{"id":1351,"date":"2006-10-08T16:51:17","date_gmt":"2006-10-08T14:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/08\/collecting-digits-the-upgradejhb-digital-soiree-panel-discussion\/"},"modified":"2007-10-19T13:25:05","modified_gmt":"2007-10-19T11:25:05","slug":"collecting-digits-the-upgradejhb-digital-soiree-panel-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/08\/collecting-digits-the-upgradejhb-digital-soiree-panel-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"Collecting Digits – The Upgrade!JHB + Digital Soiree Panel Discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

As usual a thorough post from Christo on our last Upgrade!Joburg<\/a>, via the atjoburg<\/a> site:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The
\nThe Collecting Digits Panel at Wits Digital Arts. From left to right, Franci Cronje, Warren Siebrits, Nathaniel Stern, and Clive Kellner.<\/sub><\/p>\n

The first Upgrade! Johannesburg panel discussion brought together an exciting group of speakers to deal with the topic of “Collecting Digits – the challenges and obstacles to curating and selling digital art in South Africa.”<\/p>\n

First to speak was Warren Siebrits<\/a> – founder of one of Johannesburg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most prestigious contemporary and modern commercial art galleries. Since he opened his gallery in 2002 with the landmark exhibition “States of Emergency”, Warren has consistently exhibited artists who are pushing the envelope in terms of new content and challenging forms. He spoke about the impact made on his personal development as a curator and gallery owner by his friendship with pioneering South African video artist Conrad Welz.<\/a>
\nUsing video art as the framework for his presentation, he traced the impact of significant events such as the First Johannesburg Biennale in 1995 on the uptake of video art by a younger generation of South African artists in the post-Apartheid years. Focusing in particular on the influence (and rivalry) of video artists Kendal Gears and Candice Breitz he spoke with enthusiasm of the impact made on him recently by Breitz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s six-channel installations, Mother and Father<\/a>, in the White Cube Gallery in London. He confessed that this level of technological display would be unaffordable at any South African commercial gallery. Even the limited projections required by his Konrad Welz exhibition in 2005 had, he revealed, been a severe strain and the exhibition had run at a loss. This was compounded by the lack of enthusiasm exhibited by private buyers in South Africa for video art. Local buyers are “risk adverse” and their reluctance to pay rands for new forms of art such as video (let alone new media) has been a brake on the ambitions of gallery owners such as himself.<\/p>\n

Clive Kellner – Director of the Johannesburg Art Gallery<\/a> – spoke from the perspective of institutional galleries. Here the situation is more encouraging although the cost of technology continues to be a major obstacle. Although the largest gallery on the sub-continent, with a collection larger than the National Gallery in Cape Town, the JAG struggles to find fund the exhibition requirements of contemporary artists who, Clive commented, are continually raising the ante in terms of their exhibition requirements. The recent William Kentridge retrospective exhibition, he revealed, cost the JAG more than R1.4 million just to set up. However they were able to purchase 14 projectors for the retrospective which are now part of the Gallery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pool of equipment available for future exhibitions.<\/p>\n

With Clive at the helm, the JAG has taken a leading role in the purchse of innovative and important South African art. Their recent purchase of “Step Inside” the interactive work by Nathaniel Stern; and the two channel video, “Snow White” by Berni Searl.<\/a> are examples of their committment.<\/p>\n

Nathaniel Stern spoke from the perspective of a practicing artist who is particularly concerned with the relationship between traditional and new media. He describes his work as a “series of provocations” which have explored this relationship in a range of media and are in several public and private collections. Since his interactive work, “Step Inside” has just been bought by the JAG has was able to describe the complexities of the sale to the Upgrade audience. Unlike the examples in the previous presentations, which had been dominated by the paradigm of video art, “Step Inside<\/a>” is a digital work with a complex combination of installation requirements and computer-software. Nathaniel revealed that the sale had been delayed by the announcement of the new “Intel” Apple Macs. Originally written for the PowerMAc processor, the Step Inside package was held back until the new platform was available and the software could be adapted accordingly. According to Nathaniel there are various strategies the digital artist can take towards the inevitable obsolescence of the platform originally used for the work. The work may be sold together with the hardware in a complete package. The problem with this approach is that hardware and software require maintenance – with the passage of time this becomes increasingly difficult. The other approach is to sell the concept ie to outline the logic of the work\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s operation in pseudo code so that future programmers can replicate the process in whatever programming environment is then available. He demonstrated how the package which he had sold to the JAG utilized both of these strategies. Nathaniel provided both locked and unlocked Max\/MSP-Jitter patches and a pseudo-code version. In addition, Nathaniel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s agreement with the Gallery specified that the work would be updated at specified intervals. All attempts to keep the work functional into the future.<\/p>\n

