implicit art

Howdy all. If you remember, early last year I developed a new WordPress theme as part of the launch of SAartsEmerging.org - promoting and critiquing emerging South African artists. That site is now maintained by Bronwyn Lace and Rat Western, and you should keep an eye out for upcoming changes.

Given the popularity of this theme, I’ve decided to release a new, widget-compatible version, and you can expect all future releases to be maintained from this site. I believe the most beneficial aspect of this 2-column design is its easy customization. The zip file includes:

• new design, with different sidebars for posts, pages and single posts - these are now customizable using WordPress’ built-in widgets
• header and footer images using a detail of Nathaniel Stern’s Compressionist work
• layered Photoshop file to put in your own image; includes gradient, curved edges and “pre-cut” slices (and instructions)

Download the zip file. (open source CC/GPL)

As you can see, this blog now also uses the new artsemerging theme (with a “widgetized” sidebar - note that all changes happened in the WP interface - I needed no code in any of the php files to customize this), and this coincides with the announcement of some upcoming changes around here — as I concentrate on my PhD research and writing over the next year, blogging will again pick up pace, mostly concentrating on thoughts and works related to my dissertation topic. You’ll see texts (rants?) that intersect between performance studies, art, embodiment and technology, and eventually a re-design of this whole site to match my thesis (this, over the next 4-5 months). In the meanwhile, note that “nathaniel and the non-aggressive” is no more, and this blog is henceforth to be known as “implicit art.” Enjoy the theme, and the blog, and please let me know if you encounter any problems, in the comments section.

More soon!

(PS Technorati Wordpress and Theme)

Paddy’s favorite piece of mine is now on YouTube. See the work in action, stuttering (also below), or watch a video with voiceover of me telling what it’s all about….

So, we’ve got two extra beds/couches in a lovely house in Kassel from 20 - 25 July (had cancellations). Self catering, and we’ll cook together… €195 per person for all 5 nights, including taxes and exchange, and we will have a car to get to/from the festival (if we squeeze for the 5 minute ride, otherwise there is also public transport). See the room here. Any takers? Email me.

litho stone in progress, piece will be 1080 x 380 mm

Am on residence at the Frans Masereel Centre in Belgium at the moment, working on a new series that is being printed by printmaker and artist Zhane Warren, and published by Art on Paper Gallery (Johannesburg). It’s an extension of my Compressionist works, and my last solo show at AOP, Call and Response.

Compressionism is a “digital performance and analog archive.” I traverse bodies, spaces and objects with my scanner face, while its head is in motion. After being Compressed into digital images the size of a small sheet of paper, the files are then stretched, cropped and colored by hand, then printed as editioned, archival works. Later pieces in the series further transform details of these prints into hand-made art objects: etchings, engravings, aquatints, planographs, carborundum, monotype and more.

Compressionism is an exploration of media and perception, a transfiguration in time and seeing.

I’ve done some new performative scans since my show with Haydn Shaughnessy (these will be printed on metallic paper through photographic processes), and am amidst working in stone litho, silk screen, wood cut and dry point. We’re playing up the bands of light and color that Brenton Maart remarked on in Art South Africa, a relic of the digital scanning performances, by creating manufactured spaces on our stones and screens. Will post links to images of the finished works in a little over a week!

LINK: the flickr set in progress :)

Yo.

Brussels was fun. I saw good art and Zhane Warren and Simon Gush, among others (my new friends Ivan Durt and Jean Hoffman, for example). Currently working my ass off in Kasterlee, at the Frans Masereel Centre, a printmaking residency: Compressionist images as silk screen, litho, wood cut, engraving and dry point…. Pix soon (my camera broke).

Been Kasterlee? The weather is even worse than Dublin, apparently….

Of money, meaning and artists in residence is a lovely response to our artist talk and work by Tom Chance, while Paddy’s insightful review is slightly more critical (especially of my own work). It inspired a great conversation, actually, and I’m excited about where I might go with the next Wireframe, as I think through what happened, and what didn’t (with or without Paddy’s approval :).

And more from Joy. And, oh well, go here. That’s what technorati is for - I’m off to a planning meeting for next year’s Summit!

updated links (and again):

http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2007/06/14/the-art-happens-here/#comment-39071
http://www.parthsuthar.com/derive/2007/06/15/the-art-happens-here/
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/06/by_prokofy_neva.html#more
Why don’t artists use open source software?
Second Summit
http://www.ugotrade.com/2007/06/18/second-life-a-global-creative-context-of-the-future/
http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/004417.html
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2007/06/icommons_keynot.html

Go/diva of the Icommons is an extension of Patrick Lichty’s (re)constructing Cicciolina project in which he, recontextualized as real-life avatar Cicciolina, questions the translations of mythology, culture, normative sociology, gender and IP issues. Here, Lichty stood in the iCommons art gallery for 30 minutes, then rode through the iCommons performance area before exiting. While the double play of Cicciolina asks questions of identity and image in cultural terms, Cicciolina as Go/diva is far more symbolic, asking what cultures we are creating in online communities. Attached is a properly sized texture for a primitive. Thanks for the opportunity, and it’s been an honor.

Opening went really well last night in Dubrovnik (still open for 2 days if you missed it)! There are a constant stream of pictures on flickr from the iCommons Air stream, as well as write-ups (more coming) on the iCommons site (we love you Paddy). Great turn out and response, and several net stars made the artists giddy (Jimmy Wales, for example, writing “edit this art” in chalk on Joy’s mural).

While this was going on, Sitearm Madonna and Cory (Linden) were finishing up the SL build for that iteration of the exhibition (mostly live now), and M.River, the other half of our AiR team MTAA, is in NYC re-mixing the photo stream, live (check out his copyright story on that here).

More from Croatia soon, but we performed the first “Sentimental Construction” here before guests started arriving, and I’m not sure it could have gone any better. Watch the video!

Sentimental Construction #1, part of The Wireframe Series
site-specific, publicly performed “spaces,” made of rope (2007), support by iCommons

These are ephemeral arrangements that, nonetheless, carve out space and frame their various contexts; they are “sentimental” in the tensions they create between sadness and playfulness, nostalgia and possibility, construction and emergence, the pre-formed and the per-formed.

More flickr photos here. Thanks to Joy Garnett for her video space, as well as all the performers / documentarians / collaborators: JC Bukenya, Tomislav Domis, Joy Garnett, Ana Husman, Kathryn Smith, Tim Whidden (MTAA) and Jaka Zeleznikar.