Between 1999 and 2004, Nathaniel Stern produced dozens of media-rich poetry pieces – released as net.art, interactive installations, video sculptures, and more – all of which which culminated in his first, large-scale solo museum exhibition: The Storytellers, at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Here, stories and characters unfold from what is both spoken and unspoken, and how we relate to each.
Stern’s site, hektor.net (2000), used mostly Flash and streaming QuickTime – neither of which work any more. And his video series for iPod, at odys.org (2003), was largely considered the first work of its kind. Both are in the Rhizome ArtBase and Cornell University's Rose Goldsen Archive.
Stern is updating several of these always quirky and OG, often humorous and discomfiting, pieces as 1/1 NFTs exclusively with theVERSEverse.
Oedipus was Stern's genesis internet-based video poetry piece - produced for what would later become hektor.net - circa 1999. His character, hektor, was first tested at slam poetry venues like the Nuyorican and CBGBs in New York City, then embodied online via experimental video and animated effects. The poem compares the "Ameritocracy" - and capitalism's class structures - to Greek fatalism, alongside an "apt and inappropriate," dark Oedipal humor.
