technology | implicit art

Archives

15 February 2007 by nathaniel

NCAD, Joburg art, media art calls

Sorry for the lack of postings lately, but as promised before the move to Dublin, that’s just how it’s gonna be (until such time as Bronwyn and Rat do the regular blogging they tentatively offered here; like most Joburgers, they’re busy with more than a handful of things, so…).

OK, catch-up spanning (and doing little justice to) about 4 weeks of "stuff," beginning with a talk I gave at Ireland’s National College of Art and Design on 18 Jan. A bit of an enlightening experience for me in terms of crowd response — I guess I’m used to the very animated audience that Joburg and greater South Africa offer, so when people listened without expression, I ended about 30 minutes into the presentation, thinking I had completely bombed (all the more disappointing, since it was a crowd of about 70 – 100 people, a good turnout, IMNSHO – In My Not So Humble Opinion). But alas! A great discussion persisted for another 45 minutes beyond my early end! Mostly very generous questions which led to great dialogue, a few compliments, and one very provocative accusation; I have to say I’m excited to be starting off with a discussion in this community, and hope my leaving the country a few days after the talk didn’t put a potential speed bump on what began there…. NCADers – let’s hang?

I won’t cover my own exhibition since both Bronwyn and I already mentioned it, but there was a nice piece in beeld that was more like a profile of me just before leaving, and I think Robyn Sassen may be writing a short text in the Jewish Report. I did manage to go see GordArt’s new space, with several good shows (am new to Zach’s work – nice), lots of red stickers and the usual enthusiasm and support every art scene needs. Gordon Froud should be thanked over and over again by emerging and established artists alike, for his ongoing contributions.

Also caught the last of the Parking Gallery (at least in its initial Joburg incarnation) collaborations, this one between Simon Gush and Dorothee Kreutzfeldt at the Drill Hall. It was a very funny performance piece called 3-point turn, where they hired Sam Metentji to go, the wrong way, down a one-way street in downtown Jozi during rush hour. Many debates ensued, but mostly laughs and good byes: Simon has since left for a 2-year residency at the prestigious HISK in Belgium; see you there in July, buddy.

^{all photos taken on my crappy cell phone}

Sad to say I missed most of all the other goings-on in the art world, catching up on my own crap, but I hear the Guy Tillim show at Goodman was divine, and there’ve been a few workshops at the Bag Factory worth checking out.

And finally, a few calls:
You have til Monday to nominate yourself or a friend for the iCommons Artist In Residence in Croatia (use the Wiki).
Rhizome has its annual call for net.art commissions.
Turbulence has, probably, the most interesting net.art call I’ve ever seen: a collaboration with Art Interactive and Ars Virtua.
Ars Electronica Prix has been launched, with a few new categories.
Not new media (tho my proposal will be, if I get into the second round) there’s the Sasol Wax Art Award for South African mid-career artists.

I’m sure there are others, too. These are just the ones I’m currently working on or thinking about working on ;)

Hmm, that wasn’t really catch up so much as a few little things I’d been meaning to mention, but there you are. TFN (Ta For Now).

Archives

06 February 2007 by nathaniel

welcoming (art on paper opening)

Sorry for the lack of posts whilst in SA. Just been too hektik on this visit home. It’s been so great, and I miss this place immensely… Old friends and colleagues… great art and passionate community builders… yadda yadda.

Sitting in 44 Stanley making a quick post. Here’s a great photoset of images from the opening, with credited images by Christo Doherty and Franci Cronje. My favorite is of course the one of William Kentridge looking on to satin, a hand-made print (carborundum, etching and engraving) inspired by the image on the invite (see below post).

Archives

19 January 2007 by nathaniel

Call and Response: Nathaniel Stern at Art on Paper Gallery

You are invited to the opening of

Call and Response
performative prints and iterations

On Saturday 27 January 2007 at 15:00
Art on Paper Gallery, 44 Stanley Avenue
Johannesburg South Africa

^{satin bed, lambda print, 220x600mm}

To be opened by Professor Jane Taylor
Preview by appointment

Walkabout with the artist, Saturday 3 February at 15:00
The exhibition closes 24 February 2007

http://callandresponse.co.za for information, catalogue and images

^{satin bed II, aquatint, 195x245mm (455x370mm support)}

Art on Paper Gallery
44 Stanley Avenue Braamfontein Werf (Milpark)
PO Box 91476 Auckland Park 2006 Johannesburg
+27 11 726 2234 +27 11 482 7995
info@artonpaper.co.za www.artonpaper.co.za
Tues to Sat 10:00 – 17:00

Compressionism is a "digital performance and analog archive.” I traverse bodies, spaces and objects with my scanner face, while its head is in motion. After being Compressed into digital images the size of a small sheet of paper, the files are then stretched, cropped and colored by hand, then printed as editioned, archival works. The latest pieces in the series further transform details of these prints into hand-made art objects: etchings, engravings, aquatints, planographs, carborundum, monotype and more.

