self, in oz, 2005, non-academic silly hat

I did a little genealogy research some time ago, and found a distant ancestor named Tore Tinghatt. He apparently acquired the name by turning up at an assembly (Thing) with something peculiar on his head. Challenge accepted.

Right now I am off-line at 30.000 feet, en-route to Australia again, to acquire a silly hat. It will take a while, but if all goes to plan, I will post-grad from RMIT with a few years of research on information architecture and four dimensions, some aussie wine under my vest and a silly hat on my head.

Wish me luck.

I finished my bachelor in Digital Media Production at the University College Østfold, and in october 2010 recieved an email from a lecturer asking if they could buy some of my photos for their new IT-student website. I said yes, and heard nothing more.

Two months later I discovered that they had taken 13 of my photos and published on their new site without permission, credits, payment or informing me. I was not impressed. I emailed a handful of people I knew would have been involved, including the webmaster, the dean and the Chief Information Officer and asked what was going on, and asked them to remove the photos until we had come to an agreement.

No answer.

I send another email, a tad more formal, outlining that Norwegian intellectual property law had been broken, what the common practice is in cases like this, but that I would like this solved in a manner that both parts could accept. But that this is not possible without communication. Basically: talk to me.

Silence. They remove the photos from the site, bar one.

I send a letter snailmail, repeating what was in the email, and added that I would send an invoice, but I hoped that this could be solved in a friendly manner. In addition, I also said that when an agreement had been reached, they would be allowed to use 10 out of the 13 photos. The remaining three I would never have allowed them to use in any case. I also point out that it is their responsibility to get permission from the people in the photographs. You know, that is another law…

Deafening silence.

A few weeks later, I talk to them. He said he would email me an offer.

I hear nothing. I send an email reminder.

Silence.

In March I receive an email asking me about something else, some files I had worked on while studying. I take the opportunity to remind them again.

Silence.

In august I send an email saying that since I have heard nothing, I assume they would accept an invoice on what is current practice. That would set them back about USD 13.000.

No reply.

Being abroad for most of the summer, I return, and in december, with a heavy heart send them an invoice. They do not want to talk to me, I do not have any options left. If I am stuck in a corner, but I did not put myself there. According to normal practice, I should have invoiced the price of a photo times three: once for the image, once for lack of credits, once for lack of an agreement. Normal freelance price for a photo is estimated to about NOK 2000. That would have brought the total up to approximately NOK 78 000 (about USD 13.000).

I snailmailed an invoice of NOK1000x2 pr. image. 1000 kroner pr image, 1000 kroner pr image for lack of credit and agreement. This is cheap. This is getting off easy. Bear in mind they will be allowed to use ten of the images. This is, essentially, normal price for a photo.

Finally, a reaction. A phonecall. He offered me NOK 3000 for the lot as “compensation for a misunderstanding”. 230 kroner pr image. USD 38. An offence. I insist he sends that “offer” in an email. He is very reluctant to do so. He gives me time to “think about it”. He calls back a few days later, I and tell him that this is not acceptable, and that I have to consider where I will take this further. I am so angry I am shaking, but I speak slowly and calmly.

He calls back, and tells me he has talked to the university college solicitor. He repeatedly refuses to tell me what the solicitor said, but now the offer is NOK 1000 (approx. USD167) pr image. I am asked to “meet them half way”. The gall. I could have invoiced USD 13.000. I should have done that! He does not want to give me the name and contact information to the solicitor as he “does not want to bother him with this”. Finally I get the name and number of the solicitor, his rationale that me calling the solicitor could not possibly take more than ten minutes. I have no guarantee or faith in that this guy has given the solicitor the whole picture. Or that they have talked at all.

He does not want to send me this new offer in an email. I insist. He refuses, on the grounds that “he does not have the time right now”. I say he can write it as we speak, I helpfully suggest: “we offer you 1000kr pr image. Best regards, signed Mr. Weasel”. He would have had time to do that in the time it took me to argue this point. No, he does not have the time. It is friday. It is half past four.

Again, I am given time to think, and he says with a sternly, fatherly chastising tone, that “we should get this thing done with”. I have tried to get this over with for over a year! They have had a year to give me an offer and start communicating. And now I am given the impression that this is my fault. He also starts the argument that “you are not really a photographer“, and that “the images was not really on the internet for a long time“. They were only removed because I found them – through Google! 

He thinks the price is steep. It is not. It is really really really cheap for breaking the law. And if the total is large, that is due to the fact that they took 13 images. Not my doing.

