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Staniar Gallery Offers “Geolocation: Tributes to the Data Stream,” Photographs by Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman

The first exhibit of the academic year at Washington and Lee University’s Staniar Gallery, which will be on view Sept. 1–24, is “Geolocation: Tributes to the Data Stream,” photographs by Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman.

They will give a public artist’s talk on Sept. 15 at 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall’s Concert Hall. The lecture will be followed by a reception for the artists. The exhibition and reception event are free and open to the public.

Larson and Shindelman’s collaborative work focuses on the cultural understanding of distance as perceived in modern life and network culture. In this project, the artists use publicly available GPS coordinates from Twitter messages to find and photograph the location where the Tweet originated. The pictures are then presented with the text that inspired them to create poetic pairings, which range from sorrowful to humorous, confessional to cheeky.

The project has garnered much attention for its exploration of contemporary cultural dichotomies such as public/private, real/virtual, analog/digital.

“Geolocation” has been widely exhibited and featured in such publications as Wired Magazine, the New York Times Lens Blog, VICE Magazine, Discover Magazine, The Washington Post and Utne Reader.

Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call (540) 458-8861.