The 8’oclock Buzz: Quarantine Connections Revives The Pen Pal
Quarantine Connections seeks to bring people together — safely — during the lockdown by fostering a retro method — pen pals, using real pen and paper. We’ll talk with artists Nathaniel Stern and Chris Butzen.
Instant messaging, video conferences, social media are all good ways of staying in touch with family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances while you’re in social isolation. But they’re all… sort of … cold. Something’s missing. Wouldn’t it be nice, to receive an actual, handwritten letter? That’s the premise of a new collaborative project called Quarantine Connections. Sign up — yes, online — and you agree to send an envelope, through the mail, with a postage stamp on it, and you get one in return from someone, somewhere out there, who you’ve never met before, but with whom you might share a connection. The project is the brainchild of three primary collaborators, two of whom join us by phone now. U-W Milwaukee professor of art and mechanical engineering Nathaniel Stern is a familiar voice to longtime Buzz listeners. We also have Chris Butzen, a Milwaukee native web developer currently living and working in Toronto.
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Creative Mornings talk
This is the CreativeMornings Milwaukee talk in January 2020. It’s 20 minutes with 15 mins of Q&A.
Nathaniel Stern gives a dynamic artist talk about his experimental and beautiful work between art and science. By artificially aging phones, growing non-human life inside of media devices, and turning electronics into other tools, he inspires us to change our relationships with various technologies. Stern tells us more about where our computers come from, where e-waste winds up, and what we can do to improve our future.
Free events like this one are hosted every month in dozens of cities. Discover hundreds of talks from the world’s creative community at https://creativemornings.com/talks
CreativeMornings Manifesto
Everyone is creative.
A creative life requires bravery and action, honesty and hard work. We are here to support you, celebrate with you, and encourage you to make the things you love.
We believe in the power of community. We believe in giving a damn. We believe in face-to-face connections, in learning from others, in hugs and high fives.
We bring together people who are driven by passion and purpose, confident that they will inspire one another, and inspire change in neighborhoods and cities around the world.
Everyone is welcome.
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NPR / WUWM
‘Ecological Aesthetics’ Encourages Thinking Differently With The World Around Us
with MADELINE ANDRÉ on Lake Effect
How do you think about the objects around you? What do they do for you? What do they want? Are they art? These are some of the ways that local artist and author Nathaniel Stern wants us to think about our surroundings, our planet and the art within it.
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NPR / WUWM
Giverny of the Midwest: A Conversation with Artist Nathaniel Stern
with Bonnie North on Lake Effect
Artist Nathaniel Stern speaks with Lake Effect’s Bonnie North about his use of scanners to create beautiful images.
Nathaniel Stern’s intensity is palpable. The media artist always has multiple bodies of work going on simultaneously, he’s a Fulbright scholar, a professor of art, a parent. Talking with him, you get the impression he never stops thinking about, or exploring, art and life.
Stern’s current exhibition at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend is called Giverny of the Midwest. The work has had previous exhibitions in Johannesburg, South Africa and London, but this is its first stop in the United States. The scans are a nod and homage to the Impressionist painter Claude Monet…if Monet were painting his lilies while immersed in the pond rather than sitting on its banks.
Nathaniel Stern, detail, Giverny of the Midwest, Digital print installation, 2011, Lent by the Tory Folliard GalleryCredit: Musem of Wisconsin Art.
The work is technological, thought-provoking and unexpected. And although his work has been compared to photography, Stern would disagree. “It’s probably closer to print making.” He continues that as opposed to the objective distancing you get in photography, “where you’re looking through [a] lens and seeing what you’re capturing, (with this work) it’s more that you’re on top of or a part of your medium,” says Stern.
When he isn’t scanning his environment, Stern is an Associate Professor of Art and Design in Peck School of the Arts at the UW – Milwaukee.
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TEDx talk
“Nathaniel Stern is an awkward artist, teacher and writer, who likes awkward art, students and writing. Stern’s talk, Ecological Aesthetics, discusses tweets in space, scans at the bottom of the sea, interactive installations, and art in virtual worlds – all work about the complex relationships between humans, nature, and politics.”
What is TEDx?
