Carsten Nicolai/ Alva Noto

Carsten Nicolai, also known as Alva Noto, creates a lot of Data Visualisation projects. His works span over quite a few subjects, but one of the subjects I found interesting was his unicolor, unidisplay, and unitxt installations. These installations are a series of projects designed to great ever expanding moving images of colours and shapes, some of which were created with audio hardware.

Unicolor Installation

Nicolai creates these ever expanding images using mirrors. When actually viewing the Unicolor installation, it can confuse the viewers perception as the images are always changing and they expand infinitely due to the placement of the mirrors. This is to create an impression of an ever expanding universe. This can relate to my project, as the rendered images are in an ever expanding 3D plane. The way the 3D shapes work in my project, they can go off the screen, particularly when the pitch is bent, to create this same effect of an ever expanding universe.  To try and relate Nicolai's work to mine, I may try and find a way to spin my project continuously, to show how big the 3D space really is, to create this perception of an ever expanding Universe.

A project made by Nicolai actually helped inspire my project, when it was the LED piano, but still relates heavily to my continuous project. This was a live show of Carsten Nicolai working with musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, to create this data visualisation along with a music performance. Sakamoto is on the piano and Nicolai is using a laptop and together they create this ambient music. However, what makes this performance more interesting is the data visualisaion projected behind them. The data visualisaion brings more life to their performance and creates more meaning to the music. What makes the visuals so effective for them is that they are subtle. The visualisation doesn't distract from the performance, it enhances it. This is exactly what my inspiration for this project was, particularly as I consider myself an ambient composer.

References

Nicolai, C. (2015) Unicolor. [Online] Available from: http://www.carstennicolai.de/?c=works&w=unicolor [accessed 21 March 2015]

Robin Chan. (2012) Alva Noto Ryuichi Sakamoto Live in 2012. [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ggEYoVKX_M [accessed 13 November 2014]