Compressionism is an exploration of media and perception, a transfiguration in time and seeing.

And, opening on the morning of the same day @ the David Krut Print Workshop (also in Joburg), a group show of Recent Work.

Archives

14 January 2007 by nathaniel

updata

Howdy y’all.

Apologies for the lack of updates on this blog or my daughter’s site over the last few weeks. I realize now that I really only cut out a few hours per week (my online teaching), but added a full-time PhD post, a daughter, a new country to learn, and (the usual) a few new writing and art projects. The blog has (and will likely continue to) suffered a bit. Also expect more on the academic / philosophy art-geek side, and less on the techy and local stuff… But, a few things to report nonetheless.

I’m in Joburg in 10 days! I’ll be coming in for my solo exhibition, Call and Response, at Art on Paper Gallery, in the 44 Stanley Avenue complex. It’s going to be opened by the gregarious Professor Jane Taylor; click the link to preview the beautiful catalogue Ellen designed, with texts by Clive Kellner (Johannesburg Art Gallery) & Wilhelm van Rensburg (University of Johannesburg), edited by Nicole Ridgway (Best Wife Ever). Also just put up a slideshow of all the prints there… Please try to make it, 27 January, 3PM (map).
And in the spirit of updating my online stuff, I’ve added a few things to the main site, like new descriptions (and a new page) of older performances – I never wrote statements for those collaborations, so wound up finding some text online. There’ll be a few more updates in the coming days.
But more in line with printmaking, I can confirm I’ll be working with printer and artist Zhane Warren on my three week residency at the Frans Masereel Centre in Belgium this July. Very excited to work with her, as well as keep up the SA link.
Last and most of all, if there’s one important thing I’ve done towards my PhD over the last couple of months, it’s solidify my research goals. Woo woo. Below is a 300-word abstract proposal I wrote for a potential upcoming conference. Multiply it by dissertation-length (by adding several sections on methodologies and sub-concepts through case studies and my own arts production), and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the next 3 years of my life!

Without further ado,

In and Around: the Implicit Body as Performance
by li’l ole me

Theorists and producers of the “mixed reality” movement within interactive art argue that inviting action and enactment, rather than producing illusion and simulacrum, creates more immersive spaces. Mark Hansen’s concept of the “body-in-code,” for example, reads the sensorimotor body here as an “activity” and a “being-with,” where the body is “distributed beyond the skin in the context of contemporary technics.”

Others, such as Brenda Laurel and Chris Salter, have sought to re-think critical histories of digital practice in order to locate interactive and digital art more precisely in the theatrical or performance realms.

My research contends that in such spaces, it is the body, itself, which is performed. A body in space can “act” as a site of emergence, a boundary project, and an incipience. While Rebecca Schneider’s “explicit body” in feminist performance art performatively unfolds (Latin: explicare) and explicates, the implicit body concordantly enfolds (Latin: implicare) and implies. Inter-action is both constitutive of, and always already involved in, the space of the body as relational. Like an animated moebius strip, the body is: in and around.

This paper attempts to think through digital art as a proscenium for, and framer of, the implicit body. I’m not necessarily interested in work or environments that are more illusory or more immersive, but that, rather, ask us to move in ways we normally wouldn’t, pushing the boundaries of performativity and affect. Like space itself, bodiliness is “susceptible to folding, division and reshapingâ€¦ open to continual negotiation” (K Kirby). By setting the stage, interactive artists-as-directors create productive tensions between the per-formed and the pre-formed, shifting our experiences of “body”. At stake, are potential strategies for intervention in our understandings of enfleshment, art that contextualizes embodiment towards specific ends.

Archives

08 January 2007 by nathaniel

Paddy Told me: The All-In-One Woodworking Tool

This is a direct reblog stolen from Paddy who took it from Cory and OMG I want one I want one I want one. You’ll not be hearing from me much in the next two weeks, but then heaps from me when I hit up Joburg for my show!!!!!

The All-In-One Woodworking Tool

Image via Sears

Alright art nerds, I hadn’t planned on posting the rest of the day, but Make has made this impossible. Phillip Terrone has just posted Craftsman’s latest woodworking tool, an $1800 computer controlled CNC machine. Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow describes it as a 3-D printer, which doesn’t mean that it prints holograms on wood, but rather that you can rip, cross cut, miter, contour, joint and route, without having to own a separate tool for each job. Hello all-in-one printer of the woodworking world! Product description below:

"Compact, computer-controlled, 3-dimensional woodworking machine with an easy-to-use interface. It allows a novice to make a complete project without a shop full of tools.The unique configuration allows it to perform many other woodworking functions, including ripping, cross cutting, mitering, contouring, jointing and routing. The CompuCarve can work in most soft materials, including wood, plastics (polycarbonate or cast acrylic) and certain types of high density foam. Set includes CompuCarve machine, (1) 1/16 in. carbide carving bit, (1) 1/8 in. carbide cutting bit, CarveWright Memory Card, starter software package, (2) 1/4 in. bit adaptors, vacuum bag adaptor, bit removal tool, hex wrench, owner’s manual and Quick Start Guide." – Link.

