implicit art

Had a great email exchange with Brian Sherwin of myartspace.com over the last few days, which culminated as an interview published on the myartspace blog. There’re bits on my work,  dissertation, inspirations, even a question on Creative Commons and a few other little tidbits not published anywhere else to date. Check it out.

snip / teaser:

Art Space Talk: Nathaniel Stern

“… Brian Sherwin [myartspace.com]: Nathaniel, I’ve read that you are inspired by the Interactive art of David Rokeby and Myron Kruger. Can you tell us about these influences? What else inspires you?

NS: I believe Kruger’s core contribution to understanding interactivity was a concentration on action rather than perception - ’seeing’ in particular. He had little concern for illusion-based and simulated VR that replicated reality, and was more interested in stimulation - with a ‘t’ - and how people moved / getting them to move. I think Rokeby is brilliant in many ways, and his work, Very Nervous System (1986-1990), was one of the first and most important pieces to accomplish an affective intervention in embodiment through this kind of inter-activity. But what inspires me most about him is his contrariness. He almost always tries ’something else,’ never really accepting the limits or taken for granted in any given medium.

The Odys Series: The Storyteller, archival print on watercolor paper, 1189 x 841, edition 3, 2004
(screenshot from video)

My other influences are fairly idiosyncratic: from Hiroshige, the Impressionists and Homer’s epic tales to Liam Gillick or Camille Utterback and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. I often turn to contemporary fiction, theory and philosophy in my thinking and making. I should also say that my wife, Nicole Ridgway, is the most wonderful muse and crit I’ve ever met: my biggest fan and supporter precisely because she is also my harshest critic before a work is done….”

read more (2500 word interview)

You can tell I’m uber uber busy (who isn’t? But I still used to make time for blogging…) when I am not only posting very infrequently, but also mostly / only in response to comments left here (and it’s not as if my comments section is very forthcoming). Last week it was something on my Northern Ireland holiday in response to Laine. And now, artthrob editor Michael Smith asks - after chiding me about MWEB / artthrob down time - for some news. And he called me Sterny. Which is frakkin hilarious, on so many levels.

Admittedly, most news these days is dissertation-related, and / or not yet announcement-ready. There are a handful of exciting shows potentially forthcoming for me, but the operative word is potentially, and so I don’t want to make them public just yet. I am 5 weeks from a too short visit to Joburg and Cape Town - just a holiday, which I’m thrilled over - and then, after a 2-day stop in NYC to see family and hit galleries for a day, I start my new job at UWM’s Peck School of the Arts. See more on that here. I’m actually on track to have a draft of said dissertation in before I leave Dublin, which is startling for most people, myself included (I’ve been working on it less than two years). The original proposal is here, and we’re lookin at 230 or so pages of academic text and case studies (5 chapters, intro, conclusion; this doesn’t include the bibliography or any of that extraneous stuff yet).

Confirmed shows include a group one in Pretoria with some older prints, and a new commission for Carine Zaayman’s NRF-funded project at the Michaelis Gallery at UCT, Jozi and the (M)other City. The latter show features work by myself, Ralph Borland, Nicola Grobler, Stephen Hobbs, Svea Josephy, Marcus Neustetter, Johan Thom and James Webb, creative writing by Sean O’Toole, and a catalogue with an essay by Zaayman herself. I’m very excited about the work I’m doing, as it’s a huge departure for me both conceptually and aesthetically - more of a performative and sociopolitical intervention than anything else - and is specific to a South African context and art world. The exhibition and catalogue and web site will all see documentation-as-art, so I don’t want to give too much away just yet, but the title may clue you in a bit: Doin’ my part to lighten the load… I will post upcoming international stuff when it’s confirmed.

In press news, there’ll be a full feature on me in the Winter issue of Printmaking Today, which is pretty exciting, and it also looks like I’ll be one of the featured artists in the sequel to Richard Noyce’s Printmaking at the Edge, by the same author and tentatively titled Printmaking Beyond the Edge, due for release in early 2010.

On a final note, I wanted to mention that I went to see Ralph Borland (fellow South African artist and Trinity grad student) and Julian Jonker’s Song of Solomon at the Project Arts Centre here in Dublin last week.

 A computer program samples many versions of the song ‘Mbube’ (the source of the song ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’) to form a continually-changing audio collage that questions notions of intellectual property and the processes of cultural production.

Although the original work was intended as a looped installation, this version was a 20-minute performance that did not disappoint. I have to say that the above statement reads like it could potentially be interesting, but might be better in concept than in practice. NOT TRUE. And the work was exceptionally potent as a performance, in the dark, sitting centered between the speakers, and as a common experience between all those present. It was a moving tribute and memorial which I’d sit through several more times, given the opportunity.