Remember that one picture they did not remove? They say it was a photo taken by a lecturer. I said in that case we are not talking about the same photo. As it is a photo OF THE GUY who (they say) claims it to be his photo!

So. Where did I go from there? I had three options. Solicitor, media or the settlement office, the lowest rung on the legal ladder, where the aim is to reach agreements. I researched all three.

What they failed to see is that I could not let this go for a number of reasons.

• they have offended me personally by refusing to communicate, not taking my letters and emails seriously, and by extension, offended anyone trying to communicate with them, including the students past and present.
• They never offered and apology. The closes thing was an oral admission that “I see that we have not handled this very well“. My diagnosis is that they have not “handled” anything at all.
•  They tried to weasel away by calling it a “oral misunderstanding“, and when I produced the email with the initial request, that certainly upped the stakes.
• They tried to intimidate me by saying they had talked to a solicitor but refused to say what the solicitor said, and then tried to refuse me the contact information to said solicitor.
• They tried to belittle my work, the value, the experience and the product of years of practice by saying “you are not really a photographer“. Well. By the same token: you guys are not really educators.
• They tried to blame me: I was being unreasonable, I had misunderstood, my tiny little head could clearly not grasp this.
• They said it was merely an “internal communication error”. But did nothing to rectify it.
• They tried to weasel out of giving anything in written form, and generally just postponing, stretching time, “forgetting”, and the ever lovely “I have been very busy“-excuse. Seriously. I studied there for three years. I know how “busy” they are. And they had a YEAR.
• It is also an offence to every photographer out there. It is incredibly unprofessional, and the most depressing thing is that this is not unique.
• it IS a violation of the law of intellectual property. You know. Illegal.

 But most of all:

this is the IT-department in an educational institution that teaches their students about intellectual property law. They demand their students do their research and reference according to standards, and do not steal or plagiarise. I did my Digital Media Production bachelor there, but they obviously have no respect for the bachelor programme they created themselves, and the work resulting from it. Such as photographs. And somehow, the Norwegian law does not apply to them.

It makes me so furious I can hardly speak. And I am seldom lost for words.

They get away with this, I am sure, because most students are young and inexperienced. So I guess they are living in a tiny provincial bubble, where they can put on the “fatherly chastising”-tone, and kids will buckle. And you can buy young country-bumpkin students off with trinkets and shiny beads. You do not need the law then. They tried every trick in the book; pleading, accusing, blaming, intimidation, belittling. The thing is: I know these people. And they should know me, by now. Still: little cheap theatrics.

This whole thing has made me sick, my stomach turns every time I think about it. I am also angry at myself for not invoicing the full price. I am angry at myself for trying to be accommodating. I do want them named and shamed, and I want to warn current and future students about this himalayan incompetence, cheekyness and outright illegal behaviour.

I finally send an email saying I have nothing more to say, and that they will hear from my solicitor.

They decided to cough up.

Eirik Solheim, an editor with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation had pretty much the same thing happening to him, and he writes the story in this blog post “They stole an image of my son and just had to pay $4000“. The observant reader will see his point that the whole thing could have been averted had the violators promptly apologised and suggested reasonable compensation.

This whole thing could by and large have been solved a year ago, if, instead of burying their heads in the sand thinking it would go away and then subsequently trying to blame me, offend me, accuse me, intimidate me. A year ago, if they had given a sincere apology and a decent offer, this would never have happened.

It does not feel like a victory, I feel trampled on, misused. When the method of ignoring all my attempts at communication failed, they tried all the manipulative methods in the book. I have little interest in law, I believe in consensus, communication. But push a rat into a corner and see what gives.

I deeply regret that I tried to be accommodating. I should have invoiced the USD 13.000. I should have called a solicitor months ago.

Let this be a warning to anyone finding themselves in a similar situation. Please spread this story, as a warning and as an information about property laws.

Will they use the ten pictures they are allowed to? I doubt it. If they do, will they get permission from the people in the pictures, and will they credit me? I doubt it.

Then we shall see.

The Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program Database: Relating scientific data through time and space

At the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., they have a programme that’s been going on for a number of years; The Human Origins Program. This is to bring evolution and research out there, mainly via the exhibition Hall of Human Origins. In the US, this is considered politics. I venture to say that in Europe this is considered history. So as the americans need to do sensible research, they also to a certain extent need to step carefully. Interesting, bizarre and a wee bit disturbing to me; this tip-toeing.

