Wednesday, September 30, 2009

interview from super cool blog... Joe Nolan's Insomnia

http://www.joenolan.com/2009/09/bridge-on-river-why.html


This post is actually an interview with Nashville photographer/musician/bon vivant and raconteur, Tony Doling. We discuss Halfway Across A Bridge: Super8 Stills, his latest exhibit at Twist Art Gallery in downtown Nashville's historic Arcade building.


JN: Why don't you tell me a little bit about your new exhibit. How did the concept evolve?

TD: I've been thinking about this show for a couple of years now. I lived in Marin County from 1999-2000. LA for 2 months in 2000. I lived across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco for almost a year, and crossed that bridge probably 50-60 times. For an individual who would like to consider himself an artist/photographer, I never took a single photo of that bridge. I mean, why bother? It's all been done. What I did do is shoot about 10 seconds of black and white Super 8 film footage by sticking my camera out of the window of a moving car while crossing that bridge. For some time now, I've wanted to display the random, incomplete images that came out of these 10 seconds. After a stunning amount of time scanning tiny little frames, that's the show that I came up with.

JN: Obviously, in Marin County the bridge takes on a number of practical, symbolic and historical meanings. How did the bridge figure into your world view during that time?

TD: As a guy who grew up in Louisiana, I was clearly affected by all the many definitive images I'd seen across the rest of the country (The Golden Gate Bridge, The Chicago and NYC skylines, The Seattle Space Needle and on and on). My only relationship was to see something become more beautiful and majestic in person than any of the media images could have attempted to portray.



JN: Still, the images of the bridge color the perception of the real thing. The real thing can sometimes become almost unreal once we have been saturated with mediated messages about what something is. In this case, images of the bridge are a cliché. What made you decide to shoot your footage at that moment? What made you roll down that window?

TD: We were shooting a lot of Super 8 at the time (my brother, Shane and I, when we had common days off) and I had a camera loaded with film and didn't want to turn around to get a legit shot, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to capture the fact that we had actually seen the thing in person. Not a lot of foresight involved.



JN: Its one thing to create some work, its another thing to put it on display. You've started showing more work formally in the last year, but what made you decide to pursue getting this show together?

TD: Again, to be totally honest, an opening came up for the main gallery at Twist, and, given the age of the footage and concept, I realized I would probably never do it if I didn't force myself to do it now.

JN: You've displayed your photos before, but this is more of a conceptual installation. Does this show represent something new in your opinion? A step up? A step out?

TD: I don't know the specific term I would give it, but it is an artistic risk for me. I like to consider myself a simple, no frills guy who doesn't take himself too seriously. I never had a "Master Plan" for this when I shot this. I was just glad to have a day off. The biggest fear for me doing something different than I've done before is that the reaction may be "Who does this guy think he is?" There's definitely a worry that people will think I'm intentionally trying to do something conceptual out of context with my character, and that the result may be insincere. I hope it's not.



JN: At first, I began to suspect that your ambivalence regarding this show was disingenuous, especially given your confidence regarding your musical projects. (Doling is a composer/musician with the Nashville-based pop-collective, Bulb). However, I was fascinated to find out that you look at this show as something separate from your other projects. And you're genuinely worried about it! (Laughs). Tell me a bit about how this is "something different" from your musical efforts.

TD: Well, first of all, I've been playing music for so long, I don't really even have to think about it. In the work I do with Todd ((Greene), a great artist here in Nashville, as well) in bulb, it's so collaborative. I write most of the music and he writes the lyrics and melodies. It's a kind of assembly line in regards to the specialization and by far the most collaborative thing I've ever done. It's a unique way of doing music, but seems to work as we are just wrapping up our 15th album. www.bulbmusic.com (thanks for the plug, Joe). With the Twist show, although I've used many great suggestions from friends, it's still just my name on it - so I feel alot more pressure. There's always a worry in my new ventures into visual arts about the fact that by displaying your work, you have to be willing to let people like it or not, and maybe even tell you that they don't like it. I need to get used to that and be okay with it.

