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)

Acting on orders is a new project by the likes of South African artists Barend de Wet, Douglas Gimberg and Christian Nerf. Please note that this opportunity is only open to American citizens. Feel free to email your order today to MuseumOfContemporaryArt@gmail.com

Me? I asked them to share a really good cheeseburger. I’m admittedly unsure what all the images on their site are, but they are fascinatingly odd juxtapositions of the everyday along with notions of terror. I guess others’ orders were far more interesting than mine…. If you’re a citizen, please go ahead and outdo me.

Act 018, c. 2008, De Wet | Gimberg | Nerf

Acting on orders is part of the Emergence: Creative pioneers in uncharted territory show at ‘Commanders House’ (Building 14) on Governors Island, NYC. Other friends of implicit art on the exhibition include Avant Car Guard and Chris Jordan, and I’m sure the longer list of artists contains several other people I’d probably like to be friends with.

More info here. Check it out if in town.

update: apparently, “Act 020 has been produced in response to [my] command.” Ahem:

Act 020, c. 2008, De Wet | Gimberg | Nerf

It does look a bit like it could be a wrapped up cheeseburger, no?… So I guess it’s the artists and not the commanders who are more interesting than me.

Last night’s DATA, featuring Karl Klomp, Wolf Lieser and Jane Tynan, and part of the Darklight Festival (organized by Caroline Campbell and hosted by yours truly) was extremely rad. Ben’s photos will be up soon, and in the interim, I highly recommend doing a little googling on these three - especially interesting to me were Wolf and his gallery, curatorial projects, online digital art museum and, most of all, his lifetime digital art achievement award. Two amazing winners thus far….  Karl is a hot video circuit bender offering workshops over the weekend, and Jane spoke about some fascinating surveillance art goings-on in London. Great group, nice crowd, good questions.

Uber bonus was to have my good friend and talented South African artist Franci Cronje with me for the whole evening (and most of the week). We got to meet and chat with all three of the above, and the bonus highlight was to spend an after-evening pint of Guinness with NYU Computer Science rock star and Techy Academy Award winner, Ken Perlin. (My supervisor and department would kill me if I did not mention here that our own Anil C. Kokaram has also won one such award…)

Ken blogged about our conversation (more like a debate), and we’ve been emailing a bit about it, too. My RSS reader and blog links list has been updated to include his dailies - recommended!

I’m hoping to chat with Ken more in the near future. Nice to meet ya, and looking forward to more at Darklight over the weekend…

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.

In the comments, Laine asks, “I was wondering how the trip in Belfast was?”

Thanks for that, Laine! My wife actually planned this whole trip without my knowledge, as my birthday gift (and for our anniversary), so my not worrying and enjoying it all was part of the fun. It was a completely tourist-based holiday, and it turns out we didn’t just do Belfast - we drove around much of the northern part of the island. It was just lovely.

We started by driving up the coast through Newry and Newcastle, with stops at lovely Norman castles and sea views along the way. I had oysters: yummy. After arriving in Belfast, we took a drive through the city, then hit up this fantastic puppet show as part of the children’s festival for Sid.

The next day was our “black taxi” tour of Belfast. Our guide, Bram, lived through the struggles of the late sixties and early 70s (his mother was actually shot - but survived - at the time). I think our chats and walks with him were the highlight of the trip. This really was the first time that the history of Ireland felt alive to me. And, having lived in… well, having lived, I could also appreciate all the contradictions and efforts he had and made with regards to that history, current events, discrimination and activist rights. I love that Irish activists looked to Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass for their inspiration… And, of course, there were the murals, the odd and wonderful and mythical (but mostly mythic) murals. (And check out the more recent mural below.)

We went to more of the children’s festival later in the day; it’s weird how the Irish love gay-ish acting sportsmen with 70s styles that make fools of themselves as their performing clowns, don’t you think?

After driving through and having lunch at the magnificent Giant’s Causeway (mussels!), we wound up in Derry, the walled city. The hotel sucked, but again, the walking (and chatty) tour of the wall, which provided a fascinating history and context for things like Bloody Sunday, etc., was a highlight. This tour has apparently won “best tour in Ireland” for several years now, and I can see why. It moved a bit fast, but there was a lot to get through.

Did I mention Sid had ice cream every day?

Lastly, we drove through Armagh, and did the Lilliput museum (Gulliver’s travels). Sid didn’t get that Gulliver peed on the city, and she was a bit scared by it all, but mostly liked the little people (babies!), and we got to wear crowns, which was cool….

See a whole photoset from our holiday on flickr

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.

Had a fairly productive week working on my dissertation, and am now off to Belfast for a self-proclaimed long weekend - to celebrate Sid’s 2nd birthday, Nicole and my 6-year wedding anniversary, and my own birthday (all of these in the span of 2 weeks)! We’ve never been up to Northern Ireland, and I have no idea what my better 2/3rds has planned, but it should be just grand. Will try to post some photos of that, and my folks’ recent visit to Dublin for Sid’s b-day (on her blog), when we’re back.

In the meanwhile… a proposal I’ve written with California-based artist and friend Scott Kildall (if you don’t know his work, you should definitely check it out; he’s an innovative and generous voice in the digi-arts community, and much of his work is not only smart but also beautiful) has been voted into the final round for a rhizome commission: Wikipedia Art. If you’re a member of rhizome, please take the time to rank the top 25 - and by all means, if you like ours (I’m biased, but I think you will), we’d really appreciate your rating it tops! Vote here (you need to log in first).

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