That’s all I got for now.

Nice 2-part feature on Haydn Shaugnessy and Fragments on Dream Not of Today coming out, with the first installment now live. A snippet and link:

South of Cork near the very southern tip of Ireland rests the physical storefront of the Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery. The corporeal manifestation of this collection of contemporary art would be deceivingly small even were it the size of a Wal-Mart, as the gallery’s reach extends far beyond IRL. Helmed by a collector whose technological savvy is unparalleled in the modern world of art collection, Haydn Shaughnessy also maintains a critically acclaimed space in Second Life called Ten Cubed, an active blog, and the requisite Facebook page rendering a digital footprint nearly without rival in this space.

In this 21st century, art collection remains an offline game for the wealthy; a status quo Haydn Shaughnessy aims to upheave. While the gallery offers works by artists internationally known for their work in bending technology into new forms of expression, the various online manifestations of the effort aim to make that work break through the fish tank of the art collection world to reach the masses. Both online and offline, the Shaughnessy Gallery features contemporary names such as the well-known Second Life limit-pusher Scott Kildall, interactive artist Nathaniel Stern, and Oakland’s own HTML painter Chris Ashley…

Read more.

UPDATE: and now read part 2!

Printmaker Jillian Ross, the manager and resident printmaker at David Krut Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, has a new web site live this week. She’s a great friend and a brilliant printer, thinker, maker and collaborator, who I owe a great debt to when it comes to opening my eyes to the experimental world of print, and who I hope to work with many times again in the future. From the front of her site:

Jillian Ross is well-known throughout South Africa not only for producing high quality limited edition prints with emerging and established artists alike - using a large variety of traditional techniques - but also for her unique, collaborative approach to more experimental mark-making with contemporary artists who normally work in other media.

Jill’s drawers of printed work include a range of intaglio techniques from spitbite and sugarlift aquatints, drypoint, engraving and carborundum with international artist William Kentridge, to performative scanner art that has been transformed into pronto prints, experimental aquatints, carborundum, chine colle, and engravings with artist Nathaniel Stern.

Go there to see more prints and read more about Jill’s work - most art is available for purchase.

Fragments: GREAT ART for €40

Fragments provides a fabulous opportunity to own and collect great, new, contemporary art. All works in the series have been created by established artists specifically for this project by the Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery.

Each Fragments artist revisits his or her existing work, and takes a fragment or detail or still from a print, photo, painting or video that they feel is indicative of their art or practice. The result is a series of ongoing images - Fragments - that capture the essence of their work; every piece has been especially crafted to give a wide public access to astonishing and collectible art at an affordable price.

Each archival Fragments print is available for €40 (about $62) plus shipping and handling from http://fragments.galleryica.com. These signed and numbered works are usually 8 x 10 inches and in editions of 100.

Fragments is part of the This Is Not A Brand art label by the Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery for Innovative Contemporary Artists.

Participating artists for the launch: LoVid, Chris Ashley, E J Carr, Jon Coffelt, Susan Kaprov, Nathaniel Stern. A new print by one of these or other/new artists is added to the site every week! Give the gift of art to yourself, friends or family :)

Image: window, 8×10 inches, lambda print on metallic paper, edition 100

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a huge supporter of Creative Commons (CC), and more specifically iCommons. The former is an organization dedicated to open source coding and content for creative technologists, designers, artists, musicians, scientists (and more!), and promotes access and re-mixing through distribution licenses that are alternatives to copyright worldwide. The latter (iCommons) is an international community of the same types, all of whom may use or promote CC, copyfight, pirated content/material for activism and/or art, remixing and reusing legally and illegally, or anything around “the commons” of content and community; this is mostly manifested as a yearly summit of amazing individuals talking about and furthering the state of the (communal) arts (and the community itself).

In 2006 and 2007, I participated as an artist in resident (AIR) for iCommons (in Brazil and Croatia, respectively), and in the latter year I ran a larger AIR programme, where there were 6 interdisciplinary artists (and one arts critic!) from 4 continents. Although I’m sitting out this year (Sapporo!), I’m still a friend, as evidenced by the logo/link below and in my sidebar.

I highly recommend checking it out and getting involved - my life, art, networks and activist tendencies are better having been involved, and I’m sure to be participating again in the future.

