Denmark Introduces Harrowing New Tourism Ads Directed By Lars Von Trier

Information is code, a representation of sensory experiences and exchanges, stored. A recorded conversation is a captured exchange of sounds that have been heard, of words that have been spoken. Short sections are clips, tracks are longer.

A letter is an exchange of written ideas, an email a digital evolution of this captured idea-exchange.

But hang on a minute, what is ‘digital’? Digital is electric maths yet can also be aesthetic. A synthetic yet untouchable medium from which captured ideas can take form and become a perceptible aesthetic medium.

I’m intrigued by the idea that digitising one’s life is a step towards immortality, that a collected databank of images, sounds, videos, thoughts, ideas, social interactions and exchanges can exist where and when we are gone. From a spiritual standpoint is this creation of an intangible history of our lives our ’soul’? Is this approximation what makes streaming content of our lives to the world so attractive to citiziens in post-religious consuemrist societies? Do we desire immortality and hence tweet ourselves to the grave. Possibly, but then we msut question if these repositories of information about our lives are likely to endure.

Something digital is arguably less permanent, which is why what increasingly interests me are real-world representations of information captured and collected by digital sensors.

Winter fun and frolics

2009/10 has been the coldest winter for 40 years in Denmark, and coincidentally my first taste of living in such a cold climate. Having seen little snow in my life in Sussex on England’s south coast I still relish the opportunity of diving around like a child, as you can see here.

Pigeon Hole

51 bottles of home brewed ale

The first brew from the four Bjelkes Ale brewers was bottled last weekend. 51 bottles (around 17 litres) of dark ale are now carbonating and bottle conditioning. We’ll see how long we can resist opening them for, but a minimum of three weeks is required for the sugar to carbonate them (the Danes like their ale fizzy). We have been told that they are at their best after three months, odds of us lasting that long? c. 51-to-1.

Imagine my surprise then to find that British Ambassador to Denmark, Nick Archer blogs both in Danish via popular newspaper Berlingske here and in English for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office here.

What’s he been saying? Well, the RSS feed of the Berlingske blog will give Danish speakers an idea:

And for the non-Danish speaking here’s the same content translated via Google Translate:

I won’t analyse this in any great depth, but it’s interesting that Afghanistan is mentioned significantly more than Copenhagen, despite the upcoming COP15 climate summit. That may be no surprise, as the two recent posts that have attracted the most comments by far are on this topic:

• ‘Should we send more troops to Afghanistan‘ - 172 comments to date
• ‘Afghanistan: Who said the exit strategy?‘ - 130 comments to date

I’m quite impressed by the British government’s use of the internet and an increasingly open attitude towards non-personal information, they’re in dialogue with some formidable thinkers such as Tim Berners-Lee, and have hosted some interesting events in London recently.

From a Foreign Office perspective the global reach of Digital Diplomacy is an exciting prospect that should help increase the effectiveness of overseas civil servants (a full list of FCO bloggers can be found here). Domestically making public information more accessible in Britain could go some way to restoring public confidence in government after a summer of expense scandals and bank bailouts.

Mootorbike

Muuto E27 light

I liked these Danish/Finnish Muuto lamps so much that I bought three of them: green, yellow and red. I think I’ll hang them over the stairs in the new flat.