implicit art

Some of my handmade Compressionist prints - iterative etchings, engravings, aquatints, etc, which use plates that were inspired by details from my infamous  scanner performances - will be at the Editions | Artists’ Books Fair in NYC, next week. A small box set from this series will be featured @ the  David Krut table, alongside William Kentridge, Penny Siopis, and Colbert Mashile - good company! Please check it out if you can, November 2nd - 5th, The Tunnel, New York, 261 Eleventh Avenue.

"Anyone interested in contemporary printmaking should not miss this event."
     — Ken Johnson of the NY Times

-More info on the fair-

left: allysum, Compressionist aquatint, 2006

It’s with mixed emotions that, 5 years after my initial "just gonna go hang out in South Africa with my girlfriend for a couple of months" trip, I depart - with wife in hand, baby in arms, and leaving behind many of the closest friends i have in the world, a community of wonderful and generous thinkers and creators.

What’s especially sad is how things did not go as planned with Wits (re: Nicole applying for leave, their not being so generous - please note that this is an understatement), and so our adventure is slightly more open-ended than originally intended… Especially sad, and amazingly exciting.

Still, I’ll be back in Johnnesburg in January for my exhibition at Art on Paper, and my growing relationships with Alet there, and Jillian Ross at David Krut, as well as my ongoing collaborations and lifetime friendships… well, you have definitely not heard the last from me. For now, tho, it’s Dublin or bust :)

See you soon.

My wife handed me this article by Martha Nussbaum in the newsweek a while back, and it’s been sitting on my desk waiting to be read since then. I went for a walk with my daughter swinging in her sling across my chest this morning, reading it as I sang her to sleep, and was enthralled by its simplicity and clarity on that which seems so ingrained in me, misunderstood and underused by education systems and mass media world wide. If you don’t have time to read the whole article, I ask you to read the following (last) paragraph TWICE. Once, as is - accenting the importance of liberal arts education - and a second time, replacing the word “education” with “news media” - for shits and giggles…

Democracies have great rational and imaginative powers. Yet they also are prone to irrationality, parochialism, haste, sloppiness and selfishness. Education based mainly on profitability in the global market magnifies these deficiencies–to the point that they threaten the very life of democracy itself. We need to favor an education that cultivates the critical capacities, that fosters a complex understanding of the world and its peoples and that educates and refines the capacity for sympathy. In short, an education that cultivates human beings rather than producing useful machines. If we do not insist on the crucial importance of the humanities and the arts, they will drop away. They don’t make money. But they do something far more precious: they make a world worth living in.

Although America is no longer the aforementioned, Keith Olbermann has been providing me with minor amounts of sanity with regards to my birth-country, and its direction, as of late. Watch this, and be moved, and I’d recommend searching the site for more of his clips…. I save them all.

T-MINUS - 2006 FESTIVAL

Presenting works by 11 artists creating in the medium of time.

Screenings:

October 19th, 2006
Monkeytown, Brooklyn, NY
Two showings: 7:30pm and 10:00pm.
Please make reservations, seating is limited.

Abstract: As computers and cameras become increasingly ubiquitous, a greater number of creators are becoming interested in the artistic possibilities inherent in combining these technologies. Time-distorted video is easily realized with affordable consumer equipment, and this ability has generated a wave of image-over-time interactive "physical computing" installations and homegrown timelapse projects. T-Minus3 seeks to bring together exceptional realizations that explore the union of digital media and time.

2007 T-Minus Submissions
We will be making an announcement for receiving submissions in December for T-minus 2007. Please email Chris Jordan for more information, or to be included in T-Minus announcements.

Participants: Glen Duncan, Jonah Elgart, Michael Betancourt, Chris Jordan, Andre Ruschkowski, Robert Ladislas Derr, Nathan Smith, Marcel Weirckx, luke Dubois, Nathaniel Stern, Adam Kendall

Something like this was in my inbox (paraphrase edit type thing):

The ArtReview Power 100 is out on Monday and you can get the whole issue of the magazine for free on your computer screen.

This is ArtReview:Digital. It’s the entire magazine online, in the exact same format as the print edition. The next six issues are free actually. You can register here to receive it (with no future obligations):

www.artreviewdigital.com

On Monday October 16 you will get an email with a link so you can access the Power 100 issue.

Obviously, some kind of promotional deal, and you’ll likely get mailers, but Art Review has been around long enough that I’m willing to give it a shot and see what it’s all about; sign up takes less than 30 seconds….

With an early start in art education you’ll be prepared for a future in art.

2 spots left for a hands-on interactive video workshop this weekend, contact Bronwyn Lace, (083) 284-4726. R600

On Friday, there’s  free lecture on the topic, which bleeds into Saturday and Sunday for the paid (but cheap) workshop:

This presentation, demo, and discussion ‘over drinks’ will survey the current interactive video landscape, and the pioneers who shaped the territory. Nathaniel will look at documentation of artworks over the last 20 years by artists like David Rokeby, Camille Utterback, and Golan Levin — all artists working with interactive technologies and the body. He will also present what kinds of tools are available for artists, musicians and VJs who want to produce interactive installations or multimedia performances. Lastly, he will explore how someone might achieve body-tracking, motion-tracking or proximity-sensing with basic tools, and take a quick look at ‘jitter’, an interactive video development environment for artists, as well as some projects that have been produced with it.

This lecture will be followed by a weekend hands-on workshop. The workshop will explore a variety of possibilities for tracking information from the physical world through microphones, cameras and other plug-and-play devices. Workshop participants should be comfortable with their computers before they attend - at least able to perform simple tasks like word processing or email with ease. Before the end of the weekend, they will produce simple works that may use a wide variety of tools to capture and track information from their environment and people in it. For more information on the lecture please contact Bronwyn at bronwyn@bagfactoryart.org.za

VENUE: The Bag Factory
10 Mahlatini Stree, Fordburg, Johannesburg
Take Jeppe past Museum Africa and it becomes Mahlatini
Parking is available on Mahlatini Street. There will be a cash bar with music before and after the lecture.

We leave Joburg in about 2 weeks. i gots mad sh!t to do afore we head out, then it’s registration and flat-hunting in Dublin. You may not hear from me for a bit, or at the very least, it’ll be intermittent for about one month. Wish us luck!

UPDATE: OK, so I’ll ocassionally post if I find something and have a mo, but this still gets bumped cuz I want low expectations….