art and tech | implicit art

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05 September 2006 by nathaniel

NETWORKED_PERFORMANCE at The Premises Gallery

via atjoburg and Christo Doherty:

I’m wary of rushing to proclaim South African firsts, but the networked art event at Premises on Saturday 2 September certainly felt like an authentically new thing. Digital Artists from South Africa and different parts of Britain were collaborating in real-time to create a networked video art event.

Trinity hosted a live collaborative performance by Nathaniel Stern (on site in Johannesburg), Marc Garrett from Q Arts (in Derby, UK) and Ruth Catlow from HTTP, London. They engaged in thirty minutes of live audio-video performance by uploading, manipulating and collaging images, video clips and sound via the VisitorsStudio database.

According to VisitorsStudio, the idea behind their service is "to encourage audiences new to media arts to get actively involved in the creative process by providing an easy-to-use, experimental production space live online, which was also a playful social space." This definitely happened on Saturday. The small but enthusiastic audience watched the three headline artists interact and then sat down behind the provided laptops to experiment with the network themselves.

Fueled by the sponsored Red Bulls (look closely at the debris on the tables) even participants new to the process quickly got the hang of the VisitorsStudio interface, which is written in Flash 8. The system allows a form of participatory doodling which, at times when real interaction occurs, bursts into moments of visual delight. I hope this is just the first of such networked performancens and intercontinental collaborations through the WWW.

Archives

29 August 2006 by nathaniel

NETWORKED_PERFORMANCE at The Premises Gallery – The Johannesburg Civic Theatre

The Premises Gallery at The Johannesburg Civic Theatre invites you to join us for a Red Bull and some live online performance:

NETWORKED_PERFORMANCE
VisitorsStudio performance Joburg-Derby-London, live at The Premises and online at http://www.visitorsstudio.org

A live-online collaborative performance by Nathaniel Stern, Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow.
And open laptop mixing by audiences and invited local artists
at the Premises Gallery (Johannesburg), HTTP (London) and Q Arts (Derby).

EVENT: Saturday 2nd September, 16:30 – 19:00 (SA time)
Getting started and uploading at The Premises: 16h00 (SA time)
Live scheduled performance: 17h00- 17h30 (SA time) and 16h00 – 16h30 (UK time) by Nathaniel Stern, Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow
Open collaborative mix: 17h30 (SA time) and 16h30 (UK time) Everyone welcome to join!

About VisitorsStudio
an online place for real-time, multi-user mixing, collaborative creation, many to many dialogue and networked performance and play.
VisitorsStudio is a Furtherfield project @ http://www.visitorsstudio.org
VisitorsStudio is included in the Game/Play networked touring exhibition.
A collaboration between Q-Arts, Derby and HTTP, London.
Please see www.game-play.org.uk for further information.

How to PARTICIPATE
First, get the latest flash player on your computer. South Africans wishing to participate can bring their laptops (with ethernet cables) or content to The Premises a bit early, and upload content on our open network via their own machine or one of ours. Or, upload anywhere, anytime – you can even mix with us from Cape Town. If you want to be part of the VS performance by nathaniel, be sure to name your files beginning with SA_, and then an idea of what it is he would be including in the mix. If you want to play on your own, supply names for your files that you will remember. File types supported are jpg, png, mp3, flv and swf files, as long as they are under 200k.
More info, and to play: http://www.visitorsstudio.org

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21 August 2006 by nathaniel

netVerse

Joburg’s own Andre SC has developed his first piece of net.art, and it’s definitely a noteworthy feat. Kind of a cross between fridge magnet poetry, geeky guy gluttony, snot flinging, and surrealist games, netVerse’s raining text allows for beautiful poetic formations, zoom-ins and zoom-outs, exports of images and a really big pixel size. Check it.

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18 August 2006 by nathaniel

the CC Salon

cc Salon, Johannesburg

Remix. Sample. Mash up. Reconstruct. Reformulate. Remake. Reproduce. Reshuffle. Transform. Recreate. Modify. Reassemble. Revamp. Rejuvenate.

These are the words that make corporate copyright protectors shudder and free culture creators grin with glee.

The ‘remix’ has become one of the most powerful tools of the digital age. But the legal barriers to taking an established image or concept and mixing it up for a fresh take have become a hurdle for creativity – leaving those with the most power and wealth the only ones who are able to take the legal risk.

Enter Creative Commons: a set of legal licences developed by those who are willing to share their works and/or have them remixed by creative communities around the world. The result: a pool of some 140 million images, music tracks, samples, and movies that creators can copy and use with legal certainty.

‘Remix Nation’ is the title of the first ccSalon in Jozi. It’s about celebrating cultural pioneers in South Africa who are pushing the boundaries of the digital world and recognising how important legal remixing is to building a vibrant creative industry in South Africa. ccSalons are being held around the world: from San Francisco to Beijing, from Korea to Berlin – and now in Jozi. The salon is a chance for digital artists, free culturists, musicians and creators to get together to chat about what’s new on the digital commons front, where to find material that you can legally remix and share, and to learn about how to incorporate Creative Commons copyright licences into your work.

