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07 November 2005 by nathaniel

Talk at Brown University

Nicole and I are giving a li’l talk at Brown University today. 7pm, Grant Auditorium, corner in the music department – you can see it on a map here.

The Implicit Body

Nicole Ridgway and Nathaniel Stern ( http://nathanielstern.com ) will discuss their concept of the implicit body: the body as an emergent locus of exchange. Showing contemporary examples of interactive and immersive work, The Implicit Body explores questions of affect and perception, and embodiment as performance. This will be followed by a closer look at Stern’s own video, performance and interactive pieces.

nicole ridgway is an interdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual who currently teaches at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand. She teaches in the fields of cultural, visual and gender studies across the divisions of film, drama, art, and interactive media. In 2000 she was awarded a Markle Foundation Fellowship to explore the teaching of Digital Arts in South Africa, and in 2001 spent a year as a Visiting Professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Her two most recent publications address the question of interactivity and new media art (“In Excess of the Already Constituted: Interaction and Performance”) and the anthropological concept of culture appropriated as a form of prophylaxis in popular discourses around HIV/AIDS (“Culture, Contact and Contamination; Or, If I Touch You Will I get what you’ve Got?”).

nathaniel stern is an internationally exhibited installation and video artist, net.artist and performance poet. His interactive installations have won awards in New York, Australia and South Africa, and his net.art has been featured in festivals all over Europe, Asia and the US. nathaniel’s collaborative physical theatre and multimedia performance work with the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative has won three FNB Vita Awards and has seen three main stage features at the Grahamstown Festival. His poetry repertoire includes CBGBs and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the US National Poetry Slam and the South African HIV/AIDS Arts, Media & Film Festival.

If on Rhode Island, please drop in! Many thanks to Todd Winkler and noah wardrip-fruin for organizing!

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06 November 2005 by nathaniel

podcast odys!

odys for your ipod is now available as individual zipped files, a whole package, and even a podcast! Fun to play, and should work in all new iTunes: window and mac. Am still trying to get links direct to iTunes store, but being an indy artist one-off, no promises. For those who don’t know it, the artwork goes like this:

odys for your iPod (2005) is an extension of the odys series (2001-2004). the odys series consists of six short digital video poems / monologues for small screen viewing in an intimate gallery space. By stuttering between odys’ actions and words, listeners construct his person. As he attempts to re-member, bringing the past back to his body and calling it his own, listeners attempt to piece together a story for themselves. Viewers are encouraged to re-visit and jump over juxtaposed media, and create a shifting collage of, and in response to, his person.

odys for your iPod encourages viewers to download all six of the newly optimized video art pieces from odys.org, and into iTunes and their iPods. It allows for an even more intimate and physical relationship with his character, as well as a continually growing connection with each vignette.

odys’ name comes from The Odyssey; he is the traveler, the seeker of home (Ithaca). Contrary to both Odysseus and hektor ( see http://hektor.net ), odys is an unconvincing liar and horrible storyteller. His failed attempts to speak the traumatic past are often mistaken for nonsense. Ironically, odys’ poor endeavors at communication can now be largely consumed by a take-away transmission: online at odys.org.

odys’ language of utterances is about the "spaces between." The space between words, between articulation and inarticulation, between Troy and Ithaca, between judgment and responsibility, and between speaker and listener.

Enjoy!

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04 November 2005 by nathaniel

the goldberg strikes again

Had a fanfab dinner with Nicole’s dear old friend, Nancy, and her boyfriend, Glenn, last night. We only met him for the first time, but he gets major approval ratings. Afterwards, headed to Josh Goldberg’s of “don’t call me a VJ, I’m a live visualist” — first digital artist in residence in South Africa; he would hate how pretentious I am making him sound, which he is not; but he does not read my blog, so there — fame. Of course we geeked out over various patches, technologies and other oddities, and now that I don’t have a cap and have decent speed with his internet (like, 1MBPS or something), I’m finally getting a taste of Bittorrent. Wow. So cool. Not as fast as I expected, nor exactly ‘on demand,’ given how it works, but I love the idea of the technology in general, and not too bad. For those who don’t know, it’s kind of like a combo between peer-to-peer and http, and when you file share, you are rewarded for how much you can and do share with others, with your own increasing speed of the download. Melikes catching up on TV shows!!!!

Still up with a bit of the ole jet-lag, but getting better — nearly made it to 6:30 today. Gonna go to brunch later with Joshy and Rachel (his awesome wife), and maybe finally hit some galleries and/or museums.

w00+

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28 October 2005 by nathaniel

durban downloaded

Just looking over the vast amounts of photos over the last few days, but have chosen to reminisce in text (remember: we’re in Africa; I like to keep file sizes down!)….

Wednesday morning began with a whole lot of gushing over Colleen Alborough’s amazing work. The production of Night Journey was a journey itself – Colleen has been working on the piece for about 3 years. But it is only with that time that the piece has come to be so amazingly well rendered, so obviously considered. The interactive elements are far superior to her last attempt (now moving to alarm motion sensors instead of motion tracking cameras), but rather than turning the piece into something playful, they push the piece towards an unrepeatable eeriness. Her felt (the material, not the action) walls and animated videos are a scary yet comfortable claustrophobia, and the lights and bodies in the space paradoxically make me feel safe, and make my skin crawl.

The next part of the morning was slightly different. We went to catch a rehearsal of Bombay Crush. You heard me right: Jay Pather, avant-garde choreographer extraordinaire, is producing a full-on Bollywood Musical. OMG it was super duper fun to watch its beginnings. Opens 1 Dec, and if time and money allow, I’m hoping to take my second-ever trip to Durban in order to see it.

Then we hit the Durban Art Gallery to see some of their permanent collection, some newly acquired works from the recent red-eye exhibition, and the positive: aids in 2005 show. The most interesting works for me were by Desmond Zeederberg, Clive van den Berg, Churchill Madikida and Wayne Barker.

Storm then took me for a bit of a tour – we hit ushaka for a walk on the pier, round the new and old architecture, through a few parks, and finally to the aquarium for a look at the fishies. There seems to be a new fascination with clown fish since the dawning of Finding Nemo, and I got to reference my / Josh Goldberg’s ‘clown joke’ far too frequently for the common man.

Day eased into night as I blogged a bit, did some personal admin online at the gallery, and prepped a small feast for our final night in Durbs. I’ll be back….

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