Finally, Franci Cronje, herself a video artist and curator of several collections & competitions, including Sasol New Signatures<\/a>, spoke from the perspective also informed by her own academic research into the topic. As curator of the important Sasol competition, she revealed that 26 out of the 110 works on the final exhibition were new media. (By new media she meant works that went through electronic mediation at some stage in the production process, therefore included video and digital prints.) Despite the high-tech status of their sponsor, the New Signatures exhibition struggled with the cost of projection technology. In the end they had to build a “black box”, essentially a small projection space, where the videos selected for the exhibition were shown in rotation. Artists who could afford to provide their own projectors were privileged with their own displays. All in all this was not a satisfactory situation, Franci admitted, and in many ways this approach handicapped the disadvantaged artists on the competition. For future competitions, she hoped to find funding to support a wider range of projections. Franci ended by making an appeal to the younger generation of digital artists to find place in the system. Digits are flexible and can go anywhere. It is up to digital artists to find those ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As usual a thorough post from Christo on our last Upgrade!Joburg, via the atjoburg site: The Collecting Digits Panel at Wits Digital Arts. From left to right, Franci Cronje, Warren Siebrits, Nathaniel Stern, and Clive Kellner. The first Upgrade! Johannesburg panel discussion brought together an exciting group of speakers to deal with the topic of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,3,18,7,9,8,25,2,19,5,12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-art-and-tech","category-franci-cronje","category-me","category-pop-culture","category-re-blog-tidbits","category-reviews","category-south-african-art","category-stimulus","category-technology","category-theory","category-uncategorical"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9blZT-lN","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1339,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/02\/the-upgrade-johannesburg-presents-our-first-panel-discussion-collecting-digits\/","url_meta":{"origin":1351,"position":0},"title":"the Upgrade! Johannesburg presents our first Panel Discussion: Collecting Digits","author":"nathaniel","date":"02 October 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"the Upgrade! Johannesburg presents our first Panel Discussion: Collecting Digits Friday October 6, 2006 @ 3pm: Panel Discussion: Collecting Digits WSOA Digital Arts. Map: http:\/\/digitalarts.wits.ac.za\/artworks\/contact\/map.htm This panel and discussion on the possibilities and problems with collecting new media art will include presentations by: Warren Siebrits - founder of one of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1345,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/06\/this-afternoon-evenings-events-reminder\/","url_meta":{"origin":1351,"position":1},"title":"This Afternoon \/ Evening’s Events Reminder","author":"nathaniel","date":"06 October 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"15:00Panel Discussion: Collecting DigitsVENUE: WSOA Digital Arts, Wits Universitywww.atjoburg.net\/upgrade for map and details This panel and discussion on the possibilities and problems with collecting new media art will include presentations by: Warren Siebrits - founder of one of Johannesburg's most prestigious contemporary and modern commercial art galleries Franci Cronje -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1188,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/18\/humor-and-materials\/","url_meta":{"origin":1351,"position":2},"title":"Humor and Materials","author":"nathaniel","date":"18 May 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"gordon froud, south african artist and gallerist, in his studioNewtown, Johannesburg, South Africa (Forgive the quality of this image - I broke my crap camera and will from now on be taking gallery pix on my even more crap phone...) Spent much of Monday with Gordon Froud and Franci Cronje,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":511,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2004\/11\/29\/digital-art-walkabout-and-panel-discussion-on-december-4th-at-the-johannesburg-art-gallery\/","url_meta":{"origin":1351,"position":3},"title":"Digital Art Walkabout and Panel Discussion on December 4th at the Johannesburg Art Gallery","author":"nathaniel","date":"29 November 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"You are cordially invited to attend a walkabout with nathaniel stern through his exhibition, the storytellers and a seminar\/panel discussion conducted by Sean O'Toole (Moderator): Digital media art in South Africa: What\u2019\u00c4\u00f4s it doing here? Panellists include Marcus Neustetter, Churchill Madikiba, Marc Edwards, Christo Doherty, Tracey Rose, Kathryn Smith, Thando\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":757,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/08\/new-guest-blogger-franci-cronje\/","url_meta":{"origin":1351,"position":4},"title":"new guest blogger: franci cronje","author":"nathaniel","date":"08 September 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Note the Pretoria exhibition post, below, was the first from our new guest blogger, Franci Cronje. Link to her bio and photo is at right - let's hope we hear more from her!","rel":"","context":"In "franci cronje"","block_context":{"text":"franci cronje","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/franci-cronje\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":591,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/22\/watercolours-and-works-on-paper-warren-siebrits\/","url_meta":{"origin":1351,"position":5},"title":"watercolours and works on paper @ warren siebrits","author":"nathaniel","date":"22 April 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"kentridge's UNTITLED watercolor concertina, circa 1991 First, I gotta say that the siebrits site is just about finished, and it's already looking pretty classy... I like it when SA arts go live for the rest of the world to find! Woot. Second, as usual, Warren et al have put together\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}