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 show will be on display in the Mandeville Gallery through Sunday, Sept. 28.
“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.
The artists use a combination of traditional and nontraditional techniques Apfelbaum employs 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 and reorders and reconfigures the pieces fragments into new images. Saville uses a medium-format camera to make photographs of urban and rural twilight landscapes.
Herting subverts conventions in both medium and subject matter, while Kreisher employs technologies that span the history of photography and combines photographic techniques with post-photographic interventions.
For “Outside Information,” Moore, a composer, audio artist and sound designer in New York City, uses the Nott’s built-in speaker system and an array of hand-built Hemisphere speakers to evoke and manipulate sound.
“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.
A reception and gallery talk for both exhibits will be Thursday, Sept. 18 at 5 p.m., followed by a 7 p.m., presentation of “Magnetic North” created by Moore in collaboration with designer/performer Chris Harvey and choreographer/performer Kimberly Young. For more information, visit http://www.union.edu/gallery.