Haydn Shaughnessy gives a little teaser / preview of his Fragments project today and features my work. For some reason, he put up a tiny image, so here’s a close-up:

Window, 8×10 inches, lambda print on metallic paper, edition 100

Saving this for the web unfortunately managed to dull the colors a bit - the blues and reds are wonderfully startling with the real thing. I’m very happy with the project generally; it’s the first time I’ve produced “artist affordable” archival art (€40 / $65 each!). Haydn explains the project, in which he solicits artists to re-work larger projects at the lower-priced editions of 100:

Basically Fragments is a project where I’ve asked artists to go back to a work and select a fragment that in some way typifies the larger work or has special resonance. This fragment is called Window and it is from a street scan called Cathedral by Nathaniel. We have some interesting artists lined up for Fragments more of which later when I’ll also get round to posting Cathedral.

Beat ya to it, buddy! Here’s the original work: Cathedral, lambda print on metallic paper, 20 x 36 inches, edition 5 (also with colors slightly dulled when saved for web, sadly):

I really like how the “fragments,” can be details, screen grabs, refigured pieces or collages - Haydn has some really great artists and art works lined up, and I can imagine them flying off the web/wall a set at a time once he launches next month. Keep a look out!

Both Window and Cathedral are part of my ongoing Compressionism series of prints.

Ireland: Figure, Face, Home
Group show curated by Haydn Shaughnessy
Nova Straaf Gallery on the SS Galaxy, Second Life
opens Saturday 8th March 1- 3 pm SLT
til 31 March

For those not in the know: Nova Straaf Gallery is a gallery on a virtual cruise ship in SL!

Haydn Shaughnessy / traveler Auer views Nathaniel Stern’s work at the Nova Straaf Gallery

Ireland: Figure, Face, Home is a virtual exhibition of works on display at Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery based in Kinsale, Co Cork. (www.galleryica.com). This group show is running at the Nova Straaf Gallery on the SS Galaxy, one of the most highly trafficked areas of Second Life, from Saturday 8th March to the end of the month.

Clare Greene uses the software programme paintbox to capture the fine outlines of her nudes against the background of atonal colour typical of paint programmes. In the process she has created a particularly Irish pop art, focused on the country’s recent quite public rejection of repressed sexuality.

Nathaniel Stern is an interactive installation artist who has created these performance scans of the Irish landscape especially for our gallery. Here you have new technology, the desktop scanner, giving us access to new images of the most painted landscape on earth. Stern’s performative scans and prints are attracting growing attention from serious collectors in Ireland.

Home is the theme of Dearbhail Connon’s oil on canvas work. We normally don’t work artists whose metier is traditional media. Our reasoning is simply that other galleries cater well for this work. In Dearbhail’s case we wanted to exhibit her spiritual search for home. IT fits well with the diversity of work around her.

EJ Carr is an internationally renowned photographer who has been living in Ireland since 2007. His Avalon series is a provocative attempt to capture an important part of history, the Arthurian Legends. In EJ’s work you see the faces of everyday people in and around Bantry, set against the backdrop of mythical Avalon, here in Ireland.

Claire Keating plays tricks with your perceptions For her Illusion series she worked with make-up artists to paint the faces of six models in the style of well known artists. We know from visitors to our gallery that people are often confused over whether they are really paintings or photographs..

Paul La Rocque is our second Irish pop art artist. Paul trawls the Internet for iconic images from around the world and combines them with images he captures from the streets of Cork. This series of icons combines Irish emblems with iconography from China and the USA and signals the arrival of Ireland on the world economic and cultural stage.
- Show quoted text -

Haydn and I gave very brief talks to the the Contemporary Irish Art Society last night, about my recent print work for Art on Paper Gallery (South Africa) and Haydn Shaughnessy Gallery (Ireland and in Second Life). It was really fun to be with an audience who knew nothing of the technologies I normally use (they were so curious and interested when I showed them one of my interactive installations, stuttering, for example), but who could completely appreciate the trajectory coming from that work, and leading into my performative printmaking process. The most buzz from them came out of the art historical referential pieces, such as nude descension and nude descension II, or Joburg Boogie Woogie and Joburg’s Ghost, as well as the locally made works. The Society itself wound up buying sirens’ dillisk (shown right, and a detail is in the header of this blog), a piece produced in West Cork in the middle of last year. They often purchase Irish works that are later donated to museums, galleries, hospitals and other official bodies, so I’m curious to see where it winds up.

Tangentially, today is my blog’s 5th birthday. It’s gone through many refigurings, so I appreciate any and all who have been “with” me for any length of time, as well as newcomers to my work and occasional rants. This means MTAA also had a recent blog birthday - Tim, here’s your yearly reminder.

update: Haydn on his talk last night