Airports look alike all over the world. Schiphol has conformed to the patterns of the airport, but its unique design makes it stand out. The book Megastructure Schiphol looks into the history of the Netherlands’ most famous national airport and its sophisticated appearance.Schiphol has grown in fits and starts as a result of ever-expanding traffic in freight and passengers. The area around Schiphol is constantly evolving, yet there is great consistency in the visual aspect of this airport, which can rightly be called a ‘megastructure’. This is not merely due to the efforts of its designers, who have strived to achieve a spectacular simplicity. Other factors, such as its location in a polder and the local planning culture, have also played a role.In Megastructure Schiphol an analysis of its metamorphoses over the past century demonstrates Schiphol’s unique character and its function as a model for other airports.
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Data, the raw material from which information is derived, is stored, copied, moved and modified more easily than ever. This quantum leap reaches levels outside our imagination. Surrounded by sensors, recommendation systems, invisible algorithms, spreadsheets and blockchains, the ‘difference that makes a difference’ can no longer be identified. Big Data is a More Data ideology, driven by old school hypergrowth premisses. As Nathan Jurgenson once observed: “Big Data always stands in the shadow of the bigger data to come. The assumption is that there is more data today and there will necessarily be even more tomorrow, an expansion that will bring us ever closer to the inevitable pure ‘data totality.” (2) Nothing symbolizes the current hypergrowth obsession better than Big Data. Let’s investigate what happens when we apply degrowth to data and reserve datafication–as a decolonial project, a collective act of refusal, an ultimate sign of boredom. We’re done with you, data system, stand out of my light.
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One of the characteristics of arts-based environmental education is that it encourages participants to be receptive to nature in new and uncommon ways. The participant is encouraged to immerse him or herself in nature, to seek a “deep identification.” In my paper I explore if there could be cases where such immersion may reach – or even go beyond – a point of no return. A point, where the “intertwining” with nature causes the subject to sever the “life lines” to the world which would enable him or her to maintain the psychological, cultural and spiritual integrity of the ego. The dissolving of the ego’s boundaries through artistic practice can be seen as having certain shamanistic qualities, specifically in cases when this transgression involves efforts to connect with other animal species. Such undertakings may constitute – at least in the perception of the shaman-artist – a form of “going native,” becoming “one” with the non-human Others.As relevant cases I discuss the “trespassing” from the world of culture into the world of nature by Joseph Beuys in his famous studio encounter with a coyote and Timothy Treadwell entering the life-world of the grizzly bears in Alaska, for which he ultimately paid the price of death (the tragic story was documented in Werner Herzog’s film “Grizzly Man”).I analyze these phenomena along the distinction between Apollonian versus Dionysian sensibility in cultural activity as articulated by Nietzsche. Finally I discuss some pedagogical implications for teachers and facilitators who encourage an attitude of radical amazement and vulnerability in arts-based environmental education.
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