up to a compressor.  What I've been told is that the air gun shoots ions at the Plexiglas, which dissipates the charge on the surface, effectively removing the dust from the surface.  This sounds like crazy talk to me, I think the ionizing air gun is just acting as an ordinary air gun and blowing the dust off the surface.  The only ionizing sources I'm familiar with are in mass-specs, and they definitely wouldn't be friendly to the surface of a piece of Plexiglas.

Can some science/engineering types (here's looking at you Timmy and Uhls) enlighten me?  Is my bogus-science-ometer on track, or does it need a recalibration?  The Timmy has really made me wary of pseudo-science trash, as one summer I got paid to read and edit papers dissing waste water treatment science-hoaxes.

Here is your reward, in advance.  This poster was glued to the ceiling of the brewery-windmill.  He is Dutch, he is happy, and it is all because of the beer.

The Return of the Wellies

Today was the last day to spend in Amsterdam with Ynn and Tank, as tomorrow morning they will be heading to Frankfurt, Germany.  They spent the morning and part of the afternoon at the Hague and I went to work (as usual).

As you may surmise from the title, the wellies were called back into action today!  At the Atelier we started to work out the unframing/reframing process for the Gilbert & George.  That meant I also spent the afternoon at the ICN (mentioned previously, see Dr. Bill Wei, Man Who Studies Dust).  To make a long story short, I took a large piece of Plexiglas down to ICN to see if certain spots could be sampled for FTIR analysis (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy).  We rode the tram, the Plexiglas and I.  It was mostly awkward, and the trip turned out rather unsatisfying, as there wasn't enough material present for sampling.  That meant I had to haul the Plexiglas back up to the Atelier, which would have been fine except for the torrential rains that occured as the Plexiglas and I walked across the Museumplein toward the tram stop.  I did get a tour of the new ICN labs though, which was nice.  

The rain during my date with a sheet of Plexiglas necessitated a change of clothes before heading to have dinner with Ynn and Tank.  So, at one point in the day I was dressed entirely in primary colors.

This picture is from Saturday, but I've decided to post it because the Homomonument was a landmark that Frank would point out every time we walked by it.  But seriously, it is a monument in memory of all the homosexuals who were persecuted and killed during the Holocaust.  I think the name of the monument is fabulous because of all of the omomo's present in the name.  The monument itself is kind of a dud though, at it is low and not very striking.

Frank could not get the name right.  My favorite Tankinterpretation (that is a new Dutch word which I just now invented) of the name was the Gay Formation.

Cherry beer!  Who knew?  (Not me, obviously, though I'm sure others do.)

Two of the highlights of the day were seen as Ynn and Tank walked with me back to the Amsterdam Apartment. 

The Bow-Tie Store, where all that was sold were bow-ties.  If you look closely you can see our delighted expressions reflected in the rainy window.  Ynn liked the light green one with the applied pearls.

The other was the Toothbrush Store.

The window display.

I'm actually going to purchase toothpaste in the near future, and I'm thinking that I should head to the Toothbrush Store.