Bylta
Icebergs are born through a cataclysmic collision of two states of the same matter, between ice and sea. Inspired by the tumultuous plunge of unstable glacial fragments into the ocean below, the Icelandic term Bylta means “a heavy blow, to overturn, roll, or tumble about”. Bylta is a collaboration, between performance and sound artist Tinna Thorsteinsdóttir and glass artist Alli Hoag, fueled by the purpose to reveal and celebrate the unstable endpoints of creativity that fuels both musical and visual art. They work across sound, sculpture, and performance in their collaborative known as Bylta. Bylta premiered, in a performance self-titled Bylta, at Corning Museum of Glass in December 2015.
Alli Hoag's artistic practice is concerned with themes of magic. Seeing magic as the desire to connect with the world outside of our perceptual and cognitive abilities, she attempts to create moments where one can believe that distance is overcome. Alli works across mediums of glass, installation, video, performance and digital technology to investigate this uniquely human desire, and to reveal the simultaneous lightness and heaviness that is created when the imagined or invisible is labored into the physical realm.
Alli completed her BFA degree in Glass at University of Hawaii at Manoa, and graduated from New York State College of Ceramics in 2012. After graduation, she served as Adjunct Professor, teaching in both Sculpture and Glass.
Alli has developed her work internationally through residencies abroad at Cité internationale des Arts in Paris, France and S12 Galleri og Verksted in Bergen, Norway, where she first collaborated with Tinna Thorsteinsdóttir in the sound performance and glass/ sculptural work Cry Piano.
She has exhibited both internationally and nationally, with solo exhibitions recently at UrbanGlass, New York and upcoming at University of North Georgia in 2017. She was recognized as a 2015 Emerging Artist by the Glass Art Society and serves as Head of the Glass Program at Bowling Green State University.
has a broad experience with new music and has premiered around 80 piano works especially written for her. She works on a regular basis with many composers and is an active figure in the experimental music scene.
Educated as a classical pianist, 21st century music serves as her main passion. Prepared piano, electronics, toy piano and theatre pieces often show up on her programs. In recent years, apart from giving solo recitals internationally, Tinna has been active as a performance artist, making soundscapes, installations and improvising.
Collaborations include the dance work It is not a Metaphor to John Cage´s piano music as a production for the Iceland Dance Company in 2012. Tinna performs in the video work Constitution of the Republic of Iceland by artist duo Ólafur Ólafsson and Libia Castro and composer Karólína Eiríksdóttir, which was showcased at the Venice Biennale in 2011. In 2014 Tinna was a resident at the glass gallery S12 in Bergen, Norway, where she created the glass-performance work Cry Piano with Alli Hoag. Most recently Tinna played one of the main roles in the opera UR_ by composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, which was premiered in Theater Trier, Germany in 2015.
Her activities as a curator include the large scale art exhibition Piano at Reykjavík Arts Festival 2014 in Iceland.
Tinna co-leads the music and art festival Cycle in Iceland.
She was awarded the DV Culture Prize for Music in Iceland in 2013.