Two new exhibits in the Nott Memorial challenge and tantalize the senses.
“Outside Information: A Site-Specific Sound Installation by Stephan Moore,” which runs through Friday, Sept. 19, uses the complex acoustics inside the Nott Memorial to transform the building’s interior into a dense, hushed wilderness of small, shifting sounds.
“SNAP! Contemporary Photography” features the unconventional photographic treatments and approaches of five contemporary female photographers: Sally Apfelbaum, Nora Herting, Katharine Kreisher, Melinda McDaniel and Lynn Saville. The exhibit will be on display in the Nott’s Mandeville Gallery through Sunday, Sept. 28.
Both exhibits are free and open to the public and may be viewed daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“These artists engage in complex, artistic investigations of both the capabilities and limits of the photography medium, while simultaneously exploring ideas about perception and our relationship with the world,” said Rachel Seligman, curator. “Through employing a combination of traditional and non-traditional techniques to create their photographs, the originality and rich exploration in the resulting image translates to rich meaning for the viewer.”
Apfelbaum uses a large-format camera and layers multiple exposures onto a single negative to create images of nature that are dense, layered and mysterious.
McDaniel fragments her photographs by cutting, tearing and shredding them. She then reorders and reconfigures the fragments into new images, a metamorphosis that brings her a more immediate relationship with the final work.
Using a medium-format camera, Saville makes photographs of urban and rural twilight landscapes capturing the atmospheric quality of light fading to darkness.
Herting’s photographs focus on her subjects as she analyzes and subverts conventions in both medium and subject matter. In the Spirit series, Herting isolates young cheerleaders in the foreground, and replaces the backgrounds with decorative patterns, creating a contrast between movement and activity and the static grid of the pattern.
Kreisher employs technologies that span the history of photography and combines photographic techniques with post-photographic interventions to create final works that have been torn, sewn, stapled and collaged.
Moore is a composer, audio artist and sound designer in New York City whose creative work centers around the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. For “Outside Information,” Moore uses the Nott’s built-in speaker system and an array of hand-built Hemisphere speakers to evoke and manipulate sound, inviting exploration and discovery.
“The piece is a shifting, shimmering series of sounds that fills the vast open space of the Nott, and is at the same time delicate and discreet, localized in the various sites throughout the building where each speaker is located,” said Seligman. “The experience of the piece varies radically depending on where you are in the space.”
A reception and gallery talk for both exhibits will be Thursday, Sept. 18 at 5 p.m. At 7 p.m., there will be a presentation of “Magnetic North,” a performance created by Moore in collaboration with designer/performer Chris Harvey and choreographer/performer Kimberly Young.
For more information, contact Seligman at (518) 388-6729 or the Mandeville Gallery information line at (518) 388-6004, or visit http://www.union.edu/gallery.