let created = `Date (2020, 9, 7) in
I recently gave a talk at Bornhack
where I spoke about the ideas and the technology
behind niseq. In this blogpost I'll give a less technical overview of what
niseq is.
In a sentence, niseq is an instrument for making live visual art -
especially of the abstract kind. At the same time it's an explorative instrument,
for finding interesting relations between single images or groups of images - which
enables one to work in an intuitive and immediate way with footage. This
workflow is very different from
how one would work with ordinary video-editing applications (NLE's).
This non-immediacy of NLE's is one of my original reasons for coming up with the
idea for niseq.
I developed niseq in my spare time throughout the past couple of years,
and have been working on the idea of it for about a decade (where I in the
meantime also worked on related projects, studied computer science and worked
as a programmer).
The idea initially stems from how I came up with manually moving the playback-cursor
around in my video-footage, while making a video-installation at the Fatamorgana
school of photography.
Since the beginning of july I quit my job as a programmer to work on niseq,
hopefully ending up with new works of art and performances.
The core technological
feature
of niseq is that one can access and show any image loaded from disk at
60 frames per second. This enables live, free movement through time - which
is hard for me to do justice in a sentence, so I'll list some examples for how
I use it currently:
Just before the recent Bornhack performance,
I implemented an effects system in niseq, where each image can have
effects applied and recorded for later. This e.g. includes zooming and
stretching images - which is what I call moving in space. Effects also includes
fading images together, brightness/contrast and bandpass-filtering (added later).
For now I'm mostly interested in exploring less effect-based workflows, as I see a great value of the resulting art in being relateable to the original material.
A major focus for niseq is being an
instrument for live creation of visual art.
I use the word instrument in the same sense as when one says 'musical
instrument'. Here I mean there being a direct and instant relation between what
the human player does with the instrument, and what can be experienced
from the instrument.
As niseq is a software instrument, it also has automative features -
for example, one can record a rhythm of
switching between different streams of images. Though the current primary
focus of niseq has been on direct human control, I'm planning to explore
generative features at a later point - inspired by how modular synthesizers
work. Generative input to niseq is already supported, as niseq is
includes a client/server structure, which makes it easily extensible.
Another important reason for extensibility of niseq:
keyboard and mouse, which is the current interface to niseq, is a good
approximation for a powerful and intuitive interface -
though this interface not expressive in communicating what the
player actually does towards the audience.
New hardware interfaces to control niseq is also a dimension I'm
planning to explore.
The idea for niseq initially came to me through
experimentation and intuition, and a feeling of there being something missing
in the language of cinematic expression of most cinematic experiences I had -
especially the mainstream cinema, which I think often has degraded to a
fast-food alternative to books.
I've later found that
the ideas of the french Dada and Surrealist movements of the 1920's
correspond closely with my idea of the unlived potentials of cinema,
and I consider the art of niseq part of the related
cinéma pur
movement.
The non-narrative nature of experimental electronic music has inspired me a lot, as it leads to more direct forms of emotional, aesthetic and atmospheric experiences. This relation to music also existed for the surrealist/cinéma pur filmmaker Germaine Dulac, who wrote (1):
... The cinema can certainly tell a story, but one mustn't forget that the story is nothing. The story is a surface. The seventh art, the art of the screen, is the palpable rendering of the depth which extends beneath this surface: the musical ineffable... Visual impact is ephemeral, it's an impact you receive which suggests a thousand thoughts. An impact analogous to that provoked by musical harmonies.
I've been performing a
couple of 'silent cinema' shows
with niseq, which I want
to do more of in the future - but right now I'm looking at making
collaborations with musicians for making improvisational jam sessions.
If you are interested in collaborating, write to me at rand at r7p5 dot earth.