art and tech

Archives

28 April 2007 by nathaniel

body in quotes

body-in-quotes.jpg

There’s the “Body in Quotes” panel at the Borders, Boundaries & Liminal States conference in Second Life. Sponsored by Ars Virtua New Media Center, and the CADRE Laboratory for New Media, and hosted at the Amphitheater on Learning (NMC Virtual Worlds). From stage left to stage right is Xerxes Druart (Stuart Bunt of SymbioticA) , Wirxli Flimflam (Jeremy Turner), Natberg Sternberg (me) and The Unknown (Carlos Castellanos – moderator). I think I’m cool cuz I know that Pling Ping, the avatar up front and on the left from the camera lense, is Jo Greene of Turbulence. We like her.

WIrxli has a fantastic summary of his talk and some images of the panel etc over at his blog. I had no idea he had so many avatars, and it was fun to have a bodyguard protecting the guy sitting next to me in SL. He also says my audio kept crashing, which sucks. I had no idea. Oh well. I’m not gonna paste my notes, like he did, cuz they are mostly disorganized, but I will say that a draft of the short paper where most of my ideas come from will be online in the next few weeks. It mostly looks at affect and body-environment coupling in and around the space of the computer, network, crying babies and spouses, all between RL self and avatar self, and how those might disperse and interfere with one another. Next time I try to use ventrilio and SL at the same time, I will go into the office rather than trying to use my home connection….

Stuart’s work blew me away – he is a bio-engineer that works on a team facilitating art and artists (the likes of Stelarc). Some of his recent work includes pigs with wings, and attaching a homegrown ear to Stelarc’s forearm; oh and, the one my veggie wife likes, they “grew” a leather jacket so as not to harm a cow!

Thanks to all on the panel, and to Carlos…

Archives

27 April 2007 by nathaniel

art south africa now online

art-south-africa.gif

Not sure when I missed this, but it seems that South Africa’s premiere (and apparently accredited) contemporary art mag (um, only printed contemporary art mag, really, tho there are more and more “lifestyle” mags that do some art and design) now has most of its issues and articles online – including the ability to comment! – plus a blog-ish feed of announcements, a few articles and exhibition openings. The RSS seems a bit publish-happy, and I’ve only just added it to my reader (so am not sure if all the new articles from the actual mag go there as they’re finished, or if they are just announced all at once), but it’s a pretty great resource, and you can bet I’ll be starting to read and link online beginning with the next ish. It’s GREAT that there is another serious, mostly online publication for contemporary SA art (the other being artthrob), and it’s very smart of them do to this; my guess is it’ll increase international interest from advertisers, as well as readership, and more and more artists will be linking to their articles, helping sales, ads, the rest of it (not to mention the fact that their galleries represent many of the hot names in the mag’s pages, just in case you didn’t know). And although I don’t know the peops over there very well, I’d be willing to guess they had a bit of wanting to help prop up SA art in general as part of the plan. Rock on you guys.

Check it out: Art South Africa (rss feed on the right of the menu).

Archives

27 April 2007 by nathaniel

remains – Second Life panel discussion

remains.jpg
The ‘Remains’ panel discussion @ Borders, Boundaries & Liminal States, from letft to right: Rubaiyat Shatner (James Morgan, Ars Virtua), JOE Languish (Laura Jones, anthropologist and archaeologist), Chloe Mahfouz (Renée Ridgway, artist & curator), Kliger Dinkin (Brad Kligerman, artist & architect).

Yesterday marked my own first interaction with other avatars in SL, and, unfortunately for the organizers, it was kind of like how most skeptics might’ve imagined it. To quote James Morgan via Rhizome:

If you haven’t been in Second Life then you cannot understand the lengths to which something can go wrong. It was certainly odd for the world to be offline at the beginning of our conference yesterday [and they didn’t get the sound working – imagine giving a prepped 15-min presentation by typing just the important bits in real time!], but I have to say that Laura Jones, Brad Kligerman, and Renée Ridgway managed to maintain composure and have an interesting session on remains.

Yes, the second part of his statement is dead on – despite technical problems. It was admittedly more like a chat, where other things interrupt (BRB!), than like being at a physical conference, where that is the sole thing you are doing (and I think audio might have helped there), but that is the nature of SL, I imagine, and I think the generosity and interest of everyone I spoke to actually showed an enjoyment in navigating that space. There were continual slippages between SL and “RL” names and activities, my favorite part being when Brad / Kliger’s beautiful but dopey-looking avatar (which had just finished giving a pretty intense “talk” about his work) said he was “fried.”

SL means never looking bad or having morning breath, no matter what happened the night before.

Hopefully I’ll ‘see’ some of you at today’s sessions – I’m on the second one, “Body in Quotes” – program here and instructions on participating here.

Archives

26 April 2007 by nathaniel

Sean Slemon @ Pratt, Brooklyn

nonexclusiveinvite.jpg

My favorite South African displaced in New York, and an inspired/inspirational sculptor and artist, Sean Slemon, is having his Masters Solo Show at the Pratt Studios in Brooklyn, 30 April – 4 May. If you’re around, do yourself a favor and attend (and tell him I said hi – he’s very nice). More on Sean (scroll down a bit for some text I wrote about his last solo in Joburg).

Archives

25 April 2007 by nathaniel

iCommons Summit 07 — help us increase the number of scholarships

via Lessig Blog (they do artist residencies, too!):

iCommons Summit 07 – help us increase the number of scholarships

s.png
iCommons is an entity Creative Commons helped incubate. Its purpose is to enable a platform for commons-related projects from around the world to interact — including A2K, Wikipedia, Free Software, Free Culture Movement and Creative Commons.One core project of iCommons is an annual summit. The first year was Boston. Last year was Rio. This year is Dubrovnik.

Tomorrow, CC will be launching a special fund-raising drive to raise money to sponsor scholarships to the Summit. Click here to help.

← Older posts
Newer posts →