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22 January 2006 by nathaniel

more Compressionism

The new text, images and video are up at Compressionism.net. I think the most exciting bit is probably the new video, with some great footage of "action Jackson" and my Compression methods and images – thanks to Franci Cronje, Nicole Ridgway, Lara Rivera and Colleen Alborough. "action" is the new custom-made and fully portable appendage for 360-degree Compressionist scans, and there’s a great stop-frame of him from all angles.

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.

 related: thanks to Daniel Hirschmann for pointing me to this Boing Boing post about Mike Golembewski’s scanner photography (currently down from linkage overload; mirrored at http://www.findacomputerguy.com/scannerphotography.com/index.html). Basically, he’s turned his scanner into a (very) large format pinhole camera – beautiful stuff!

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20 January 2006 by nathaniel

emmarentia lilies

So, I have finally joined the flickr craze, and started by uploading a handful of images with "action Jackson" – the new custom-made and fully portable appendage for 360-degree Compressionist scans… Will post the latest finished works (as well as all new documentation, text, etc, on compressionism.net) in the next few days. They’re hot…

In the meanwhile, you can check out the aforementioned documentation images with the new "humbnails and links" flickr feature in my sidebar. Woot!

Archives

20 January 2006 by nathaniel

SAartsEmerging launch and party!

SAartsEmerging launches today with a feature on Pretoria-born and bred Donna Kukama. In celebration, we’ve planned a cash bar hootenanny for emerging artists and art appreciators, alike:

9 February, 2006
Berlin Bar in Johannesburg, South Africa
7th street, Melville (across and down from Xai Xai)
18:30ish til whenev
Features a site-specific installation by our own Bronwyn Lace!

SAartsEmerging.org is dedicated to featuring emerging South African artists, curators and arts personalities who are not generally, or have not yet been, written about – but who should be. SAartsEmerging lacks any pretense of objectivity, and preference is not only given to Gauteng locals and friends, but also to early-career non-stars working conceptually, and across disciplines. We’re always looking for writers who want to feature burgeoning artists… More information on us or contributing? Visit the site!

SAartsEmerging features a new producer every third Friday of the month. 17 February will see our next feature, Bronwyn Lace, a Johannesburg-based, installation artist, just before her YAP solo show in Durban.

Hope to see you at the party!
Simon Gush, Bronwyn Lace & Nathaniel Stern
http://www.saartsemerging.org

Archives

20 January 2006 by nathaniel

DVblog feature on at interval

Ah, how I love mutual respect and fondness.

at interval featured on DVblog
at interval featured on DVblog

michael szpakowski makes me sound cooler than I actually am by saying:

More remarkable work from Nathaniel Stern as he reworks, in the most curious of ways, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.
Interesting that although the working method here seems almost diametrically opposed to the hands on, performative approach found in the odys series (dvblog 01/05/06) here too is that same sense of the fragility & vulnerability of human beings and their bodies & psyches & of the unreliability of the language we use to try & make what we want to happen & to relate or lie about what did .

Thanks, michael! See the feature and/or download the video from this DVblog link.

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16 January 2006 by nathaniel

at interval, 1977 / 2006

Spent most of the weekend working on a new video piece for the t-minus 2006 festival, an exhibition and DVD produced by Joshua Goldberg and Chris Jordan, New York City. It’s likely to be the first in a small series of "lapses," which play with time and language by compressing popular films into a different space of relation:

video still from at interval
video still from at interval

For at interval, I captured the entirety of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, then removed all spoken dialogue from the film. Time is slowed down, through emphasis on breathing, silence, mistakes, facial expressions and music between the text, and paradoxically sped up, through an immense shortening of the film – from one hour and thirty minutes, to just over thirteen. at interval compresses the movie by removing Allen’s characters’ lapses in judgment, and instead plays with time to accent similar impossibilities within language.

play movie
quicktime and javascript required, from browser not feed; 11.7MB pop-up window, 13:22

Archives

15 January 2006 by nathaniel

Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

According to a Zogby Poll: Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping. This poll was conducted by the highly-regarded and non-partisan polling company (Zogby), and interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

Yes, Conservatives have been citing polls that say Americans feel they want to be listened to, but the ridiculous question asked there was, “should [the President / his administration] be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects.” Ironically the poll had only 64% in agreement. Hell, I’d agree with this statement! But it mentions nothing about no warrants, about the fact that the FISA court already allowed him to do this, about the “suspects: being American citizens, about most of them NOT being viable terrorism suspects (media reporters, bloggers and children are on their watch list, which has grown exponentially since Bush was elected). How big is their suspect list, and where do we draw the line? More importantly, FISA allows for emergency taps, so long as the government turns in paperwork for a back-check warrant within 3 days AFTER they’ve done the listening, it is a legal warrant. If Bush doesn’t it even do this, does it no make you wonder why? Who s he listening to?

When a more precise (and pointed) question was asked, “If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment,” 52% agreed!

This may seem like a small majority, but it’s bigger than the majority Bush won his presidency by! And you must also bear in mind that a similar Clinton poll had a number in the 30’s – but the idea of impeachment was ALL OVER the news, and he was eventually brought to trial. Even after the results of this poll, we’re seeing no major news coverage of a Bush impeachment, or the poll, and it’s barely up for grabs. Where the hell are the Dems?

Liberal bias in the media? What world do you live in? IMPEACH BUSH. (Oops. That probably means my phone calls can be listened to, especially since I live overseas….)

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