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05 February 2006 by nathaniel

artthrob artbio feature

Nathaniel Stern

Ralph Borland writes:

Nathaniel Stern is an artist, a teacher, a technologist, a blogger, a social catalyst and constant networker in the art community. As an artist, his works spans performance, poetry, interactive installation and video, net.art and print. … Nathaniel’s artwork often touches on the mutability of personal identity, as in his assumption of multiple personas through his video performance work. His ideas around the body, a centre in much of his art and his focus in recent academic work around The Implicit Body, speak of the body and person ‘enfolding’ the world around them into themselves, and so constantly transforming….. Read more

It’s a very generous and comprehensive overview of my current work, and most of my arts career. "ArtThrob is South Africa’s leading contemporary visual arts publication, reporting on the national arts scene and the involvement of South African artists in the international art world." See the full bio.

Posted in art, art and tech, me, pop culture, re-blog tidbits, reviews, south african art, technology, theory, uncategorical ·

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04 February 2006 by nathaniel

moCo (mobile Compressionism)


moCo (mobile Compressionism)

This just makes me smile: ‘action Jackson’ (Compressionist scanner / appendage) strapped onto my bling bling of a bike, ready to hit Johannesburg, South Africa (click for larger image).

Compressionism is a digital performance and analog archive. In the current studies, I compress bodies, spaces and objects by traversing their surfaces with an image scanner, along varying 3-dimensional paths – literally, I glide, run, hover and swoop across windows, trees, or lilies while the scanner head is in motion. The resulting digital images, which are transfigured down to the size of a small piece of paper, are then re-stretched to their original size, sometimes cropped or colorized. The final prints ask us to ‘look again’ at the relations between subjects, objects, actions and perceptions.

more at Compressionism.net

Posted in art, art and tech, Compressionism, flickr, me, pop culture, south african art, stimulus, technology, uncategorical ·

Archives

02 February 2006 by nathaniel

PWO (post whites only)


still: dineo bopape

Kagablog, ex-guest blogger Aryan’s own space, writes about a showing of South African art he curated for the Rotterdam Film Festival (obviously, ironically titled – that’s info for my overseas readers who don’t know Aryan, who is, ironically, also ironically titled…):

post whites only digs deeper and provides an encounter with the more disturbing realities of the south african condition. identity is always a concern with artists working in a neo-colonialist context, and it is no surprise that some of the most rigorous and challenging work coming out of south africa today is directly concerned with interrogating issues of identity and self manufacture.

It’s a lucid and long post, detailing all featured artists and their works. He’s also been added to the ‘roll and the ‘reader. We miss him over here, but are also glad to see some consistent text about his other work online! See his daily – I would not call them rants. They are too articulate to be rants.  uuuuuuum – posts. My ‘sentimental deconstruction,’ A Song for The, is a video made sometime mid-last-year, specifically for the festival and at Kaganof’s request. It’s a ‘slammy’ exploration of growth and listening, inspired by conversations with my father, Marshall Blonsky and Edmundo Desnoes. There’s a hot line-up on Kag’s reel, and I hope he considers re-showing it in Joburg etc sometime soon!

Posted in art, art and tech, kaganof, me, pop culture, re-blog tidbits, reviews, south african art, stimulus, technology, theory ·

Archives

02 February 2006 by nathaniel

SAartsEmerging feature

SAsrtsEmerging is featured on liquidfridge this month. Given that they asked me for an image, my guess is that it’ll be on Artthrob this month, too…. I like the unambiguous interplay of the pretense and pretence on the post – bloody Americans; why can’t they speak English?

 

Posted in art, art and tech, bronwyn lace, me, pop culture, re-blog tidbits, simon gush, south african art, stimulus, theory ·

Archives

01 February 2006 by AJ

The next generation of piracy – content producers fear ¨the bio-hole¨

¨There is a new form of music piracy running rampant around the world, and your children could be involved placing you at risk of legal persecution¨ – the recording industry association of America (RIAA) warned parents to keep watch of their children´s activities in order to curb this new form of theft, stating ¨we will not hesitate to use the full power of the law to punish those who steal our intelectual property and parents will be held accountable for the actions of their children.¨
The RIAA´s South-African counterpart ASAMI echoed these thoughts.

