"Nite Nite" at Sandra Gering Gallery, opening Sat., March 22

For Immediate Release:


BILL JONES and BEN NEILL:

"Nite Nite"

Opening reception: Saturday, March 22, 2003

22 March - 19 April 2003

Sandra Gering Gallery
534 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
tel: 646 336 7183
email: [email protected]


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.

Bill Jones and Ben Neill 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 Neills 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. He 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 Neills 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 Neills
self-designed, 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 protege 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.


Links:
Bill Jones
http://www.geocities.com/firstpulseproj/bill.html

Ben Neill
http://www.benneill.com/

Green Beet:
http://www.greenbeet.com/

Six Degrees Records
http://www.sixdegreesrecords.com/artists/neill/index.htm

Sandra Gering Gallery
http://www.geringgallery.com/