And so it changed shape again. First off I programmed NL_MIX – the app I made to study the future of the Netherlands with – in simple matrices. Then I went one better – one can now see the future of the Netherlands in the shape of the Netherlands. Also one can now be in control of said future by mixing in more or less ‘nature’, ‘recreation’, ‘housing’ or one of the other visions-of-the-future categories that I organised my material in. It is amazing to see how much visual difference there is between a Netherlands with just ‘nature’ and a Netherlands with just ‘Safety’ – and all the options and gradations inbetween.

Also spent time on an ‘about’ page (in Dutch) where I contextualise the app and the impulses that led to its conception. I very often come to grief writing about my own work, but this piece of writing I am content with …. sort of.

Dapper Street

Nature is for the satisfied or hollow.
And what does it add up to in this land?
A patch of wood, some ripples in the sand,
A modest hill where modest villas follow.

Give me the city streets, the urban grey,
Quays and canals that keep the water tamed,
The clouds that never look finer than when, framed
By attic windows, they go their windswept way.

The least expectant have most to marvel at.
Life keeps its wonders under lock and key
Until it springs them on us, rich, complete.

One dreary morning all this dawned on me,
When, soaking wet in drizzly Dapper Street,
I suddenly felt happy, just like that.

J.C. Bloem ( 1887 – 1966 )
Uit: Verzamelde Gedichten I,
Atheneaum-Polak & van Gennep,
Amsterdam,
1991Translation: © Judith Wilkinson, 2008
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