a minima/ August 2007

Interview with Kurt Ralske
by Mia Makela

> 1. how did you get started with realtime audiovisuals ?

I worked with electronic music, and around 1997, I began using Max/MSP for some experiments with making long compositions by restructuring very short bits of pre-existing source material. One day I realized that the strategy for restructuring material could work with images as well as sound...the strategy was the important thing: it didn't matter if the result was music or video. I started experimenting with processing images in Java, then Nato became available...and then, it was all downhill from there.

> 2. what was your relationship with the legendary nato software ?

Nato was the probably the first software to provide real-time random-access video processing. It was so exciting at the time. Here was this powerful tool -- but to use it, you had to trust a bizarre anonymous online entity. You had to be willing to endure poetically cryptic documentation, use the software via typographically challenging commands, and if you needed tech support, submit to patronizing and/or abusive treatment. But, there was no choice -- it was too interesting not to be involved!

> 3. what has happened since (after nato) in your life as a creator / software developer ?

In 2001, I developed Auvi for Nato, because I wanted to extend the capabilities of Nato. Then in 2002, I developed Auvi for Jitter, because it was clear that Nato would not have a long lifetime. Since that time, I have done less software development, because it is far less interesting than making art. I create video installations, and have exhibited in galleries and museums internationally, and perform live video with contemporary classical ensembles and dance companies. I teach full-time at the School of The Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. In 2007, I received a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation.

> 3. how would you describe your work as realtime visual artist ?

I love to work with a camera, to capture an environment, then process the images live, so that when they are projected they change the environment. Delaying live images, changing their speed, reversing their sequence, repeating sections, all disrupt the temporal coherence of an event. This works well with live musicians or dancers. The camera is objective, but our sensory apparatus and cognition are not, so the processed images perhaps more resemble the way we read the objective world; our minds assemble bits of information perceived at different times into one coherent model. By playing with time, new aspects of an event are revealed, even as it is occurring.

> 4. how would you describe "live cinema" ? (do you use that term for your work ?)

"Live cinema" to me implies that there is an element of narrative. When I worked with the video performance trio 242.pilots (with HC Gilje and Lukasz Lysakowski), we were trying to improvise collectively in the hopes that a narrative would spontaneously arrive out of the dialogue of images. So we were thinking of narrative flow, of recurring "characters" (which might be a type of image, or even an effect), of conflict and resolution. But more recently, I prefer to think of this type of work as "visual music" instead of "live cinema". In music, there may be dynamic form, but no expectation of narrative. I've been involved in music all my life, so this idea is more comfortable for me -- especially since I have no talent for narrative, at all. It may be, however, that the art world is more comfortable with work that involves extreme distillation of a concept. Time-based work (like "live cinema" video) presupposes that the audience is comfortable with enjoying the ride. Most contemporary art practice is much more likely to "cut to the chase", partly because of the attention span of the average gallery-goer. For this reason, work like experimental cinema, or performance art, or "live cinema" video, do not currently enjoy much commercial cachet in the art world, perhaps unjustly. Not to imply that time-based work is superior to non-time-based work, or vice versa; it just has to do with the different ways that the art audience consumes art products.