JN: We all certainly have to find a way to continually take ground despite criticism, rejection or - even worse - disinterest. I think my solution is always to stay so busy that I don't have time to consider how others might perceive a given effort. It helps to be immersed in an expansive project. Have you been looking for a bigger project to do or did the material inspire the show?

TD: The accidental nature of the footage and the question of what to do with it definitely inspired the show. The "something bigger" idea scares the shit out of me.

JN: Will you be pursuing similar ideas/projects in the future?

TD: I have no idea where to go now. Any ideas?

JN: What will make this show “successful” in your eyes?

TD: I hope that some of the girls at the after-party might talk to me since I had stuff at the Gallery Crawl.

Doling's project will open this Saturday night, October 3 with an artist reception from 6 – 9 p.m. at Twist Gallery's space at 73 Arcade.

Twist Art Gallery takes part in Nashville sound crawl october 3 2009

nashville scene

SoundCrawl: Nashville at Various Galleries
Now Hear This
Joe Nolan

While Nashville art-abouts may be caught off guard by eye-catching finds during this Saturday’s Gallery Crawl, it’s likely that they’ll be surprised by what they hear as well. In addition to the visual art packing the Fifth Avenue and Arcade Galleries, this month’s Crawl will also play host to an international exhibition of sound artists whose work will be heard throughout the event, inviting viewers to become listeners, experiencing the way that sound can create mood, define space, imply movement and more. Curated by Nashville composers Aaron Hoke Doenges and Kyle J. Baker, SoundCrawl will feature sound artists from around the globe and will be hosted in various spaces, but our money is on the Sanctuary and Chapel spaces at the Downtown Presbyterian Church, where the amazing acoustics and quiet settings should lend to a long, loving listen.

Nashville Public Radio “Sound Crawl” (transcript)

Nashville’s “Sound Crawl” (transcript)
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
By Kim Green

In an industry town that polishes and packages its sound to perfection, it can’t be easy to get folks to rethink their ideas of what music is. But for composers Aaron Doenges and Kyle Baker, experimental digital sound like this is as vital a genre as country and bluegrass. That why they’ve launched SoundCrawl: Nashville — a festival featuring sound art by composers from all over the world . WPLN’s Kim Green reports – For more information: www.soundcrawlnashville.com

Audio for this feature is available here.



GREEN: Composer Aaron Doenges finds music where you least expect it.

(SOUND: coins spinning)

DOENGES: “That’s a sample that I’ve created myself of a quarter spinning on one of the end tables in my house.”

GREEN: Doenges calls himself an “electroacoustic” composer. It’s a broad category that basically means music produced digitally, using anything from synthesizers to theremins to recordings of everyday sounds, manipulated using audio editing software. (SOUND: coins dropping into a machine)

DOENGES: “Another sound enters that is a coin being put into a slot machine or a vending machine of some sort.”

GREEN: Coins. Thousands of them. This is one of Doenges’ compositions. It’s called “The Suicide of Freddie Mac,” and it’s featured in the festival. By manipulating recognizable sounds that connote money, the piece journeys through recent economic history. The clanging of slot machines and the Wall Street bell build towards a giddy climax. A crowd cheers as an ATM dispenses easy cash, evoking an era of feverish speculation. Finally, the bubble bursts. :25

DOENGES: “…and then suddenly you get that kind of alarm sound, // when the ATM doesn’t give you money. And every time that happens, the crowd kinda boos. Until it gets to a breaking point where there’s a gunshot // and then the ATM sounds turn into a heart monitor like you would hear at a hospital, and then it’s back to that initial quarter spinning.”

(SOUND: coin spins)

GREEN: Doenges and Kyle Baker, both recent grads of Belmont’s masters in composition program, dreamed up the SoundCrawl festival as a way to showcase and advocate for the kind of experimental work they do— which often has a hard time finding an ear outside the academic music world. One night last summer they posted a call for submissions online.

