Nicking the Never

2004, 2007

7-channel installation
animation, DVD and quicktime, sound

Music: Lem Jay Ignacio
Technology: Julian Bleecker
Installation Design (The Kitchen): Palmer Moss & Marina Zurkow
Title Design: Nancy Nowacek

Nicking The Never is a project of Creative Capital, with generous support from Creative Capital, The Jerome Foundation, and The Media Arts Fellowship (supported By The Rockefeller Foundation).

Nicking the Never is a multi-linear installation that incorporates screen-based animated narratives into a sculptural interface. Composed of allegories about a young girl stuck in a kinetic world of emotional pitfalls, this kaleidoscopic trip into the states of selfhood bases its structure in the Tibetan Buddhist Wheel of Existence, whose images luridly and vividly describe the human struggle with need, jealousy, complacence, aggression, desire, and ego. Borrowing this emotional taxonomy, Nicking the Never unfolds in six corresponding short chapters: GuzzleBashBuoySmashNuzzle, and Dash.

The premiere of Nicking the Never took place in Dec 2004- Jan 2005 at FACT in Liverpool, UK. In this large-scale installation, seven DVD players projected their discrete realms onto seven 2-meter screens, each with a speaker overhead. Located sound helped to spatially orient the material in space. The viewer wandered through the labyrinth of screens.

Nicking the Never was first shown as a work-in-progress at the Kitchen in New York, May 2004. Monitors were arranged in a circle of six realms, with a hub at the center. Continuous animated loops of the girl’s physical gestures embodied the contents of each realm. Viewers activated the sub-animations via sensors embedded in six discs on the floor that mirrored the circular structure of the screens. Stepping on a disc triggered a realm, and all realms could be activated at once, by multiple users, creating a sonorous cacophony of parts.

 

Documentation and Video Clips

The Kitchen

FACT

FaCT Installation Video


Animations

Need
Envy
Complacence
Aggression
Desire
Ego

Animation Stills