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Every year, the Dutch digital industry gets together for their shot of next-level inspiration during the Dutch Digital Day. A conference, hosted by the sector association DDA, specially for people who work at digital agencies in the Netherlands. This year’s conference, entitled ‘Meet you on the other side’, took place on a sunny Friday afternoon at Undercurrent, a striking floating event venue with a beautiful view of the Amsterdam skyline. And of course, we were there with a couple of Lab Digital colleagues to listen to the keynotes, meet likeminded people from other agencies and enjoy the food & drinks.
Like previous years the DDA arranged a great line-up of inspiring, funny (and sometimes weird) speakers:
- Nell Watson (The emerging field of machine ethics)
- Léon Spikker (Robotic fabrication in architecture)
- Vera de Pont (Body forward: Making nothing by designing everything)
- Thijs van Vuure (What is it Like to Be a Bird?)
- Rogier Wieland (Animated film production)
- Arno Wielders (Bringing humans to the Red planet)
- Aernoud Bourdrez (Think like a lawyer, don’t act like one)
- Antonio Fernandez (Rebranding of the Latin Kings)
- Jennifer Kinon (Good vs Effective. Can vs Should)
- Neil Harbisson (The Renaissance of our Species)
Although some keynotes were more interesting than others, all were worthwhile and had their own unique angle on our digital future. We have picked the stories that appealed to us for this short summary:
Among all the serious topics, suddenly there was Thijs van Vuure. A long-haired guy with a light blue suit walked on stage. The outfit was quite different from the rest of the speakers, and his story was too.
His life is about birds. From his childhood, he has had one big fascination with birds. In his early days, it was the owl who inspired him - but later he liked the species so much that he dreamed about being a bird. He started his project ‘What is it like to be a bird?’. He explored the similarities and boundaries between ‘human-ness’ and ‘bird-ness’ and it turned out that there is still a similarity, despite the fact that we haven’t belonged to the same species for 300 million years.
Together with the complete audience, we participated in his experiment. With headphones for everyone, we all repeated the noises we heard for a few minutes. About 400 people where singing/saying; ‘Whoooo whoe whoe whoe whoe’ in different tones.
After the break, Thijs showed us what happened with our crazy sounds after he had sped it up significantly.
We (the complete audience) sounded like a ‘Blue tit’ — which is a very small bird, by the way. It was crazy but interesting. Thijs explained that for his project, he slowed down the bird sounds, copied it, recorded it with his own voice and sped it up. In a park he turned on the volume with his recordings and the birds flew around him and talked back… The bird is the word! Not a lot to do with DDD, but we liked the story nevertheless!
p.s. I almost added the video where we all sang, but due to the GDPR I decided not to. Lucky Els, Arjan and Chiel!
Aernoud is specialised in copyright law and a seasoned (conflict) negotiator. He is the author of books on law and negotiations, and an ardent fan and passionate collector of contemporary art.
The keynote of Aernoud was very interesting to me. It was funny to learn how to manage conflicts in a positive way. Based on principles, research, and real-life examples Aernoud provided us with great strategies to solve conflicts.
The example of Jack Daniels especially lingered in my memory. In 2012, a book was published with the cover very similar to the label of the Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey. Instead of an angry cease-and-desist letter, it became a friendly one in which Jack Daniels asks to use a different cover for a reprint. It wasn’t specifically a letter with humour, but the friendliness was welcomed and worked in the favour of Jack Daniels. By the way, the letter went viral.
The last speaker of the day definitely wasn’t the least. His name is Neil Harbisson, and he was introduced as the world’s first ‘cyborg artist’.
Neil Harbisson was born with achromatopsia; he was completely colour blind and could only see in greyscale. In 2004, he therefore had an ‘eyeborg’ implemented in his skull. This antenna measures the vibrations of different colours and translates these vibrations into sounds. Thanks to this antenna, Neil now can experience colours in his own unique way.
By showing the audience pictures of fruit and vegetables accompanied by the sounds they make to Neil, we got a glimpse of the way Neil hears colours. Ranging from purple to green, from red to yellow, and all the colours in between, we heard completely different sounds. But when the picture of milk came up, it was completely silent for a while. As he told us: ‘Milk is silent because milk is white. Black is silent too.’
Just imagine: Neil hears the sounds of colours every day and 24 hours a day. Think about him walking through the aisle of a supermarket, especially the ones with all the cleaning products and their intense primary colours. This must be really overwhelming to him.
What inspired me most about Neil and his antenna is the question of where this will bring us? And when will we stop being human and start ‘being technology’ instead of ‘using technology’? Maybe these questions are a bit too heavily formulated, but this antenna is just one of the first ways to take an active role in our own biological evolution.
Sooner or later, it will be technically possible to create many different senses and even organs that allow humanity to go beyond what’s traditional. Apart from all the ethical questions you could ask about this ‘renaissance of our species’, it’s really interesting stuff. For more information and inspiration, just take a look at the website of the Cyborg Foundation.
Thanks @DutchDigitalAgencies for hosting a superb event. We really enjoyed the speakers, food & drinks, atmosphere and camaraderie. We are looking forward to next year’s event!
On behalf of Lab Digital:
- Els Gosens
- Arjan Meulenbrugge
- Erik van Zuylen
- Chiel te Loeke