NML == Noise Make-up Language
Vsebina
Tools
OSC (Open Sound Control), animated GIF, SVG, Firefox, DIY Noise Generators and sequencer, Pure Data, Javascript
All new tools and (non-live) code developed for NML will be released under GPL on a public github repository.
Our demo site currently lives on http://nml.ljudmila.net:3300/
Concept
NML is a noisemaking propaganda network of browsers, DIY electronics, pure data and activist collaboration.
In noise we perform an environment to manifest a display of forces, it's an environment more than a discourse, a space, or many spaces for noise to occur - a meta-discourse. Noise may still be occurring when there is sudden silence. Noise is similar to games. Noise is a sort of gaming environment where organization alternates with entropy.
Using the web as a dynamic visual composition canvas lets us bring the performance to the many networked screens the audience has and establishes a game field where confrontations can be enacted by moving and transforming visual and textual elements under combined human and algorithmic control.
The web is not only the lowest common denominator of today's wide spectrum of computers, it is also an excellent vehicle for getting open source software on many of them - increasingly designed as appliances where programmability by the user is seen as a risk and not a desired feature.
NML was designed to also work on the web as an easy way to publish an audiovisual call. Our first try was made to help to call out for people in Valparaiso to join a demonstration to protect funiculars, the town's unique industrial heritage, from disappearing.
http://www.ljudmila.org/~luka/ascensores/ascensores.html
Our propaganda call was very easy to pass along and had good impact, so we realized that html visuals was a light and easy way to make effective audiovisual propaganda.
Noisemaking can also mean spreading controversial things in the public and a call for atention - in this sense propagandistic, but here we are thinking as well about the openness of noise, whether it is using the means of reproduction of capitalistic fantasy (media) or is it Free and Open - that is free of representation, free of reproduction of heteronomies showing herself as material Noise.
The decision to use both noise and browser visuals comes out of a search for materiality, they focus the debate over structures and dynamics rather than specific content.
NML is a noise performance with some level of dramaturgy and a carrier of messages from social movements, particularly in this case the chilean struggle against profit oriented education. It is set up in a multidimensional space instead of occurring in a timeline. The messages are positioned in a space where performers are moving like probes on multiple trajectories.
For the visuals, we are performing with a web server as well as several web browsers. The visuals are reacting to the sound, controls and internal states of the audio patch and have internal logic to map these inputs to visual parameters. HTML and javascript code and graphs powering the visualization can be changed during the performance trough the browser interface (live coding). Members of the audience can also open a browser, display the visuals on their screen and participate as well, influencing the visuals on other screens and (partly) also the sound.
Live reconfigurability and open endedness is the key here.
We see an interesting possibility for documenting the performance. We will record the different layers of data: the sound, OSC traffic and web interaction in order to recreate a performance as a "web demo" after the fact, going a step beyond the usual video documentation.
As visual elements we will be using moving divs, animated gifs, svg, canvas and webgl, there will be many layers at times, perhaps resembling collages or the way walls used for flyposting turn out in time.
NML - it's a noiser in your browser!
Performers
Work in progress: NML por educacion teaser