Presentations at the event include multi-media artist Nathaniel Stern, who will be showing and discussing his remix work from his attendance at the iCommons Summit in Brazil; the dynamic duo, MtKidu, who will be presenting their live beat construct and visual manipulation show; and DJ, producer and sound designer, Richard tha IIIrd, who will be discussing, demonstrating and playing his own brand of South African mashups. Join us for a glass of wine at 6.30pm on Thursday 31 August at Gordart Gallery, 78 3rd Street, Melville and experience some of the sights and sounds of Jozi’s pioneering musicians, digital artists and free culture activists who are making the commons work for them.

For more information about the event please see: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Johannesburg_Salon.

Bring your USB Flash Disk along as content will be made available by the presenters to be downloaded for your remixing enjoyment!

About Creative Commons South Africa (ccSA)
http://za.creativecommons.org

The vision of Creative Commons South Africa is of a thriving African internet community using Creative Commons licences to educate our people, grow our markets, share our knowledge and celebrate Africa’s culture and heritage with people around the world.

Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach.

About iCommons
www.icommons.org
Incubated by Creative Commons, iCommons is an organisation with a broad vision to develop a united global commons front by collaborating with open content, access to knowledge, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world. iCommons will incubate projects that cross borders and unite commons communities, acting as a platform for international collaboration towards the growth and enlivening of a global digital commons.

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13 August 2006 by nathaniel

a transition (the rumors are true) – updated below

Sorry I have not been blogging much lately. Been a little turned off by complaints, busy with a newborn, and planning for a big move. Which brings me to this:

So, the rumors are true. I’ve been offered a fellowship to study in Dublin, and will be doing a PhD-by-research/production at Trinity College beginning October. My dissertation and artworks will carry on in the vein they always have, with a focus on the implicit body. Here’s the FAQ, so the rumor-mill doesn’t get too out of hand.

yes, my family is of course coming with me
yes, we are coming back – we have not sold our flat, and Nicole is applying for leave from Wits
yes, this is the same department and program that Cape Town artist Ralph Borland is studying in (tho our funding comes from different sources). We are great friends (studied together in New York), and have both been researching departments suitable for our work for a while now, all the while sharing our findings. We’re hoping to continue our collaborative teaching, as well as perhaps start some collaborative art projects, while overseas.
yes, this blog WILL change. Altho I’d love to have more guest bloggers writing about the scene here in Jozi, I can’t help it if no one bites, and won’t be able to do much from Dublin. I’ll do my best to promote SA art there, and will cover any I see in Europe, as well as happily post any SA writings sent my way. I do not know what kind of life I’ll have in Dublin yet, so certainly don’t know what kind of blog I’ll have. Still, my research and art will be my top priorities, so expect less on this site until we return
yes, I’ll still be connected to SA. I already have a show booked for January in Joburg (and am coming back for it), and have another trip planned to be here in September. I hope to travel said exhibition to Cape Town in ’08 if possible, and/or will book another exhibition in Joburg, of newer work. I’m also planning to participate in group shows – Johannesburg is one of the only two places I have ever called home (the other being New York).
yes, atjoburg and SAarts will carry on. The former, along with The Upgrade! Johannesburg, will be run by co-founder Christo Doherty (tho I will consult from afar). The latter will carry on as it has, on a submission basis but edited and run by myself, Simon Gush and Bronwyn Lace.
Surprisingly, a few people have asked me about my Wits teaching, and thought I was "leaving my post." Altho I still occasionally do workshops there, and I helped design the Interactive Arts MA and was its core part-time lecturer for 3 years, I have never been there full-time (or half-time, or with any title), and left the core lecturer part-time job in 2005. As an aside – and just to be clear – Christo (Head of Digital Arts) and I are on more than excellent terms as colleagues and friends (his recommendation helped greatly with my application to Trinity, and we’re planning to do some traveling together in Europe when he’s on leave in the second half of next year), and I hope to be involved with the department again on my return.
update. We expect to be in situ in Ireland for about two years. My funding is for three, but my supervisor has agreed to let me finish up the dissertation at a distance, allowing Nicole to get back to work, and me more time and space to write in SA while getting back into its rhythm…

Let me know if you have any questions or whatever, but please also wish us luck! We leave on 25 October.

Archives

13 August 2006 by nathaniel

the shooting gallery

via site:

a digital ceremony for a war photographer

Literary cult figure and pioneering digital filmmaker, Aryan Kaganof joins Catherine Henegan, Amsterdam based multi-disciplinary artist, for a gripping performance about a war photographer and an insatiable media machine. Also included in the team is James Webb, internationally renowned electronic sound artist who has created an audio landscape for the performance….