BILL JONES and BEN NEILL
Nite Nite
22 MARCH - 19 APRIL 2003
Woolworth Building at Night, 2003
Cibachrome print mounted on Plexiglas
48 x 60 inches
Unique
Album 1, 2003
Inkjet print mounted on Plexiglas
10 x 42 inches
Edition of 10
Album 2, 2003
Inkjet print mounted on Plexiglas
10 x 42 inches
Edition of 10
Nite Nite installation view
Nite Nite, screen still from large plasma monitor
Nite Nite, screen still from large plasma monitor
Nite Nite, screen still from small plasma monitor
Nite Nite, screen still from small plasma monitor
After, 2003
Cibachrome transparency mounted in lightbox
21 x 25 inches
Edition of 5
Before, 2003
Cibachrome transparency mounted in lightbox
21 x 25 inches
Edition of 5
During, 2003
Cibachrome transparency mounted in lightbox
21 x 25 inches
Edition of 5
Nite Nite installation
Sandra Gering Gallery is pleased to present Nite Nite, a collaboration between visual artist Bill Jones and composer/performer Ben Neill. This is Jones' and Neill's second exhibition at Sandra Gering Gallery.
Ben Neill and Bill Jones merge music and visual art, bringing the improvisational real-time performance of music to moving and still images. Together they make instantly responsive narratives of sight and sound, as well as photographs and digital prints generated from Neill's musical score.
Nite Nite is a real time video remix of an animated Volkswagen television commercial played live by networked computers. The music for Nite Nite and nine other VW spots was originally composed by Neill for Volkswagen via Arnold Advertising. Neill then remixed and extended these compositions to form the tracks of his latest CD Automotive, released on the Six Degrees label. Jones and Neill have created video remixes of all ten VW ads. Photographic stills in the installation represent images captured from the Nite Nite video remix.
In this exhibition, as well as in Neill's live performance, the re-purposed media gives a new voice to the dialogue between fine and popular art, subverting both into a new multi-disciplinary form. Jones and Neill reinterpret the corporate message within a wholly different context by remixing the extended musical score and commercial footage.
The nationwide Automotive tour took place in fall 2002. In performance, three linked computers form a "Power Book band" that merges Neill's three-belled, computer interfaced, mutantrumpet with Jones' computer controlled video. Neill literally plays the moving pictures; he blows life into real-time and recorded video, making the images an extension of his electrified horn.
In addition, Jones and Neill have produced a DVD of Nite Nite, with vocals and lyrics by UK based singer, Andrew Montgomery. As the lyrics ask, "When we wake up tomorrow, what will the world be like? When we wake up tomorrow, how will we feel inside?"
Ben Neill, a noted electronic music composer, performer and protégé of
seminal minimalist LaMonte Young, has been working with Jones, a photo conceptualist,
media artist and founding editor of the digital culture magazine Artbyte, since
the mid-1990s.
