15/10/2004
Lorie Novak
ArtSway, Sway
Reverb. A new computer-based projected installation examines the cultural significance of personal and media photographs and their meanings as public and private memorials and records of historical events.
REVERB
Reverb, a new computer-based projected installation by New York artist Lorie Novak, examines the cultural significance of personal and media photographs and their meanings as public and private memorials and records of historical events.
Interspacing photographs of significant moments from the last 50 years with highly personal images, Novak places the individual within a deeply political and historical context. Viewers are enveloped by images and sound - a dissolving sequence of approximately 250 images which includes personal and public imagery from World War II to the present. The chronological sequence contains both important and little known documentary images of historic events from the Holocaust to the current Iraq conflict. Personal imagery including family snapshots, self-portraits, and travel photographs from the same periods are interwoven with the media imagery. Selected audio fragments from the internet further encourage a notion of place and community while also challenging us to consider our own individual role or perspective in these events.
The installation uses special software designed by Jonathan Meyer to generate the image dissolves and to stream audio content from the many public audio archives on the internet. Direct broadcasts of past historical events, political speeches, and personal testimonies make different sound/image permutations each time the piece is played. Reverb is the third installation Novak has made using family photographs and media images to explore the relationship between personal and cultural memory. It is the first, however, to be made in the time of the internet where multiple and global views both past and present are easily accessible.
Novak will also be making an online version of Reverb for SCAN (www.scansite.org), which will go live during the course of the exhibition.
New photographs, made in response to Reverb and inspired by the New Forest are presented in the adjacent gallery. These photographs reflect Novak’s concern with memory, history, loss and the relationship between the intimate and the public. Reacting to the New Forest, Novak has produced a series of images that both act as effective works in their own right and as a still counterpoint to the time-based image installation of Reverb.
Access to the full functionality of Novak’s Collected Visions internet project (http://www.collectedvisions.net) will be available through broadband in the third gallery. Collected Visions explores how family photographs shape our memory. The collectedvisions.net gives people the opportunity to submit images to its growing archive of family photographs and create their own photo stories. Approximately 3,000 snapshots are in its growing archive and over 250 photo essays are posted throughout the site. The concept for Collected Visions grew out of the photographs and installations Novak has been creating since the early 1980s. Visitors will have the opportunity to add to the website with their own photographs and essays at the gallery.
Exhibition Dates: 16 October – 21 November 2004
Private View, Saturday 16 October 2004, 2pm – 5pm
Artist Talk & Tour, Saturday 16 October 2004, 4pm
For further information contact ArtSway on 01590 682260
ArtSway is the contemporary visual arts centre in the New Forest facilitating the development of new works by artists and offering creative opportunities for audiences
Lorie Novak lives and works in New York City and is Professor & Chair of the Photography & Imaging Department of New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. Novak’s photographs, installations, and internet projects have been exhibited widely including solo exhibitions at The International Center for Photography, New York; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Her photographs are in numerous permanent collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Her work can be found online at http://www.lorienovak.com.
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