Last week-end, iMAL presented Stream On You, an event around streaming art practices with audio/visual performances.
One of the most accomplished installation was performed by nocinema, presenting a live video screening and live audio performance. nocinema proposes web interludes drawing upon strings of live streaming webcams across the world and sound from a shared soundfiles database which is fed and updated by a team of sound artists/partners.
You have to know that the choosen webcams are showing mainly non-sens or empty places, like a field, a construction space, a deserted parc, a road, a forest,… The sound can be digital or captured from everyday life environments.
I was really interested by the lag created between what you know beeing live streamed and the a-temporal aspects of the images and sound. This notion of present time soon desappears while the work becomes timeless, suspended, contemplative.
The fact that the stream is slowed down amplifies also this perception of a distorted time, but this effect is mainly due to the kind of images. Even if you often have a date and time on the video capture, the non situation of the image in a specifical time-space (due to the absence of individuals or event) makes it a-temporal. You could say, that it’s some garden or field from the early 21st century, but the banality of the scene and it’s non-narrative aspect make the scenesuspended in the time.
The variation of resolution between the different video captures was also visually interesting and probably contributed to the non-situation of the scene in a certain time-space.
The overall impression is to have a contemplative experience of live streamed sound and images that break any relation with their fundamental constitution: the present.Here and now seem to be extended.
