stimulus | implicit art

Lightwave 2008

LoVid gives one of their Hand-Cranked Luminescent Jewelery workshops

Dublin’s new Science Gallery kicked off with HUGE crowds last Friday, and hosted international stars (and a few newcomers) of the media art scene, including the likes of LoVid, Graffiti Research Lab, portable palace and many others (these are just the ones I saw speak at DATA and/or hung out with in my free time and while I was showing some of my Compressionist prints).

I’ve been to enough of these kinds of events/festivals/exhibitions to be able to call this one a resounding success, and I’m looking forward to some of the ideas I’ve already heard spinning about for next year. Well done, y’all – and great to catch up with some old NYC buds, so thanks for bringing them out, too :)

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09 February 2008 by nathaniel

Obama vs. the Phobocracy

“… in the name of preserving hope do we disdain it. That is how a phobocracy maintains its grip on power.”

This is a moving and wonderful article that every American should read before they go to the polls. Chabon, who wrote one of my favorite books of all time, nails it when he explains away the reasons people give to vote for Hillary over Barrack.

read it

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31 January 2008 by nathaniel

Catch of the day: Second Life’s new gallery

A little press from the Guardian’s art blog, here. Mark Hooper runs a bit cool on SL and its economy, but speaks positively about the gallery itself, and my and the other artists’ work. Snips:

Â Three artists are showcasing their art in a new virtual gallery. But is this really the best place to see their work?

The perfect art gallery? … a view of Second Life’s Ten Cubed gallery

I’ll be honest. My experience of Second Life is fairly limited. … So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not as excited as some people about the launch of Ten Cubed, a new art gallery in Second Life, which goes live here today.

The gallery has been developed by Depo Consulting in association with Galleryica. Don’t get me wrong; it all looks very well designed. “Most virtual galleries are like your average website, poorly designed without any sense of optimising a visitor’s experience,” announced Depo CEO and creative director Peter Dunkley. “Ten Cubed has been designed by a professional architect to exploit fully the showcasing opportunities of the virtual medium.”

I’m sure he’s right. The inaugural show features the work of Chris Ashley, Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, all interesting artists whose use of new technology makes them perfect for this sort of project….

So – nice design, nice publicity stunt. It’s made me check out the artists online anyway, via their own websites. Which is the only place I’d even contemplate buying their art.

The whole article.

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30 January 2008 by nathaniel

Simulate Editions at Ten Cubed Gallery, Second Life

Simulate Editions
unique and authenticated virtual art objects

Premiering at:
Crossing the Void II
Ten Cubed Gallery, Second Life
opening receptions 31 January 7pm EST (1pm SLT) and 1 February 7pm GMT (8am SLT)
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/depo%20park%201/200/55/22

Artists Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern have each been exploring performance and performativity in their archival prints. Kildall restages then remediates iconic performance artworks in Second Life, and Stern straps on a scanner appendage and battery pack, and performs images into existence; both processes produce art objects in the real world.

For Crossing the Void II at Ten Cubed Gallery – Haydn Shaughnessy’s new virtual space designed by New York architect Benn Dunkley – they were asked to produce unique virtual art works for sale in Second Life, which mirror their real life prints. In response, they created a series of “Simulate Editions”, where every ‘print’ is individually signed and numbered by hand, making each work ‘technically unique.’ The works are copy and modification protected, but also come with a resize script, so that the new collector/owner – and only them – can grow or shrink their purchase so as to fit into their SL space.

In addition to Kildall and Stern, also on the exhibition are Chris Ashley, Jon Coffelt and Claire Keating.

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21 January 2008 by nathaniel

ten cubed

I’m involved, via Haydn Shaugnessy (my Irish gallery) in a funky new project, where he’s hired a ‘Real World’ architect to build an astonishingly beautiful gallery out at sea in Second Life: Ten Cubed (pictured). Via some of Haydn’s blogging on the subject:

About a year ago I decided to set up a real life gallery. The reason was simply that I love media art but couldnâ€™t find galleries that specialise in it. Now I have a media-art gallery and on a day-to-day basis experience the fact that the audience for this is global rather than local. Media-art is beginning to find an audience in Ireland but its real audience is urban anywhere.

I can connect to some of that audience through a website . But what I canâ€™t do through a website is join people in appreciating the art; not when they could be anywhere from New York to Naples. Nor could many of the audience really appreciate the artwork: theyâ€™d simply be viewing a 2D image.

With Ten Cubed I can do these things. I can stand with you and admire the work and together we can analyse and crit.

What I can also do is make room to showcase art that my physical gallery could not exhibit – because of its size and because of the sheer impracticality of giving over all my space to one large work. In Ten Cubed I can show any amount of art and at any scale. I can also help promote and encourage artists working in a virtual medium.

I have to say that Ten Cubed really is a visceral space – “walking” around and viewing my work, it’s the most free and embodied I’ve ever felt in a Virtual World. And one of the more exciting aspects of the exhibition – which I’ll blog about later in the week – is a project I’m working on with Scott Kildall, where we are making unique SL print editions: virtual, limited edition art, signed and numbered individually and by hand!

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18 January 2008 by nathaniel

Ralph Borland at Wits (Johannesburg)

If in Joburg, go see a great speaker and artist (and my classmate from ITP, peer in South Africa, and colleague in Dublin), Ralph Borland, next Friday.

Ralph Borland
Photographs by Pieter Hugo
Suited for Subversion, 2002
Nylon-reinforced PVC, denim, padding, speaker, pulse-reader, circuitry
Edition of 3

We are very pleased to kick off the 2008 Digital Soiree series with a
presentation by Ralph Borland entitled “Provocative Technology”.

The Soiree will take place from 13:15 – 14:00 on Friday 25 January in the
Digital Convent Seminar Room, WSOA, Wits University.

Ralph is an South African artist, technologist and DJ who is at the end of
the first year of his PhD with the Disruptive Design Team in the Electronic
and Electrical Engineering Department, Trinity College, Dublin.

He is examining an area of critical technology design practice
undertaken mainly by artists and designers, and proposing its
application to appropriate technology design.

His presentation will be around 30 minutes long, after which he will be
asking for feedback, and hoping for leads to more projects and
histories. He writes: “I’d like to know how the work I’m engaged with may
resonate with practitioners from a variety of fields. Feel free to invite
anyone who may be interested.”