atrium display: Shimmer
Shimmer is a work of visual art created for a work of music.
Shimmer is a collaboration between architect/visual artist Robby Gilson and composer D. Riley Nicholson. Each drawing is a distillation of the projected artwork that accompanies the five self-contained movements of the piano and electronics composition Shimmer. Characterized by large and small rectangular blocks the negative space reminds the listener to be attentive to the space between notes. The variance in texture and density of the graphite create intimacy inviting the viewer to take a closer look. In contrast, the gradient of dark to light mimics the swell of energy found in the more complex moments of Shimmer. Through the projection of fundamental geometric forms, stripped of symbols and signs, each movement asks the spectator to remove themselves from the context of daily life and experience pure sound and light. The full piano, electronics, and visual projections production of Shimmer will premiere at the Center for New Music on January 28th, 2018.
Artist Bio:
Robby Gilson is an architect and visual artist. He uses fields, points, lines, and volumes to express the hidden flows and movement of bodies, light, and other natural forces in space. Concerned with boundaries imposed upon our experience of the world, a consistent feature of Robert’s work is the crop. Robby’s collaboration with Post:Ballet on Field the Present Shifts gave him the opportunity to study movement and apply those lessons to the practice of his visual art and architecture. His work was nominated for an Isabel Duncan Award, Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design. Other work includes an Indonesian skyscraper that blends socioeconomic groups (Kampunkota), an energy efficient “tiny house” (Chip), and an illustrated dystopian vision of the future (Quarantena). Robby has exhibited work at the Land of Tomorrow Gallery, 111 Minna Gallery, The National Building Museum, and Venice Architecture Biennale. He was nominated for the Julius Shulman Emerging Talent Award and received the AIA Henry Adams Award, the Ray Kappe Award, and the K-Rob Memorial Delineation Award. Robby studied at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and currently works at Macy Architecture in San Francisco.