NLoops (1989) is 7 minute abstract computer animated work by Vibeke Sorensen. It is based on polyrythmic musical structures translated into 2 and 3 dimensional space, and realized using computer techniques, in which complex time and space structures are built from phasings of abstract painted cycles. It was originally produced as a 9 monitor (display) installation, with 3 separate animations distributed over the 9 monitor array. Each of the 3 animated works was carefully timed in relationship to the others and the whole. Music was composed by Rand Steiger of University of California at San Diego, and employs digital musical technology in realizing the score.
Nloops integrates intuitive, gestural elements of painting and abstract/procedural approaches to three dimensional computer animation. The work references the history of animation, including the zoetrope and variations as it is extended into the 3 and 4 dimensional world of the computer. Many of the objects result from mathematical relationships to the number of different frames (12 and 16) in each cycle of animation. The large black torus or “donut”for example, has 16 facets as a cross section and 16 “slices” around its central axis. Each successive frame of the animation cycle was assigned to side by side polygons on the surface of the torus, so that adjacent polygons in any direction are exactly one step out of phase, all the way around in all directions. When each polygon animates a complete cycle, the entire object and its surface appears to cycle in rhythmic waves. Using light emitting displays such as cathode ray tubes, with 9 large monitors at a total scale of about 3m x 2m, colored light filled an entire room, and the light appeared as a large pool of liquid light illuminating and immersing the viewer in spatial patterns of color and music.
Hardware and software employed include an IBM PC AT running Cubicomp Picturemaker and Lumena Paint software. It was produced at the California Institute of the Arts, with thanks to the Post Group in Los Angeles. NLOOPS has been exhibited at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the ACM SIGGRAPH ’89 Art Show in Boston, the Post-Currents ’89 Festival at the State University of New York at Buffalo, in its single channel version in 1989 at the MANCA New Music Festival in Nice, France and the Euro-Video Festival in Paris, and numerous other locations around the world.
