poetry | implicit art

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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

Archives

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.

Archives

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.

Archives

25 July 2006 by nathaniel

the Upgrade! Johannesburg and the Wits Digital Soiree present: Catherine Henegan

shooting gallery

the Upgrade! Johannesburg and the Wits Digital Soiree present: Catherine Henegan
Dada goes digital – Media Art in a Theatrical Space

Amsterdam-based multi-disciplinary artist, Catherine Henegan, is the director of The Shooting Gallery, the controversial performance/media art work currently showing at The Market Theatre. Aided by a computer and a projection screen, Catherine is also a performer in the work, editing live content from the Internet into the performance by Aryan Kaganof and against the sound design by James Webb. In this way she tracks in real time the way media constructs and reconstructs news and fiction. She will talk about her approach to the design and direction of this challenging multimedia production.

Images available at:
http://www.the-shootinggallery.com
http://kaganof.com/kagablog/category/the-shooting-gallery/

Archives

14 July 2006 by nathaniel

V/A (various art)

Been doing filler (mostly my own stuff) for the past while on the blog, whilst on residence in Brazil, and not getting out much since going gaga over my daughter. Hit the gallery strip two days ago, tho, and as usual was pleased by the works at Warren Siebrits – with the exception of the young, up-and-coming Colbert Mashile, the works were a bit steep in price, but that’s what you pay for in the Siebrits space, I gather; he does the work of finding great work. Colbert is also, obviously, a guy to watch. Not that impressed with Cecil Skotnes @ Goodman, but it is what it is – emotive paintings and prints, from an old master… Just not my vibe. The Krut group show of works is really worth seeing, and the pieces are really affordable for those who want to start collecting going-places (or already there) artists (I actually bought a Slemon piece for myself). Note that this is not a self-plug – my prints on show are not for sale….

Also currently on in Gauteng:
Dorothee Kreutzfeldt @ Outlet, and (oh shit, nathaniel just realized he deleted the shows he had intended on blogging from his inbox), and some other stuff at some other galleries, I am sure. Maybe look at m&g or art.co.za or Artthrob listings or something. I’m tired.

Oh yeh, and my opening at Parking Gallery went live last night (up for three days by appointment). Here’s a great photo by Christo Doherty (followed by a few others on my crap phone). Doherty says, "the image of woody allen came out rather like a francis bacon portrait – i quite liked that. he was also an artist challenged by the problems of communication and the corporal body…."

^{vincent @ parking gallery, a photo by Christo Doherty}

^{simon gush (parking gallery curator) and clive kellner (johannesburg art museum curator). the latter says the former is a great gallerist, and that i could quote him on that. after he said i should not blog about him spilling coca-cola everywhere, that is….}

^{rat western and her bright nose in my terrible photos say, "it’s nice to see your crap"}

PS – my daughter has a new site, if interested
PPS – about to post my first guest blog at Art Heat

Archives

12 July 2006 by nathaniel

the storytellers @ the johannesburg art museum

the storytellers:
works from the non-aggressive narrative

So, more than a year and a half after the fact (and thanks to Sean Slemon, who insisted on lo-res versions of all my prints before deciding on a trade for his sculpture), I finally uploaded a photoset of my first major solo show to flickr. Check out images of the space, peops and work in the storytellers photoset (with thanks to Christo Doherty, Abrie Fourie and Franci Cronje for the pics. Also a thanks to the late and great Andrew Meintjes, for all his help and support). You can also read about the exhibition via my site here, or from a review in Art South Africa here.