BAKER: “And we woke up the next morning at eight and we had six emails with submissions, and none of them were from the United States.”

Ambi: “Grinny Memories”

GREEN: This piece is called “Grinny Memories,” by a Lithuanian sound artist who goes by “Gintas K.” It’s one of thirty-six chosen for the festival from nearly two hundred and fifty pieces submitted. Some are tranquil soundscapes. Others use ordinary sounds to transport you to a place.

(SOUND: farm sounds – mooing, neighing)

GREEN: — and then bend and distort the familiar into something new.

(SOUND: Farm sounds change to more jarring electronic noise)

GREEN: A few entries feature recorded voices, rendered abstract and poetic by repetition. Like this piece, which Kyle Baker created using verses from an audio Bible.

(SOUND: “Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good…“)

GREEN: On Saturday night, during Downtown Nashville’s monthly Art Crawl event, the sound pieces will be playing at seven downtown galleries, most of them in the Arcade. By associating SoundCrawl with a popular gallery tour, Doenges and Baker hope to harness an audience that’s already open to experiencing something unconventional.

(SOUND: “Tranquility”)

GREEN: Still, they know they’re taking a big risk introducing this kind of avant-garde work to new ears.

BAKER: “We tried to select pieces that moved pretty quickly, knowing there are people who’ve never heard anything like this outside of maybe Bjork or Imogene Heap or something. And this can open up their eyes.”

(SOUND: “Tranquility” up full)

GREEN: What’s opened Doenges and Baker’s eyes is the response they’re getting from the local creative community as word of the festival gets out. Even after the deadline, audio engineers, technicians, and all kinds of folks who usually help others make music, keep submitting pieces. Baker says these are the people whose creativity he wants to encourage. People who engineer Bob Dylan’s album at their day job, and then play with their digital audio software in the basement at night. These are the people who push the envelope —

BAKER: “..the tinkerers and the entrepreneurs and the inventors, because they’re exploring just to explore, they are valuable to the rest of society as explorers. And you’ll see things move from an avant-garde piece to a pop album in two or three years, and that space is getting closer and closer and closer.”

GREEN: As with any vanguard movement, some experiments and innovations will always fail. But the ones that succeed will likely blaze the trail for a mainstream culture following closely in their wake. For Nashville Public Radio, I’m Kim Green.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

party for My Mom and Halfway Across A Bridge: Super8 Stills at Twist

Nashville Scene critic's pick
Party for My Mom and Halfway Across A Bridge: Super8 Stills at Twist
Golden Gate Mommy Party
Joe Nolan

This month, Twist opens two shows with fundamentally different origins. One is born from a connection with one’s own primal beginnings, and the other is an afterthought in slow motion. Mandy Stoller’s multimedia work invokes family, cats with spaceships and Japanese movie monsters to delight and disturb. Stoller’s Party for My Mom will celebrate “the most frickin’ amazing person in the whole wide world!” at Arcade 58. Tony Doling’s Halfway Across A Bridge: Super8 Stills, presents single, successive, black-and-white images from eight seconds of film the photographer shot from the window of a car crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, the most photographed bridge in the world. Is this an ironic gimmick or a kind of haphazard poetics that teases the transcendent from the tiresome? Find out tonight at Arcade 73.

Opening reception 6-9 p.m., Oct. 3.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

J.Todd Greene's Twist satellite show at the werthan lofts





http://www.werthanlofts.com/

Twist Art Gallery presents....in October 2009





Twist Art Gallery presents:


Tony Doling in space 73

and Mandy Stoller in space 58

we are also participating in the sound crawl

opening October 3rd from 6-9 pm 2009

show runs through October 3-31 2009




Tony Doling


"Halfway Across A Bridge: Super8 Stills" at twist art gallery #73



Artist statement: "I spent about a year living in Northern California
back in 2000. In all the times I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, or
stared awestruck from the Marin Headlands or Ocean Beach, the innate
photographic genius living inside of me never snapped a single picture
of this stunningly beautiful object. All I managed to get was about
eight seconds of shaky black and white Super 8 footage by sticking a
camera out of my brother's moving car. this has become a series of photographs.




