What happens if you put a philosopher in a group of artists and ask them to discuss mental spaces?

Her head explodes.

I should be in The Hague at this moment. Joining a group discussion on the nature of mental spaces. This discussion has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Sadly though the question whether there even is something like a mental space did not seem to occur to anyone.
The assignment is funny: you have to make a simulation of a mental space in which people can navigate.
I expect my fellow students will all come up with magnificent installations, visual effects and illusions. That's what the teachers have been aiming at for weeks now.
I think this approach is rather silly, if there is something like a mental space, it is not perceivable in a conventional way, through our five senses. Noone quite understood my point, or saw the relevance of it. Luckily last week another student gave an example that seemed to explain it a bit.
In the village he grew up they didn't have any of the modern media, but once in a while a story teller would visit and they would all sit and listen and loose themselves in their imagination. He claimed this was the way to view mental space, with our inner eye. The teachers were in awe, they said it had not occurred to them that maybe mental spaces can not be perceived in a conventional way, through the five senses.

Today I didn't go to class. I'll try and come up with something nice for the assignment, I'll work on it at home. I'm a bit sick of the uninformed, vague discussions. Let them have their way, I'll have mine.

posted by Marian @ 11:12 AM 1 comments

So today I redesigned this website. The old lay-out worked fine, but it was... well... old. My coding skills were a bit off, so I studied the manuals again and even did one of those online courses. (Which entails reading a bit, doing a small assignment, reading a bit more, doing another small assignment, etc.)
After this procedure I decided I want something high-tech. I study at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science so the quality of my website should reflect this. I am very pleased with the result, I find it esthetically pleasing and functional.
Especially the new M-press feature is cool, for only smart people can see it.

I am considering applying it to my room as well, to make the clean room only visible for really smart people. Then at least I wouldn't have to spend half my weekend cleaning uping.
Bah...

posted by Marian @ 11:40 AM 1 comments

For some days now Annabel has been acting a bit strange. She runs around my room sniffing laundry that's on the floor and scratching boxes and papers and bags that are scattered around in our room. She jumps on the table and mews at the stack of mail I keep there.
At first I was rather puzzled by all this. But I think I have figured out what it's all about!
She crumples her nose in distaste over the scattered laundry and scratches the mess in annoyance. She yells at me to open my mail and get rid of the piles of paper. Apparently she doesn't like living in such a messy room.

Maybe my behavior is even more strange: I can't find the motivation to clean up unless there's someone else to do it for. In this case my cat.

posted by Marian @ 1:36 PM 0 comments

Sadly Yoko Nono and the Randomettes got canceled, but still I expect FEST [click] to be worth visiting. Especially because it will be a good opportunity to show off my new kick-ass outfit, featuring boots!
Some of you might be able to recall me having some trouble finding shoes. Most shops sell shoes up to size 42, while I need 43. There's an easy solution: I just choose something neutral looking from the men's collection.
Usually when I ask for a size 43 in a shop the salespeople look puzzled and shake their head. This time though, when I walked into the shop and asked for size 43, the lady looked puzzled and asked me what kind of shoes I was looking for. She brought a big stack of boxes from the storage room, all of which contained shoes and boots in my size. It was pretty cool.
The boots were expensive, but I figured money wouldn't buy me happiness anyway. Maybe I'll even post a picture soon of myself looking like a girl with boots.

posted by Marian @ 5:01 PM 0 comments

And once again I'm traveling back and forth to Leiden and Den Haag on a daily basis. Yesterday it took me about 3 hours to reach my destination, due to some technical problems of the dutch railways.
I was late for class, but luckily my projectgroup was still there. We worked on our diorama (or something that looks like a diorama...) all afternoon, so my trip had not been completely pointless.

The different courses I'm taking now are a nice blend of frivolous art and hardcore philosophy. While I'm making prototypes of colorfull cardboard for one course, the other requires me to read and think a lot. After getting my fingers stuck togethers with glue, I happily collect my wits and procede polishing my logical arguments.
Somehow graduating doesn't sound very appealing, studying is fun.

posted by Marian @ 3:53 PM 0 comments