Nathaniel Stern New Media Art and Embodiment

Embodimentcomputers interacting directly with the physical world

Tangible Interaction= Form + Computingan area of digital interaction design, where designers seek to create objects or artifacts that interact with people, react to them and behave with them.

Emphasizes:o tangibility and materiality of the interfaceo physical embodiment of datao whole-body interactiono the embedding of the interface and the users' interaction in real spaces

and contexts.

Art

Produced and collaborated on projects including:• interactive and immersive environments• mixed reality art • multimedia physical theater performances• digital and traditional printmaking• concrete sculpture • slam poetry.

o Experimental installation and video artist o Net.artist o Printmaker o Writer

Upcoming Exhibitions August 2011. Current Tendencies 2, Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI

July 2011. Giverny of the Midwest, solo exhibition, Gallery AOP, Johannesburg, South Africa

March 2011. Southern Graphics Conference International, St Louis, Missouri

February 2011. Panel: Bio-Art, Boundaries, and Borders, College Art Association, New York

February 2011. Transmediale, award finalist, exhibition and conference talk, Berlin, Germany

January 2011. Mind the Gap, solo exhibition, Paul Watkins Gallery, Winona State University, Minnesota

Education

• Design degree from Cornell University

• Studio-based Masters in art from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (NYU)

• Research PhD from Trinity College Dublin.

• Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.

Publications

Networked2009

Cyberculture and New Media2009

Writes on new media for:

o Mainstream publications -- Rhizome, Artthrob, Art South Africa and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel o Academic presses -- Rodopi, the Institute of Network Cultures (University of

Amsterdam) and Leonardo (MIT Press)

Awards Nathaniel’s won many awards, fellowships, commissions and residencies between South

Africa, America, and all over Europe. 2011. Transmediale Award, nominated finalist, Berlin, Germany .

2010. Top ranking in Leonardo Abstracts (MIT Press), peer reviewed database of interdisciplinary theses Research Committee Award, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Mary L Nohl Suitcase Fund award

2006 - 2009. Postgraduate Research Scholarship, tuition + stipend for doctoral study at Trinity College Dublin .

2008. National Research Foundation, curated / invitational commission .

2007. Visual Arts: Travel & Training Award, The Arts Council, Ireland Conover Program Excellence Fund Scholarship for the Organic Motion workshop/residency, Anderson Ranch

Stuttering (2003/Updated 2009)

• an interactive installation

• proposes a space which accents how we effect, and are affected by, conversation and comprehension.

• suggests that stillness and stumbling play a role in the un/realized potentials of memory and storytelling.

What is it?

How does it work?

Computer printouts are scattered about the floor, containing quotes and passages about stutterers, situations in which stuttering, in its broadest sense, is common, and suggestions of when and where we should “make stutters,” in order to break “seamless” communication. Each viewer in the space triggers a large-scale interactive art object projected on the wall in front them. This projection is broken into grid, where each sub-section, initialized by body-tracking software, animates one of the floor-found quotes; every animation is accompanied by an audio recitation of its text.

Video: Stuttering – An Interactive Installation

Embodiment Theory• Uses George Lakoff’s (a cognitive scientist and linguist)

theory of embodied cognition

• human communication is always already mediated. Our emotions, our past and the memories it carries, cannot be separated from it.

• The mind is inherently embodied, because of our flesh, our multi-sensory perception, and our personal experiences, our communications convey much more than transparent information.

Embodied Cognition

• Phenomonology: studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.

• Merleau-Ponty - the body is an element of perception itself

• Embodied cognition is a position in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind emphasizing the role that the body plays in shaping the mind

• The embodied mind thesis is opposed to other theories such as Cartesian dualism.

Cartesian Dualism

• There are two types of material in the world. There is the mental or mind, and the physical or body

• Decartes – “I think, therefore I am”

• Using the movie “The Matrix” as an example - if the principle of dualism was true it allows the possibility that we could be trapped inside a matrix of our own, but never even know about. It is possible that our bodies do not exist and the world as we know it does not exist.

• A real example exists within The Journal of Conscious Studies. An article on placebos and the human mind, which uses Cartesian Dualism in order to explain the effects on patients.

From the Artist• Blur the lines between body and language by asking us to confuse the two.

• viewers-turned-participants use their entire bodies to touch and trigger activation points on the grid. They shift between intention and passivity, speaking and listening, to control the piece.

• Participants move in ways they normally wouldn’t, and through this, experience communication and embodiment as difficult and non-transparent.

• Central to Stern’s work are the feedback loops between our experience of the world (via embodiment and perception, for example), our movements within it (through performance and performative acts), and our understandings of it (in language and signs).

• Stern want to foster greater dialogue around these complex systems and their relationships to affect and meaning-making.

Given Time (2010)

What is it?

• Given Time simultaneously activates and performs two permanently logged-in Second Life avatars, each forever and only seen by and through the other. They hover in mid-air, almost completely still, gazing into one another’s interface.

How Does it Work?• Viewers encounter this networked partnership as a diptych of

large-scale and facing video projections in a real world gallery, both exhibiting a live view of one avatar, as perceived by the other. To create a visceral aesthetic, these custom-designed and life-sized “bodies” are hand-drawn in subtly animated charcoal, graphite and pastel. The audience is invited to physically walk between them; they’re able to hear and see them breathing, witness their hair blowing in the wind, pick up faint sounds such as rushing water or birds crying out from the surrounding simulated environment.

Video: Given Time

Second Life• 3D social network accessed exclusively by logging in as a

representational character. • Real life “residents” experience SL through a computer game-like

first-person interface, and are seen by others as human-like forms.

• Every avatar in SL’s virtual buildings and streets has a corresponding person somewhere in the physical world.

• There is no entry to SL without a user, computer, and avatar; we perceive, act, activate and are activated through our virtual interactions with its residents.

From the Artist• In Given Time, there are no users, and the SL “in- world”

location is not made available. • These avatars are realized only through each other and their

publicly shared installation and engagement, incarnated through a feedback loop across virtual and actual space.

• Here, an intimate exchange between dual, virtual bodies is transformed into a public meditation on human relationships, bodily mortality, and time’s inevitable flow.

Check Out More Work by Nathaniel Stern NathanielStern.comNetworkedCyberculture and New Media

Sources• http://nathanielstern.com/• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition• http://www.flickr.com/photos/14133973@N00/2980029238• http://cai.ucdavis.edu/kraigdualism/cogito.html• http://www.artthrob.co.za/06feb/artbio.html• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#1• http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/tangible_interaction.html• http://www.greenm3.com/2008/11/embodiment-livi.html• http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1317• http://www.upsidelearning.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/25/digital-interaction-

design-to-tangible-interaction-design/

• http://tangibleinteraction.com/gallery/twitter_photobooth• http://greylockarts.net/arrested-time-curatorial-statement