Archives

19 December 2006 by nathaniel

NYC arrivals (the ITP, the grandstanders and the clash of cultures)

We arrived late on Sunday night from Dublin to NYC for the holidays, and boy does aerlingus have it down when it comes to passport control – we did it Irish side, so no waits in NYC. Sid was a bit cranky from no sleep on the flight, and mucho ducho jetlag, but “cranky for Sid” is still pretty OK, I’ve learned; the flight staff commented on how well behaved she was. Who knew?

Given her exhaustion, and the strange place, she was actually pretty amazingly friendly when we arrived on the Shaolin (Staten Island). Maybe she felt her roots, maybe she felt the love, maybe she recognized my parents. Who knows? She had many giggles and smiles between the grandparents, making them the happiest I think I’ve ever seen them.

Monday, after haircuts and a little baby clothes shopping with granny, we spent some alone time with Sid’s godmother, Nancy Young, in Manhattan. We know, like with Joao, she was the right choice – so great with our favorite lass. Then we sped over to the ITP Winter Show. Apparently, besides being the Harvard of Interactive, my alma mater was named one of Businessweek’s top 10 Design schools this year. Yay, ITP.

Admittedly, I was spending more time showing off my daughter to old friends I ran into, some of my favorite lecturers ever, than I was looking at the art. If you feel like looking up some of the great peops (so generous and wonderful and full of knowledge), try googling the likes of Red Burns, Marianne Petit, Tom Igoe and Dan O’Sullivan (not to mention Danny Rozin, but I didn’t see him there; and sorry for the lack of links, but this post is becoming epic).

As usual, the ITP show, with over one hundred interactive projects in a small Manhattan loft, was an overwhelming and saturated exhibition of lots of blink-blinkies, with heaps of potential grad students, former students, and gizmo-appreciators with their eyes popping out of their heads. It still impresses me to this day, tho I do get a bit sad knowing that I’ll probably miss all the most subtle and understated projects amidst the mayhem, because it’s just too much to take it all in; one simply can’t give these kinds of projects the time they deserve in an environment like that. Still, I did catch more than a few bits worth mentioning, so I’ll take time to play up three. (Note: I took terrible photos with my mobile that are on my flickr now, but the images you see below I found on the artists’ web sites, so consider them credited.)

I think my favorite room was actually one of the dark ones (what used to be a Mac Lab) displaying mostly video-like interventions. For example, there was Animalia Chordata, by Gabe Barcia-Colombo, an Oursler-like installation of people trying to escape from the bottles the were projected into. It was also interactive, in that the peops noticed you as you got closer and responded accordingly, but it was the beautiful and simple set-up of the video itself that made me happy. (As opposed to this photo, they were remarkably detailed – not just silhouettes.)

^{Animalia Chordata, by Gabe Barcia-Colombo}

James Nick Sears’ and Leif Mangelsen’s Orb was more impressive as a display than as an artwork, but the applications are definitely on the creative rather than commercial side of things (tho I can see these as impressive billboards, too). “A persistence of vision display rotated into three dimensions creates a sphere of color animations,” this is basically a circle of LEDs rotated really fast, and timed perfectly, to make a “global,” spherical animation.

^{James Nick Sears’ and Leif Mangelsen’s Orb}

And finally – and admittedly, my interest in this has more to do with how I might use the technology to eventually see undertoe into fruition – the Fantastic Piano, by So-young Park, Laurel Boylen, Shin-Yi Huang, Cho Rong Hwang. Quite a feat for an Introduction to Physical Computing class, this group’s project used water tanks with glitter in them, and pumps/air bubbles to swish them around, as their output. Hand-waving to make noise and water ensues, pictures at the link above.

After some playing with quite a few other interesting projects, I had dinner with a whole bunch of South African art-folks. There was Zingi Mkefa, a Joburg journalist at NYU on a Fulbright, Amy Kaufmann, the New Yorker / former Director of Constitution Hill and Sean Slemon’s wife, Dave Andrew and his wife Glenda, here on the Ampersand Fellowship. Was great to have my two homes meet up in one place (the East Village, no doubt!), and the pan-seared tuna at Apple was divine. We all agreed that Sid is the cutest baby ever.

Today, I’m off to meet Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City for lunch in Chelsea (hoping she can tell me what’s hot in the area), then a quick meet with Kate McCrickard, Director of David Krut Projects New York about who-knows-what, some time with my old friend Tony, and finally dinner with Greg Shakar, to see if we can finally make a plan for the aforementioned undertoe project, conceptualized at ITP circa 2001 (but still hot)!

More soon…