“Imagine a day filled with brilliant speakers, thought-provoking video and mind-blowing conversation. By organizing a TEDx event, you can create a unique gathering in your community that will unleash new ideas, inspire and inform…. A TEDx event is a local gathering where live TED-like talks and videos previously recorded at TED conferences are shared with the community.” – from the TED web site
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WORT fm
The 8’oclock Buzz: Return of the Frankensteined Scanners
Last time we spoke with Milwaukee artist Nathaniel Stern, he was trying to jerry-rig dozens of flatbed scanners to take peculiarly framed, high resolution underwater photographs. Well since then, Nathaniel reports that nearly everything that could possibly go wrong with that project did. Nathaniel Stern joined the Monday Buzz once more by phone from Milwaukee with an update.
Download the mp3 (13mb), or listen to the entire interview about performative printmaking / Compressionism with host Brian Standing:
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WORT fm
The 8’oclock Buzz: Frankensteined Scanners Under the Sea
Last time the Monday Buzz talked with Milwaukee artist, Nathaniel Stern, he was sending tweets into space and subverting Wikipedia for his own nefarious artistic ends. Now, he’s jerry-rigging flatbed scanners for high-resolution, time-shifting underwater duty. Listen as Nathaniel explains to host Brian Standing how to turn a flat imager into a self-contained scuba camera, the philosophical nature of an image, and more.
Download the mp3 (13mb), or listen to the entire interview about performative printmaking / Compressionism with host Brian Standing:
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WORT fm
The 8’oclock Buzz: Nathaniel Stern: Back for More
Nathaniel Stern is an Associate Professor in Arts Tech at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. He joined the Buzz on Monday, July 1st to discuss his interactive art and give us an update on “Tweets in Space”.
In February 2013, Stern joined the 8 O’Clock Buzz to talk about his project Tweets in Space. The archive of that show can be found here. As the system is 22nd light years away, it will take 44 years for us to hear back from any of the Tweets. Still, Stern is excited and hopeful.
In addition, Stern discussed his latest interactive art. He currently has an upcoming art show in South Africa called Meaning Motion. He has hopes that a gallery in Wisconsin will display a Meaning Motion exhibit at some point in the future, to bring some of his work closer to home. He also just finished a book on interactive art, titled Interactive Art and Embodiment: The Implicit Body As Performance. His theory of art is to invite people to interact with his work. All of his “paintings” are displayed on white boxes, digitally programmed, until someone walks in front of or into the box – at which point the art comes alive. Each art piece, therefore, is unique depending on who interacts with it.
According to Stern, body and language both require each other. Bodies make language, and language makes bodies. His work is intended to spark discussion about how we relate to and interact with ourselves.
Download the mp3 (20 mb), or listen to the entire interview with sub-host Tony Casteneda:
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Wisconsin Public Radio
At Issue with Ben Merens on Monday, September 10, 2012 at 3:00 PM on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio.
What would you say to an alien that lived on a planet 22 light years away? Could you say it in 140 characters or less? An upcoming performance at the International Symposium on Electronic Art will collect your tweets and then send them to a specific planet far, far away. This hour, we get the details of the project and hear what YOU would tweet into outer space. Keep it short.
Guests: Nathaniel Stern, Assistant Professor of Art & Design at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Scott Kildall, Independent artist based in San Francisco.
Download 1-hour WPR interview (mp3)
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BBC Radio 4 (Today)
BBC News – Today – Tweeting to a planet near you
“Why is an artist about to send tweets into space? Nathaniel Stern, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Anu Ojha, Director of the National Space Academy in Leicester, explain.”
Here I discussed Tweets in Space, my collaborative project with Scott Kildall, in an interview with Justin Webb of BBC Radio 4 on the BBC’s flagship news program, Today.
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Bad At Sports
Bad at Sports Episode 244: Nathaniel Stern
by Duncan MacKenzie
“Bad at Sports is a weekly podcast produced in Chicago that features artists talking about art and the community that makes, reviews and critiques it. Shows are usually posted each weekend and can be listened to on any computer with an internet connection and speakers or headphones.”
This audio interview (available streaming from the site, or as a download to your computer or mp3 player) begins with Nathaniel Stern rapping a bit of Beastie Boys / Q-Tip, and quickly degrades to him lovingly poking fun at his dad. It’s actually a great interview, where you can hear some off the cuff chatting with Duncan MacKenzie about hektor.net, Distill Life, Compressionism, Wikipedia Art,Given Time, Doin’ my part to lighten the load, and more. It’s good fun, with lots of tangential stories and jokes, and many mentions of good friends and colleagues. Enjoy!
listen to or download interview on B@S
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