nova
Nova is a video work on the movement of water by the collective Serious Computer Group (Nina Bouchard and Evan Montpellier). The project combines video recordings with synthesized wave patterns to produce an altered portrait of water, anchored in reality while reaching into the imaginary. The work shows water as both familiar and strange, giving back some of the mystery of this fundamental element. In doing so, Nova invites wonder and respect for the natural environment.
At rest, water is neutral and still, but at the slightest stimulus it takes on complex, shifting forms. As soon as the wind grazes its surface, textures appear; currents produce eddies and flows; a thrown stone sends out a multitude of waves. In constant transformation, it becomes abstract and hypnotic. All of that richness emerges from the basic physics of waves cancelling and reinforcing one another. Water shows how simple systems can give rise to complexity.
Each viewer traces a unique path through the images, depending on how wide they look and where they focus. In this way, Nova mirrors the experience of finding images in natural structures, like seeing figures in clouds or hearing melodies and rhythms in environmental sound.
Nova was selected for the 2021-2022 edition of Luminothérapie, Montréal's winter festival of participatory art organized by the Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles. For the event, Serious Computer Group produced a set of fixed-length Nova compositions. During the festival, three pairs of videos were projected on the façades of the Wilder Building and the Président-Kennedy Pavilion, at Place des Arts. The six videos correspond to different aspects of water in winter: storms, ice and thaw.
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Nova runs on custom video synthesis and processing software developed by Serious Computer Group.
Whether they occur in natural or electronic systems, combinations of simple waves can quickly give rise to complex patterns. Nova brings together multiple recorded and synthesized waves through a feedback network, letting each visual source influence and be influenced by all the others. The system makes it possible to mix and shape these streams in real time, without ever exhausting them. Nova's video signals are woven into a dense web of interdependencies, which keeps the system evolving in unexpected directions.
The often unpredictable output of the system shapes the artistic composition and guides the next stages of the software. This approach, at once technical and artistic, mirrors the project's conceptual aim: to move from a familiar starting point into unknown territory.