.........







Mandy Stoller at twist etc. 58

My mom is so awesome I thought, "I should throw a party for my mom."
She has inspired my work of Rhonda and Agatha and has impressed upon
me a country accent that randomly comes out without warning. So let’s
celebrate my mom for being the most frickin’ amazing person in the
whole wide world!!

Come celebrate my mom on October 3rd from 6-9pm at Twist Gallery
Studio 58! There will be cake!!

sound crawl October 3rd from 6-9 pm

about SoundCrawl:Nashville Picture a Saturday night in Nashville when all the galleries are open. Beautiful people, drinks in hand, drift from one gallery to another to experience the best the city has to offer in visual art.

Now imagine that at various points along the way something new has been added, an opportunity to experience a new kind of art, art that you HEAR....sound art.

So in between the experience of the visual arts, artists and guests alike gather to listen to....a rhythmic beat of water drops....or a dizzying immersion of the sound of coins moving through space...synthetic audio wrapping around, tickling the ear drums of the city.

That evening is coming to Nashville on October 3, from 6-9pm, with SoundCrawl:Nashville.

For the first time ever, Nashville will introduce a sound art festival in conjunction with the city's monthly Art Crawl. On October 3 Nashvillians will be among the first in the nation to experience a festival of this type, an international festival bringing new compositions from all over the world.

Where better to introduce this than Music City.



about the ArtCrawl: (from www.artatthearcade.com):Every first Saturday of the month, the historic Arcade in downtown Nashville comes to life with over one thousand visitors. Multiple galleries open their doors to avid art lovers as well as anyone else that is just curious to see what the Gallery Crawl is all about. Art at the Arcade is a collective organization that hosts an assortment of contemporary artists from throughout the world to Nashville.



about SoundArt: What is Sound Art? Between 1930 and 1965, composer Edgard Varèse gave a series of lectures that have since been collected and titled “The Liberation of Sound.” In these lectures, Varese was trying to understand – and explain – his own approach to sonic expression. He, along with Pierre Schaeffer and others, began to explore the organization of sonic materials – sounds from the ambient world, evolving electronic technology, and the traditional instruments used for centuries– in any and every combination into cohesive works of audio art on phonograph (and then tape, and now computer).

The only definition that seemed to fit his music was simply: “organized sound.”

This definition has been given several labels through the years: musique concrète (in the French, Varèse and Schaeffer’s native tongue), electroacoustic music, sound collage, sound music, sound art, etc., etc. Some of these labels focus on very specific types of audio used. Some do not. Each one, however, is all encompassing of sound. Any sound. That has been organized in some way.

It’s a pretty broad definition.

The cultural and mechanical forces that influenced Varèse and Schaeffer have only become more powerful in the intervening years. With the advent of the computer and audio software, the production possibilities of sound organization – something that this town knows a bit about - seem endless. This power has brought with it technological ubiquity – computers are everywhere – and with ubiquity has come the commonplace, and with the commonplace comes the ability to focus not only on the medium (the technology used) but also on the expression (the art of the sounds used). And has changed the art of sound as we know it.

So what is sound art?

Sound \'saund\: the sensation perceived by the sense of hearing

Art \'ärt\: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects

Sound Art \'saund ' ärt\: The conscious use of skill and creative imagination in producing aesthetic sensations perceived by the sense of hearing.

Sound. Collage. Expression. Audio. Organization. Consciousness. Creativity. Music. Art.



about the Directors: Kyle J. Baker and Aaron Hoke Doenges


Kyle J. Baker is a composer and creator in Nashville, Tennessee. While thoughtful and quick-witted in person, Kyle's raw, rhythmic and cacaphonic music turns the classical idiom on its ear. When not orchestrating cacaphony Kyle dreams up new experiences drawing on his background in theatre and interest in disruptive innovation. His music can be found at kylejbaker.com; his ideas can be found at thinkingcreator.net.








