This blog is 4 years old today.<\/p>\n
I don’t recall being 4, really, but according to the stories I’ve heard, I mostly enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
Lately I’ve been obsessing over scanner art on the Internet, trying to find anyone else who has been doing things on the more performative side (like Compressionism<\/a>), and also remembering (I had forgotten) that I did a series of textile designs with scannings of water, spices and various other objects in 1993, when I was at Cornell<\/a>. Wish I could find those files somewhere….<\/p>\n Been reading this Hansen book<\/a>, which is oftentimes unnecessarily dense and self-congratulatory (whilst mocking other theorists), but it has more than a few great ideas that I certainly would never have come to on my own. Also started Brian Massumi’s<\/a> 2002 book, Parables for the Virtual<\/a>, and it’s kind of blowing my mind a bit; he’s such a generous thinker! One passage on writing (the whole introduction maintains this level of intimacy and playfulness along with the integrity and conviction of an inventor-writer):<\/p>\n The essays in this volume work through examples. The writing tries not only to accept the risk of sprouting deviant, but to invite it. Take joy in your digressions. Because that is where the unexpected arises. That is the experimental aspect. If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. You have to be willing to surprise yourself writing things you didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you thought. Letting examples burgeon requires using inattention as a writing tool. You have to let yourself get so caught up in the flow of your writing that it ceases at moments to be recognizable to you as your own. This means you have to be prepared for failure. For with inattention comes risk: of silliness, or even outbreaks of stupidity. But perhaps in order to write experimentally, you have to be willing to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153affirm\u00e2\u20ac\u009d even your own stupidity. Embracing one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own stupidity is not the prevailing academic posture (at least not in the way I mean it here).<\/p>\n … page 18<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And so on. I like to think I produce (in my various media, including text) much in the same way Massumi writes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This blog is 4 years old today. I don’t recall being 4, really, but according to the stories I’ve heard, I mostly enjoyed it. Lately I’ve been obsessing over scanner art on the Internet, trying to find anyone else who has been doing things on the more performative side (like Compressionism), and also remembering (I […]<\/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":[6,3,7,29,12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-art-and-tech","category-me","category-research","category-theory","category-uncategorical"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9blZT-mF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":482,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/23\/soiree-double-header\/","url_meta":{"origin":1405,"position":0},"title":"soiree double header","author":"nathaniel","date":"23 October 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"photo credits: christo doherty Yesterday afternoon saw a fantastic double event at the WSOA Digital Arts friday soiree. First, Cobi Van Tonder facilitated successive performances in her award-winning, interactive gumboot project. Analog sensors in the soles and on the sides of these boots trigger and control live samples of electronic\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":2003,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/05\/blah-blah-blog\/","url_meta":{"origin":1405,"position":1},"title":"blah blah blog","author":"nathaniel","date":"05 September 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"OMG I have a blog. But I've been makin art and teachin instead. I do not tweet, but the book of faces tends to let some know my state (er, state-us). You can find me there. Still, will have pics of the kid and maybe some of the new work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "uncategorical"","block_context":{"text":"uncategorical","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/uncategorical\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":466,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2004\/09\/29\/narrative-construction\/","url_meta":{"origin":1405,"position":2},"title":"narrative construction: santu & lesego @ momo","author":"nathaniel","date":"29 September 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"There seems to be a theme running with the latest art exhibitions I'm covering. Similar to what I said about Dylan Thomas Graham, Santu Mofokeng's show, at gallery momo, similarly asks its viewers to construct their own meaning, find their own narrative. At first. One major difference between this show\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":1012,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/01\/09\/get-your-art-on\/","url_meta":{"origin":1405,"position":3},"title":"get your art on","author":"nathaniel","date":"09 January 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Instead of going to the (closed) galleries in Johannesburg, and in a very successful procrastination of the chapter I'm meant to be working on for a book by Rodopi press, here are some of the art submissions I've been thinking on (you know it's procrastination when you are are just\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":963,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/05\/home-schweet-home\/","url_meta":{"origin":1405,"position":4},"title":"home schweet home","author":"nathaniel","date":"05 December 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Ah, Johannesburg. I can't believe I'm actually back here. It feels oddly like I belong way more than any other place I've ever been. And admittedly, that's a new feeling. When people in NYC asked me about living in Jozi, I often replied, \"it's completely exhilarating and utterly exhausting.\" I\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":360,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/19\/digital-arts-ma-etc\/","url_meta":{"origin":1405,"position":5},"title":"digital arts MA, etc","author":"nathaniel","date":"19 June 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I am a terrible blogger cuz I'm not even sure how long it's been since my last blog. Can you believe life carried on without me? Since my last blog, Tom Igoe and Dan O'Sullivan's Physical Computing Book was published - a must for all! Along those same lines, my\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\/1405","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=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}