Scientists argue. Scientists have specialities, and some are extremely specialised in very detailed, at times small and obscure fields. Sometimes they want to share, sometimes not. Sometimes they dislike other scientists definitions, sometimes the overlap of fields can be enriching or frustrating. They work on projects, and they create the tools they need. It seems that they, for all sorts of reasons, creates their own databases; gather their data and information in forms that suits them best there and then. Not necessarily very sustainable, but if you don’t want to share your findings, well, I suppose you could have it inscribed on scrolls under your bed.

Anyway. Working on The Human Origins Program team is Dr. Matthew Tocheri, a paleoanthropologist specialising in the evolution of the hand and foot. Part of his job is to gather data in a cross-field database. This covers several specialist fields, including paleoanthropology, archeology, vertebrae zoology, geochronology, paleoecology, paleoenvironment and of course geology. He collects data wherever he can find it, from old publications, from fellow researchers. Apparently, it has not been attempted to collect data from these related fields together in this manner before. Matthew collects, and created a database that will accept different definitions, different names and different approaches. This is an exercise in flexibility, and therefore; sustainability.
Understanding that no data is also information.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. – Einstein –

So. In the middle of this, we landed. Two computer engineering students, and one student of digital media. What could we do, and how on earth could we handle those specialist fields?!

The idea was to make a website, that would make it possible to handle these data, show relations and scope quicky and intuitively.

We drew, scribbled, and tried to get our heads around Matthews database. This is complex data with, at times, complex relations. What a field day, for a digital media student! Deep time, deep space…

This is the prototype, as it stands at the end of the project. Google maps, five timelines, and a field for data. It seems simple; it seems obvious, but the road was hard. I like to believe that to make something complex seem effortless is an art; and is the litmus test of a system like this. If you can think “of course, that is how it must be done, it is obvious” – it is the colombus’ egg. It is art, it is magic.
In reality; lots of work.

It is not easy. But it is simple. – House –

We had amazing days in Washington D.C., working with Matthew and the others in the Human Origins Program. (plenty of pictures here) It was relief, and an extreme privilege to work with solid data and talented, smart and dedicated people. The wonderful, beautiful feeling of working with real, sensible content, and not trying to sell sand in Sahara; creating designs and frameworks without content. It was mad, fab and hard work. We spend about six weeks all in all in D.C., and with the exception of one day and a hospitalisation, we worked at the museum every day. Not much sightseeing, not much fresh air. Back in Norway, we did pretty much the same…

There is a million small things to consider, building something like this. Personally, I am primarily interested in the overall structure, the architecture, the interface and the graphic design. To display scope is very important: if you’re looking for information, and you know nothing of the source, it must pretty easily show you that it might contain what you’re looking for or not. This is – as of yet – a site for students and scientists of the fields, and I think I can assume that they have a little more than a two-second attention-span. Still. Scope is absolutely essential.

This is in many ways infographics. I do obsess, though, over tiny, tiny details. The amazing privilege of being allowed to do both: play with ideas, overall structures, grand plans and gestures, and at the same time dig into tiny pixels.

An example of the detail-obsession, would be the angled text above the timeline icons. I really, really wanted them angled, and the amount of hassle and fiddling to make them, place them, and allow them to be clickable and roll-overs was unreal. Of course, as we kept inventing uses for them, I had to adjust, but it is just one example of obsessive fiddling that would easily have drowned in another project…

..and that brings me to the boys. Lars and Audun handled the programming and database part, while I obsessed with html, css, graphics, interface and structures. Bless them. Not only was it an enormous privilege to work with the anthropologists, but my team was the best. Of course they were, I hand-picked them myself ;-)

Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process. – M. C. Escher –

That I could fiddle, learn, dig and struggle with things I like, and at the same time important progress was made in other parts, was wonderful. I suspect the boys feel the same. We became a tightly knit team, and we had to talk through definitions and find a common language. We shared the dedication for the project, and nearly worked ourselves into collapse. It was hard, we all had to learn new things ourselves, we all banged fists on the table in frustration at times, but I’d do it all over again. There was plenty of compromises. And plenty of laughs. Ah, the giggles… I will miss that.

But out of the other end, came a prototype we are proud of, that others like and admire, that several people might be interested in, and I believe Matthew is happy with. We got top grades on the project, that I for one feel was the only option. It was not by far the most important thing, but feels good anyway, and the good people at the museum expected nothing less.

At the time of writing, the prototype is hosted on our servers, and only contains some of the data from the database. We hope, though, that it will go live from Smithsonian before x-mas. I am hoping they will continue to develop it; I hope we have been part of pointing out a direction.

