Dust and Noise Seminar, 4 March 2006

On the second day, Anna Magdalena L. Midtgaard, a conservator from Copenhagen Library, presented “The Dust of History and Politics of Presentation”. Her talk was very interesting, because she talked about the real dust, instead of the philosophical or abstract meanings of dust. She explained about the dust she found in the library, on the archives and old manuscript and her conservatory works and policies on saving the library's valuable collection from the harmful dust as well as saving of library's valuable and aesthetic dust on the old manuscript collections.

She gave descriptive and vivid explanation about dust in general and how it is closely related with library and librarians. Dust can be so evil in causing illness for the librarians as well deterioration of library collections. A lot of works need to be done to clean the library as well as to preserve the collection.

Cleaning the dust in the library is not a simple matter. Researchers study different ways on how to clean the dust fast but the activity should not destroy the valuable materials. The dust in the old manuscripts, in particular, should be carefully cleaned as the dust would be able to show the historical values of the manuscript as well.

In her interesting presentation, she presented a lot of pictures and images that give vivid illustration about dust in the library. Her presentation reminds me that the presence of dust is often insignificant but it has the great positive as well as negative impacts which implies serious responsibility in treating the dust. It can be either friend or enemy for people in the library as well as people in general.

Cecilie Mejer from Copenhagen, Denmark, continued with her presentation ”From Dust to Dawn”. Her presentation was about clinical photography of the students (patients) at the blind institute in Copenhagen in the past. She aimed to analyze the pictures of the students from different periods, which include the setting, position, style, lighting, background, etc.

Clinical photography was made by doctors as a medical record to visualize the development of students. Pictures usually made on their arrival and departures showed more talking proof of the blind development than many words.

Her topic was intriguing because she tried to argue that there are relationships among context, period, space and style of the pictures.

In her picture collections, she showed that in the beginning of 20th centuries, only faces were exposed. Later, more things, such as other body parts (hands and legs) background and various settings, were exposed. However, when she was asked about the current practice, she mentioned that the medical photography is still being done, but only organ (such as eyes) were exposed. Her answer is somehow on the contrary of her previous arguments that as the time goes more parts were exposed.

Dust and Noise Seminar, 3 March 2006

On the fist day of the Dust and Noise seminar at the Media Lab, University of Art and Design, Dag Petersson, the organiser of the seminar gave an opening remark about the seminar and the Nordic Summer Institute that organized the it.

Olli Lagerspetz, from department of Philosophy, Åbo Akademi (Turku), started by presenting about ”Dirt and Refuse: Grammatical Remarks”. He discussed the philosophies of dirt and refuse from the grammatical point of view. Furthermore, he also explained how the terms “dirt” and “refuse” are used in context; how the judgment of “dirt” and “refuse” can be used.

He said that dirt was a matter that out of place. Dirtiness can be objects/substances as well as quality. While, the concept of refuse implies of any movable materials abandoned because of its uselessness, such as souvenirs, which are abandoned on the shelf after they are bought, picture of unidentified people after the important part of the pictures were used.

The concepts of dirt and refuse somehow raised discussion among the participants. Some had difficulties to relate his philosophical point of view with their works. For example, a photographer might have different perspective about dirty object. He argued that his concept can be the basis of those aesthetic works. There was also confusion among the participants when and where thing is considered as dirty. He explained that in order to judge something as a dirt, one needs to have a meaningful engagement with that particular objects.

In my point of views, the concept of dirt and refuse will have different meaning and perception depending on the context where they are used. Moreover, the concept of dirt and refuse are very subjective. For example: I will consider that the dirt on my new T-shirt as bad because I have spent a lot of money to buy those clothes and I want to enjoy the cleanliness of the new T-shirt. On the other hand, the dirt on my old T-shirt because I spill some acrylic by accident would not be considered as dirt as I used to have a plan to make this T-shirt look more eccentric and cool.

Torben Sangild, Faculty of Humanistic, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), presented some interrelations between dust and noise. Before characterizing different kinds of dust and noise, he started by giving some visual illustration about disturbing dust and annoying noise in the real world. He said that there are three kinds of noise that are acoustic, communicative and subjective noise. An example from vinyl noise were presented to give a comparison between vinyl dust nostalgia and current CD output. Briefly, he also explained that dust and noise can be found in form of visual dust and noise, such as in Adobe or Final Cut Pro (movie editing software).

An inspiration from vacuum cleaner, which is so called støvesuger (Scandinavian word: støve – dust, suger- sucker), were used to give an example of white noise. The noise of vacuum cleaner inspired in a music band as well as a white noise music (http://www.sleeplullabies.com/) to help babies getting relaxed and sleeping.