Aaron Hoke Doenges is an electroacoustic composer based in Nashville, Tennessee. While influences ranging from J.S. Bach and Arnold Schoenberg to John Cage, Edgard Varese', Jonty Harrison, Radiohead and Sigur Ros are present in Doenges’ approach to music, he blends his unique electroacoustic style through a collage of aural pictures. He explores through listening, writing and musical experimentation, searching the world around him for thoughts, sounds and melodies that can be pieced together in ways to provoke attention, thought and perhaps dialog. Music and other info can be found at www.aaronhokedoenges.com.

Lady parties by Elizabeth Alley in the Tennessean

'Lady parties' inspire show of paintings at Twist
September 20, 2009

It's been two years since Elizabeth Alley last attended a baby shower, but she's spent the past nine months revisiting a lifetime of baby and bridal showers while working on her latest series of paintings and sketches. The fruits of that labor are currently on view at Twist Art Gallery.



Alley's small- to medium-size paintings offer intimate glimpses into a world of petit fours and bags stuffed with tissue paper; cropped views show a row of torsos or crossed legs, an expectant mother's stomach and lots of stylish shoes.

"It started as looking at pictures of . . . friends, sisters and mothers, mothers and daughters," Memphis-based Alley says of the series she refers to as "lady parties." Some of the source photos were hers, others were borrowed — some dating from the 1960s. The resulting lush oil-on-canvas (and one or two acrylic) paintings appear both contemporary and timeless.

An installation in the gallery's back room combines sketches and text in a manner similar to a graphic book; the pages are arranged to spell out a word related to the show. Twist's Beth Gilmore carried the motif of Alley's gray paper mountings throughout show by painting a wide gray stripe around the walls.

Alley's paintings and sketches remain on view at Twist through Saturday. The gallery is located in the Arcade, Suite 73, and is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday-Friday and 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday. For information, call 1-888-535-5286 or go to www.twistartgallery.com.

—MICHELLE JONES, FOR THE TENNESSEAN

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

workforce rebellion posters




I was very happy to receive a poster at the most recent art crawl from the workforce rebellion. they wrote this on their blog about the night :) THANKS WORKFORCE REBELLION!!!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Project: Gallery Owner Operator Appreciation

The Art Crawl is a very powerful force in the art community here in Nashville, so we decided to have a gallery owner operator appreciation night. We thank all the hard work they put in each month getting these shows together to create an unbelievable evening every first Saturday. Thanks and keep up the good work.
POSTED BY THOUGHTS MANIFESTED AT 6:09 PM 0 COMMENTS
http://workforcerebellion.blogspot.com/2009/09/project-gallery-owner-operator.html

Sunday, September 6, 2009

first view of the Colorado River

















"The Last Roll: Kodachrome 64" at Twist 58.




The image is titled "First view of the Colorado River" and the image
is by , Elizabeth Streight.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

nashville Scene..critic's pick Twist Art Gallery

Nashville Scene Critic's Pick

The Last Roll and Elizabeth Alley
Two to Twist
Joe Nolan

Having just celebrated its third birthday, Twist Gallery isn’t willing to rest on its colorful laurels. Delivering another one-two-punch, the gallery brings a pair of new shows to the Arcade this month, both of which find their connections through photography. The Last Roll is a diverse group show of local photographers shooting rolls of Kodachrome 64 film, offering their own unique insights on the end of the discontinued medium. The show features work by Elizabeth Streight, Scott Simontacchi, Jonathan Rodgers and Anthony Doling. While this darkroom dirge plays out in Twist’s Arcade 58 space, the gallery’s Arcade 73 space will play host to work by Elizabeth Alley, whose narrative paintings are informed by a photographer’s sense of composition and perspective.

Opening reception 6-9 p.m., Sept. 5, as part of First Saturday.