Now, as I have finished my bachelor, new adventures beckons. If all goes well, there might be another project for the museum. I keep my fingers crossed, and take a few weeks well deserved holiday. It is summer, and I still have that indoor skin colour that I always thought was the trademark of geeks only…

I have learned though. Mainly because I wanted to. It seems, you could get through a bachelor without learning much; without much ability. The system is made to get as many as possible through, degrading the meaning of a bachelor, and offending the ones who actually work their asses off. At the end of the day, it is a yes or no question whether you have a degree, not always the grades, attitude or accomplishments. We are considered sheep; bachelor students.

They say the world becomes beautiful and exciting at master level. I will find out, in about a year.

I realise the system is not made for me, though. I am fifteen years too old. Of course, there are kids that are way smarter than me, but I have experience in spotting gobshait. I suspect some lecturers get used to having 18-20 years olds that tend to accept whatever bullshit they say. Not so easy, then, with that old hag in the front row being difficult.

I’ve had fun too. The last year was hard, hard work, close to breaking point. But I found a small handful of good people, and you can do anything, if you have good people. Talent, hard work and nonsense is essential.

Pictures from the  bachelor years

So now I am unemployed, soon to be homeless, and the world of wonderful uncertainties unfold. New adventures.

Best of all. I can get out of this place.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

hey – she’s leaving, taking nuts away..

fraternising with the IT-crowd

anyone but me seeing the beauty of the book, the running fridge geeky t-shirt and the craniums peeping out of the cupboards behind?

ashes to ashes, dust to dust (this is what we are)

pretzel nonsense. cheap thrills.

I haz nut too

the team: Lars, Bente, Matthew & Audun

The Smithsonian castle. Mad architecture.

another friend

see what I have to put up with..?

..and again..

collapsing in laughter (foto by Lars)

installed at Caleys. Happy with own flat.

homo rudolfensis, approx. 1.9 million years old

homo erectus, approx. 1 millon years old

homo heidelbergensis, approx. 350.000 years old

homo sapiens, approx. 4.800 years old

homo nonsensiens, yesterday.

.. and the connections.

Breakfast, inside looking out.

Ancestral tunnel. The human origins programs exhibition.

Homo Floresiensis – the “hobbit”.

Aborigine-inspired art, with kangaroo intestines.

as it is?

This is not travelling, this is transport.

There is a  minor summit in town these days, so accommodation not readily available. Lots of dark SUV’s and limos around. When the boys with the guns & checkpoints turn up, I’ll paste them up here as well, and do an analysis of courtesy, quality and efficency of said on three continents.

Food soon. Then sweet, sweet sleep.

Work tomorrow. Really looking forward to that.

We had the unbelievable privilege of working next to and with extremely dedicated, knowledgeable and kind people. Specialists in their fields, comfortable, sometimes eccentric, always friendly. We pretty much gatecrashed one guys office, and after our stay got extended, seemingly never left. Everyone either thought it perfectly fine, or did an excellent job of convincing us it was. I choose to believe it was genuine: all those anthropologists cannot be first rate actors as well. We kept the coffee brewing, and that seemed to be all that was required.

Our little contribution is not directly related; and us not being in their respective field was refreshing: to be able to ask stupid questions, to play with ideas. Form and content. Information technology calling human origins. We create what their knowledge and science is/will be channeled through. The aim is to make accessible something that is rather complex. I have been thinking hard for the last weeks, exhausting processes of twisting my brain into a knot, solving problems, keeping the main goal in sight while untying tiny problems, avoiding creating bigger ones. Being bugged by large problems while solving small ones. And sometimes the large problems presents solutions, if you don’t bother them too much for a while.

Thinking until it hurts, indeed. I bemoaned the lack of that in a previous post. Now I have created it for myself, and I get to taste my own medicine every day. It is inspiring and challenging. It hurts, and I love it. I find it hard to work on other things. This project have, on many levels, my full attention. It comes down to good people. If you have good people, you can do anything. Being rather misanthropic, good people are crucial.  I have had the luck of finding good team members, and the unbelievable luck of landing a project run by the best. To be a tiny, tiny little part of this. Is awesome.

There are plenty of walls to bang my head against. But it is learning and adventure all in one: it does not get any better than that.

Last pic on the roll, so to speak. The exhibition opens in six days… Good thing it is permanent, because it feels very wrong to miss out on it. One day we will have all the time in the world to dawdle, dilly-dally, saunter and meander.

Au revoir, D.C. ‘Till we meet again.

Took us 18 hours to get home this time. Not bad. AND my car started without a hitch, after three weeks in a swedish snowdrift.