Explaining the details of the crime in a press release, the RIAA stated that this new form of piracy goes beyond digital media exploiting an innate bug in the way music is heard to make copies into the human brain itself.
¨Basically, when you remember something, your brain has made a copy of it. Copyright prohibits copying anything without our consent and ergo, this is a crime.¨
The RIAA fears that there have been untold lost CD sales already due to people stealing music in this manner (coloqially known as ¨remembering¨). What is worse says the release, is that often people will remember a song they hear on the radio or television or at a friends house, and then decide they don´t like it – costing the artists a sale they would have had, had the person not remembered how bad the song was.
On top of this memory inately allows music to be utilized in other illegal ways including derivative works (known in the vernacular as ¨humming¨ a song).
While it is true that memory doesn´t always provide perfect quality copies, and people will often only remember parts of a song some people do in fact remember songs in their entirety, especially if they copy it to their brains multiple times as memory has the ability to fill in missing bits each time a song is received, the RIAA is frank about it all: Everytime somebody remembers a song, he is guilty of thef, and besides what about people with photographic memories ?

Appart from legal action against perpetrators, the RIAA is simultaneously pursuing legislative and techincal measures to curb the activity. A bill currently pending before the US congress will demand and extension of the CSSCA and DMCA protections to the human brain.
¨Basically if the bill passes, it will be legally required for all newly-made human babies to have genetic protection software installed which will prevent music from being remembered¨ said sponsoring congressman Geemee Cash.
On the technical front Sony-BMG is taking the lead with a new generation of CD copyprotection. A sony programmer who wishes to remain anonymous describes the system:
¨Essentially we are coating all new cd´s with a thin-layer of crystalized LSD, when heated by the CD-laser the LSD reverts to liquid and then to gass form, the listener then breaths it in, effectively destroying their abillity to remember the song they heard.¨

These moves however have not been without controvercy, a spokesman for the EFF responded by declaring that remembering music is an explicity allowed copyright exception under section 17 of the US copyright law, the fair-use statute and similiar laws internationally. The EFF went further to declare the RIAA´s plans for genetically preventing music-memory as a ¨gross invasion of privacy¨ stating that ¨how people choose to make new human beings is one of the most sacredly private matters in the law¨.
When asked about SONY/BMG´s proposed new LSD-layer copyprotection the EFF spokesman snorted and said ¨That´s just crazy, it´s even worse than that whole rootkit debacle – and besides it wouldn´t work ! The last time Japanese engineers mixed drugs and music we ended up with Kareoke !¨

***********
PS. This post is a parody… (I hope).

Posted in AJ Venter, art and tech, music, news and politics ·

Archives

01 February 2006 by nathaniel

Scenes of Provincial Life


still from Kingfisher 0.9MB 10 sec loop

Michael Szpakowski, the brilliant artist, writer and personality behind alot of the JoyWar backing a couple of years ago (and a big supporter of Steve Kurtz) – as well as one of the core producers of DVblog – has started Scenes of Provincial Life, a new vlog of his own provocative QuickTime shorts:

A couple of years ago, I started making tiny QuickTime movies, as a kind of moving image dream diary. They quickly became a major focus of my work & I have made two or three at least every month since…

One of the things that excite me about the digital is that it makes possible a new sort of collaboration with both other artists and with non-professionals. Digitization makes the simple juxtaposition of different kinds of work straightforward, or enables a kind of framing process that, done sympathetically, enriches the work of both parties.

(Read more from the artist.) The videos, so far, range from Kentridge-like, sorrowful beauty, to quirky and experimental fluxus framing. Szpakowski’s mastery of re-mixing pop and historical culture/imagery feels like techno-poietic counsel for an ever-opening future-present, a sad co-celebration of the banal, and the possible. I want to collect them all…. Visit Scenes of Provincial Life.

Posted in art, art and tech, poetry, pop culture, re-blog tidbits, stimulus, technology, uncategorical ·
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nathaniel’s books

Interactive Art and Embodiment book cover
Interactive Art and Embodiment: the implicit body as performance

from Amazon.com

Buy Interactive Art for $30 directly from the publisher

Ecological Aesthetics book cover
Ecological Aesthetics: artful tactics for humans, nature, and politics

from Amazon.com

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